AMESBURY.
Three miles more and we are at Amesbury, the town for which our Massachusetts Amesbury was named. One of us having been born within five miles of the latter, we must of course see its prototype. We found it to be remarkably neat but queer. The streets and avenues are hard and smooth. There are no modern buildings. It is substantial, not thickly settled, rural to a fault, but bears marks of high antiquity. Here are the remains of a celebrated abbey, now used as the parish church. The outline is varied but low. A mile or two away was born, at Milston in 1672, Joseph Addison. One cannot help being reminded that this was a fitting place for the beginning of such a career. In all our wanderings we have seen no town resembling this,—odd in the plan of the roads, peculiar in its fixed appearance, nothing suggesting change or repair. Most of the buildings are brick, two stories in height, and a market-place is at the centre. How admirable the surroundings,—Salisbury, Sarum, Stonehenge, Wilton, Bemerton.
This ride was, all things considered, the most delightful in our journey through England. The scenery was nowhere wild or romantic, but the reverse. The landscape was undulating, with great valleys well supplied with groves, the whole forming a panoramic view of unsurpassed elegance.