All this region of the Mendip Hills, whose limestone cliffs rise sheer, terrace above terrace, is full of fascination. Traces of prehistoric man, as well as of extinct animal species, have been found in its deep caverns. In the Hyæna Den, when disclosed in 1852, the eyes of geologists could discern the very places where our shaggy forbears had lighted their fires and cooked their food. It seems a far cry from those low-browed cave-folk to Lord Macaulay, who loved this West Country so well, and to John Locke, who was born in the village of Wrington,--a village which furthermore prides itself on one of the noblest church-towers in Somerset and on the decorous grave of Hannah More. All manner of literary associations jostle one another in the town of Bath, to which at home I have heard English visitors liken our Boston. They meant it as a compliment, for Bath is a handsome city, even ranked by Landor, one of its most loyal residents, above the cities of Italy for purity and consistent dignity of architecture. To reach Bath we have journeyed east from the Mendip Hills into the valley of the Lesser Avon. Here "the Queen of all the Spas" holds her court, the tiers of pale stone terraces and crescents climbing up the steep sides of the valley to a height of some eight hundred feet. Of the sights of Bath, the Abbey is most disappointing, and well it may be, for it was despoiled not only of its glass but even of its iron and lead by Henry VIII, and only a bleak framework left to pass through a series of purchasers to the citizens. The west front wears a curious design of ladders on which battered angels clamber up and down. The interior has no "dim religious light," but gilt and colour and such a throng of gaudy monuments that the wits have made merry at the expense of the vaunted mineral springs. "These walls, adorned with monument and bust, Show how Bath waters serve to lay the dust."