Cheltenham is at the foot of a part of that chain of hills which form the sides of that _dish_ which I described as resembling the vale of Gloucester. Soon after quitting this resort of the lame and the lazy, the gormandizing and guzzling, the bilious and the nervous, we proceeded on, between stone walls, over a country little better than that from Cirencester to Burlip-hill.----A very poor, dull, and uninteresting country all the way to Oxford. _Burghclere (Hants), Sunday, 18 Nov._ We left Oxford early, and went on, through _Abingdon_ (Berks) to _Market-Ilsley_. It is a saying, hereabouts, that at Oxford they make the living pay for the dead, which is precisely according to the Pitt-System. Having smarted on this account, we were afraid to eat again at an Inn; so we pushed on through Ilsley towards Newbury, breakfasting upon the residue of the nuts, aided by a new supply of apples bought from a poor man, who exhibited them in his window. Inspired, like Don Quixote, by the _sight of the nuts_, and recollecting the last night's bill, I exclaimed: "Happy! thrice happy and blessed, that golden age, when men lived on the simple fruits of the earth and slaked their thirst at the pure and limpid brook! when the trees shed their leaves to form a couch for their repose, and cast their bark to furnish them with a canopy! Happy age; when no Oxford landlord charged two men, who had dropped into a common coach-passenger room, and who had swallowed three pennyworths of food, 'four shillings for _teas_,' and 'eighteen pence for _cold meat_,' 'two shillings for _moulds and fire_' in this common coach-room, and 'five shillings for _beds_!'" This was a sort of grace before meat to the nuts and apples; and it had much more merit than the harangue of Don Quixote; for he, before he began upon the nuts, had stuffed himself well with goat's flesh and wine, whereas we had absolutely _fled_ from the breakfast-table and blazing fire at Oxford.--Upon beholding the masses of buildings at Oxford devoted to what they call "_learning_," I could not help reflecting on the drones that they contain and the wasps they send forth! However, malignant as some are, the great and prevalent characteristic is _folly_: emptiness of head; want of talent; and one half of the fellows who are what they call _educated_ here, are unfit to be clerks in a grocer's or mercer's shop.--As I looked up at what they call _University Hall_, I could not help reflecting that what I had written, even since I left Kensington on the 29th of October, would produce more effect, and do more good in the world, than all that had for a hundred years been written by all the members of this University, who devour, perhaps, not less than _a million pounds a year_, arising from property, completely at the disposal of the "Great Council of the Nation;" and I could not help exclaiming to myself: "Stand forth, ye big-wigged, ye gloriously feeding Doctors! Stand forth, ye _rich_ of that church whose _poor_ have had