"The circumstances I recollect of my residence in Bath are but trifling; yet I never recall them without a feeling of pleasure. The beauties of the Parade (which of them I know not), with the river Avon winding around it, and the lowing of the cattle from the opposite hills, are warm in my recollection, and are only rivalled by the splendours of a toy-shop somewhere near the Orange Grove. I had acquired, I know not by what means, a kind of superstitious terror for statuary of all kinds. No ancient Iconoclast or modern Calvinist could have looked on the outside of the Abbey Church (if I mistake not, the principal church at Bath is so called,) with more horror than the image of Jacob's Ladder, with all its angels, presented to my infant eye. My uncle [82] effectually combated my terrors, and formally introduced me to a statue of Neptune, which perhaps still keeps guard at the side of the Avon, where a pleasure-boat crosses to Spring Gardens." "A sweet retreat"--Spring Gardens (again I quote Miss Lydia)--"laid out in walks, and ponds, and parterres of flowers, and hard by the Pamprom is a coffee-house for the ladies, but my aunt says young girls are not admitted, inasmuch as the conversation turns upon politics, scandal, philosophy, and other subjects above our capacity." Is aunt Janet old enough and clever enough for the company, I wonder? And Walter--what toys did he mostly covet in the Orange Grove? The passage about the effect of sculpture upon him is intensely interesting to me, partly as an indication of the state of his own nascent imagination, partly as illustrative of the power of religious sculpture, meant to terrify, on the minds of peasant children of high faculty. But I cannot dwell on this point here: I must get on to his first sight of a play. The third Fors--still favourable to him--appoints it to be "As you like it." A never-to-be-forgotten delight, influencing him in his whole nature thenceforward. It is uncle Robert's doing this, aunt Jessie having been probably doubtful on the matter, but irresistibly coaxed. Uncle Robert has much to answer for! How much, I can't tell you to-day; nor for a while now, for I have other matters on hand in the next Fors or two--Glacier theory, and on the road to it I must not let you forget the broom-market between Berne and Thun; and I've got to finish my notes on Friedrich and his father, who take more noticing than I expected; besides that I've Friedrich II. of Germany to give some account of; and all my Oxford work besides. I can only again and again beg the many valued correspondents whose letters I must abruptly answer, to remember that not one word on any of these subjects can be set down without care; and to consider what the length of a day is, under existing solar arrangements.