The street itself, to be sure, is commonplace enough, and
hot, dusty, and disagreeable; but if you look above it, or on either
side, there are green hills descending abruptly down, and softened with
woods, amid which are seen villas, cottages, castles; and beyond the
river is a line of crags, perhaps three hundred feet high, clothed with
shrubbery in some parts from top to bottom, but in other places
presenting a sheer precipice of rock, over which tumbles, as it were, a
cascade of ivy and creeping plants. It is very beautiful, and, I might
almost say, very wild; but it has those characteristics of finish, and of
being redeemed from nature, and converted into a portion of the adornment
of a great garden, which I find in all English scenery. Not that I
complain of this; on the contrary, there is nothing that delights an
American more, in contrast with the roughness and ruggedness of his
native scenes,--to which, also, he might be glad to return after a while.
We put up at the old Bath Hotel,--an immense house, with passages of such
extent that at first it seemed almost a day's journey from parlor to
bedroom. The house stands on a declivity, and after ascending one pair
of stairs, we came, in travelling along the passageway, to a door that
opened upon a beautifully arranged garden, with arbors and grottos, and
the hillside rising steep above.
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