For the first time I was now to travel alone in this country: at Bristol, however, D. was to meet me, and this was a consolation, and a pleasure in store. We breakfasted at Maidenhead, and then entered upon a road which was new to me, through a level country, with easy hills on either side in the distance, full of villages and villas: this was its character for fifteen leagues. We passed through Reading, a town of consequence in old times, and still flourishing. Speenhamland was the next stage, a street connected with the town of Newbury.
On an eminence to the right of the town stand the remains of Donnington castle, built by Geoffrey Chaucer, the father of English poetry, who was contemporary with king Don Juan I. We passed through Hungerford, and through Marlborough forest, the only one which I have seen in England; then came to the town of the same name, an old place, in which many of the houses are faced with tiles in the shape of fish-scales. At the end of the town is one of the largest inns in the kingdom, the house having formerly been a duke's palace, with an artificial mound of remarkable size in the garden.
There is something as peculiar as it is pleasing in the character of this country: the villages, with their churches, are all seated in the bottom, which is intersected by numberless little streams, in every respect unlike the mountain rivers of the north, but still beautiful; they flow slowly over weedy beds, sometimes through banks of oziers, sometimes through green fields. Beyond, and on both hands, lie the Downs, and patches of brown stubble show the advance of cultivation up their sides; for, wherever there are neither hedges nor trees, it is a certain mark that the land has not long been cultured. The soil is chalky. The stage stopped at a little, clean, low alehouse, and the coachman opened the door and asked if we would please to alight. "By all means," said one of my fellow-travellers; and then, addressing himself to me, he said, "If you have ever travelled this road before, sir, you will alight of course; and if you have not, you must not pass by without tasting the best beer in England." When I had done so, I fairly confessed to him that if I had left England without tasting it, I should not have known what beer was. The good woman was so well pleased with this praise from a foreigner, that she invited me to walk into the cellar, and, in a room on the same floor with the kitchen into which we were introduced, (there being no other apartment for us,) she showed me fifty barrels of beer, that quantity being always kept full. I wrote down the name of the village, which is West Kennet, in my tablets, that I might mention it with due honour; and also, that if ever I should graduate in art magic in the caves of Salamanca, I might give the imp in attendance a right direction where to go fill my glass every day at dinner.
Near this village, and close by the road side, is the largest tumulus in the island. As we crossed the Downs, we saw on our left the figure of a huge white horse cut in the side of the chalk hill, so large, and in such a situation, that in a clear day it is visible above four leagues off. There are other such in different parts of the country, and all are regularly weeded on a holiday appointed in each parish for the purpose. It is perhaps a relic of Saxon superstition. I may here notice a remarkable use which the English make of the word horse. They employ it in combination to signify any thing large and coarse, as in horse-beans, horse-chesnut, horse-radish;—sometimes it is prefixed to a man's name as an epithet of ridicule: they say also horse-ant, and horse-leech: and, by a still stronger compound, I have heard a woman of masculine appearance called a horse godmother.[30] Dog is used still more strangely in almost every possible sense: the wild rose is called dog-rose; the scentless violet, dog-violet. Jolly dog is the highest convivial encomium which a man can receive from his companions; honest dog is when he superadds some good qualities to conviviality; sad dog is when he is a reprobate: dog is the word of endearment which an Englishman uses to his child, and it is what he calls his servant when he is angry: puppy is the term of contempt for a coxcomb; and bitch the worst appellation which can be applied to the worst of women. A flatterer is called a spaniel, a ruffian is called a bull-dog, an ill-looking fellow an ugly hound; whelp, cur, and mongrel, are terms of contemptuous reproach to a young man; and if a young woman's nose turns upward, she is certainly called pug.
Having passed through the towns of Calne and Chippenham, the light failed us, and thus deprived me of the sight, as I was told, of a beautiful country. About nine we entered Bath. My fellow-travellers all left me, and I was landed at a good inn, for the first time without a companion, and never more in need of one. I have been writing with a heavy heart, lest my heart should be heavier, were I unemployed. Wherever we go we leave something behind us to regret, and these causes of sorrow are continually arising. Even the best blessings of life are alloyed by some feeling of separation: the bride leaves her father's house, when she goes to her husband's; and the anxieties of infancy are hardly overpast, when the child goes from his mother to commence his career of labour and of pain. It is assuredly delightful to have travelled, but not to travel:—Oh, no! Fatigue, and the sense of restlessness, are not all that is to be endured;—the feeling that you are a stranger and alone comes upon you in a gloomy day, when the spirits fall with the barometer, or when they are exhausted at evening or at night. We paint angels with wings, and fancy that it will be part of our privileges in heaven to move from place to place with accelerated speed. It would be more reasonable to suppose that Satan keeps stage-coaches, and has packets upon the Styx; that locomotion ceases when we become perfect, and beatified man either strikes root like a zoophyte, or is identified with his house like a tortoise.
*****
Sept. 17. Bath.
If other cities are interesting as being old, Bath is not less so for being new. It has no aqueduct, no palaces, no gates, castle, or city walls, yet it is the finest and most striking town that I have ever seen.
According to the fabulous History of England, the virtues of the hot springs here were discovered long before the Christian æra, by Bladud, a British prince, who, having been driven from his father's house because he was leprous, was reduced like the Prodigal Son to keep swine. His pigs, says the story, had the same disease as himself: in their wanderings they came to this valley, and rolled in the warm mud where these waters stagnated;—they were healed by them. Bladud, perceiving their cure, tried the same remedy with the same success, and when he became king he built a city upon the spot. It is certain that the Romans were acquainted with these springs, and had a station here; and it must have been a place of some consequence some centuries ago when the cathedral was built, yet not of much, or the diocese would not, at the time of the schism, have been united under one bishop with that of Wells. Within the memory of old persons, Bath consisted of a few narrow streets in the bottom:—invalids came at that time for the benefit of its waters; and wherever there are such places of resort, many, who have no real complaints, will either fancy or feign them, for the sake of going there to meet company. As the wealth of the country increased, and habits of dissipation with it, these visitors became more numerous, and accommodations were wanting for them.
Close to the town, between the springs and the river, was a morass. The ground belonged to Ralph Allen, the Allworthy in Tom Jones, one of the few English works which we have naturalized in our language. This excellent man was of low parentage, and had in his youth been employed in carrying letters from a post town across the country, for there was at that time no regular communication from one town to another, except along the direct road to London. During these solitary journeys the thought occurred to him that it would be far better that such a communication should be regularly established by the state, than that it should be left to poor individuals like himself, who were neither always to be found, nor always to be trusted: accordingly, he shaped a plan for this purpose; government adopted it; and, in consequence, his fortune was made. He fixed his residence on a hill about half an hour's walk from Bath, and, carrying with him into retirement the same active mind which had been the means of his advancement from obscurity, willingly listened to any plan which could be devised for the improvement of the city. There was then in the city an architect of real genius, by name Wood; and upon this morass of Mr Allen's he erected two rows of houses, one fronting the north, the other the south; connected them by two transverse streets, of which the houses were built upon the same plan; and left in front a magnificent paved terrace, about thirty paces in breadth, raised upon arches, and open to the country. The houses were designed for lodgers; they are large and lofty, and are certainly the finest range of private buildings in the whole kingdom, and, perhaps, in the whole world.