At Swindon we were allowed ten minutes for refreshment. The great lunching-room is a very splendid apartment--and hungry passengers rushed in at both doors, and in a moment clustered round the counters, and were busy in the demolition of pies and sandwiches. Under a noble arch the counters are placed; the attendants occupying a space between them, so that one set attend to the gormandizers who enter by one of the doors, and the rest on the others. It has exactly the effect of a majestic mirror--and so completely was this my impression, that it was with the utmost difficulty I persuaded myself that the crowd on the other side of the arch was not the reflection of the company upon this. Exactly opposite the place where I stood--in the act of enjoying a glass of sherry and a biscuit--I discovered what I took of course to be the counterfeit presentment of myself. What an extraordinary mirror, I thought!--for I saw a prodigious man, with enormous whiskers, ramming a large veal pie into his mouth with one hand, and holding in the other a tumbler of porter. I looked at the glass of sherry, and gave the biscuit a more vigorous bite--alas! it had none of the flavour of the veal and porter; so I discovered that the law of optics was unchanged, and that I had escaped the infliction of so voracious a double-ganger. The country round Chippenham is as beautiful as can be conceived; all the fruit-trees were in full blossom, and we swept through long tracts of the richest and prettiest orchards we ever saw. Hall and farm, and moated grange, passed in rapid succession; and at last the fair city of Bath rose like the queen of all the land, and looked down from her palaces and towers on the fairest champaign that ever queen looked upon before. Seen from the railway, the upper part of the town seems to rise up from the very midst of orchards and gardens; terrace above terrace, but still with a great flush of foliage between; it is a pity it ever grew into a fashionable watering-place; though, even now, it is not too late to amend. Like some cynosure of neighbouring eyes, fed from her gentle youth upon all the sights and sounds of rural life, she is too beautiful to put on the airs and graces of a belle of the court. Let her go back to her country ways--her walks in the village lanes--her scampers across the fields; she will be more really captivating than if she was redolent of Park Lane, and never missed a drawing-room or Almack's. But here we are at Bristol, and must leave our exhortations to Bath to a future opportunity.