Such was the home of Pope: there is still another portion of his life of which we get most picturesque glimpses, I mean into his haunts. Occasionally we find him at Bath for his health, but more frequently making a summer sojourn of a few weeks or months at the houses of some of his friends in the country. At one time he is at Dawley, with Bolingbroke, where they are lying and reading between two haycocks; at another at Prior Park, near Bath, at the Allens', where an odd kind of stiffness grew up between the Allens and Miss Blount and himself, that was never cleared up, but blew away, and left them as good friends as before. Then he is at Oakley Bower, Lord Bathurst's seat at Cirencester. In 1716, he writes to Martha and Teresa Blount--that was in his young and Homeric days--"I am with Lord Bathurst at my bower in whose groves we had yesterday a dry walk of three hours. It is the place that of all others I fancy, and I am not yet out of humor with it, though I have had it some months; it does not cease to be agreeable to me so late in the season (October); the very dying of the leaves adds a variety of colors that is not unpleasant. I look upon it as upon a beauty I once loved, whom I should preserve a respect for in her decay; and as we should look upon a friend, with remembrance how he pleased us once, though now declined from his gay and flourishing condition. "I write an hour or two every morning, then ride out a hunting upon the downs, eat heartily, talk tender sentiments with Lord B., or draw plans for houses and gardens, open avenues, cut glades, plant firs, contrive water-works, all very fine and beautiful in our own imagination. At night we play at commerce, and play pretty high. I do more. I bet too; for I am really rich, and must throw away my money, if no deserving friend will use it. I like this course of life so well, that I am resolved to stay here till I hear of somebody's being in town that is worth coming after."