Hence we proceeded to Wells. Here we waited, as usual, upon the cathedral, which received our compliments with but small return of civility. There was little to be seen without, except old monuments of old abbots removed from Glastonbury, so inferior in workmanship and design to the abbey once containing them, that I was rather displeased than gratified by the sight. They have also a famous clock, brought from the abbey at Its general demolition. This exhibits a set of horses with riders, who curvet a dance round a bell by the pulling a string, with an agility comic enough, and fitted to serve for a puppet-show; which, in all probability, was its design, in order to recreate the poor monks at their hours of play.
There is also a figure of St. Dunstan, who regularly strikes the quarters of every hour by clock-work, and who holds in his hand a pair of tongs—the same I suppose as those with which he was wont to pull the devil by the nose, in their nocturnal interviews.
The old castle of Wells is now the palace for the bishop. It is moated still, and looks dreary, Secluded, and in the bad old style.
At night, upon a deeply deliberate investigation in the medical way, it was suddenly resolved that we should proceed to Bath instead of Bristol, and that I should try there first the stream of King Bladud. So now, at this moment, here we are.
BATH REVISITED.
Queen Square, Bath, Aug. 20.—-Bath is extremely altered since I last visited it. Its circumference is perhaps trebled but its buildings are so unfinished, so spread, so everywhere beginning and nowhere ending, that it looks rather like a space of ground lately fixed upon for erecting a town, than a town itself, of so many years’ duration. It is beautiful and wonderful throughout. The hills are built up and down, and the vales so stocked with streets and houses, that, in some places, from the ground-floor on one side a street, you cross over to the attic of your opposite neighbour. The white stone, where clean, has a beautiful effect, and, even where worn, a grand one. But I must not write a literal Bath guide, and a figurative one Anstey [348] has all to himself. I will only tell you in brief, yet in truth, it looks a city of palaces, a town of hills, and a hill of towns. O how have I thought, in patrolling it, of my poor Mrs. Thrale! I went to look (and sigh at the sight) at the house on the North parade where we dwelt, and almost every Old place brings to my mind some scene in which we were engaged. Besides the constant sadness of all recollections that bring fresh to my thoughts a breach with a friend once so loved, how are most of the families altered and dispersed in these absent ten Years! From Mrs. Montagu’s, Miss Gregory by a marriage disapproved, is removed for ever; from Mrs. Cholmley’s, by the severer blow of death, Lady Mulgrave is separated; Mrs. Lambart, by the same blow, has lost the brother, Sir Philip Clerke, who brought us to her acquaintance; Mr. Bowdler and his excellent eldest daughter have yielded to the same stroke; Mrs. Byron has followed. Miss Leigh has been married and widowed; Lord Mulgrave has had the same hard lot; and, besides these, Mrs. Cotton, Mrs. Thrale’s aunt, Lady Miller, and Mr. Thrale himself, are no more.