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to the company who frequented this place. He is a gentleman of a liberal turn of mind, of a good family, and endowed with an education that constitutes him a man of letters. But he is in a very bad state of health at present, and visited with heavy bodily complaints, which seem to weigh him to the ground.

Mr. King is an Irish gentleman, who presides in the office of Master of the ceremonies to the lower rooms at Bath, officiates in that capacity now at Cheltenham, and, should he conduct himself with the same degree of complacency as his predecessor, he will deserve the same encouragement. Time will shew.

There are two libraries; and that which is kept by Harwood, who is an

old

old inhabitant, is composed of a great collection of books, and I believe many of them valuable ones; I mean that library in the new buildings, for he has one also in the High-street; the new room is very commodious, handsomely built, and well filled.There is another kind of library, but it is furnished with so heterogeneous an assortment of millinery, perfumery, powder and paste, toys and trinkets, that, from its external appearance, one is at a loss what to call it, except it be the gossiping shop; for there is a smirking wench or two, that seem to attract the old. and weakhammed debauchees, who visit there for the sake of a little small talk, and become customers for the sake of being flattered in their dotage. The books which this library contains are chiefly

of

of such as teem from the Minervarian press, but the only matter that seemed to be read while I was there was mostly the lie of the day, where it was said one day that Buonaparte was taken by the English, and contradicted the next; which is a political idea in the printer of a newspaper, because it makes two paragraphs, one day to give a false report as a truth, and the next to give that report the lie; but old Time, after all, has set us to rights, for we find the little bustling hero at last surrounded by all the plagues of Egypt.

The lodgings of this place are enormously dear, and, like those at Tunbridge-wells, ill adapted to the middling sort of society, not only extravagant in the extreme, but shame

fully

fully deficient in point of accommodation. The lower kind of inhabitants are as illiterate as Laplanders; and, having the complexion of Jews, are generally as avaricious and hard in their dealings.

The rides are various, and well diversified with shade and rural villages, but little water; the roads are The ride to generally very bad.

Dowdswell which lies four miles from Cheltenham, on the London road, is the best, and that elegant village is sheltered from east and north-east winds by hanging woods; it is built upon a hill, comprising only five or six handsome houses, with their gardens and orchards; and what gives it a more picturesque appearance is the old church, with its "ivy-mantled tower,"

with a neat church-yard in the centre of the village, from which you have a most beautiful and extensive view of almost all the vale of Gloucester, over Cheltenham; the spires of the different villages, peering over the tufted groves, terminated with the stately and celebrated Gothic tower of Gloucester-Cathedral, at the distance of about thirteen miles.

Once, on a summer's evening, I had the pleasure and delight of seeing. the setting sun take his leave, and couch behind the Malvern-hills, which are at an immense distance, yet are seen from Dowdswell; the rays of light, from the sun upon the clouds, threw such a glow and solemnity upon the earth, tinting it with so beautiful a variety, that, had there been but

water

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