It is but recently, says a periodical authority, that the Wye has become at all frequented on account of its scenery. About the middle of last century, the Rev. Dr. Egerton, afterwards Bishop of Durham, was collated by his father to the rectory of Ross, in which pleasant town, situated on the left bank of the river, and just at the point where its beautiful scenery begins, the worthy doctor resided nearly thirty years. He was a man of taste, and had a lively enjoyment of the pleasures of society amidst the beautiful scenery of his neighbourhood. His chief delight was to invite his friends and connections, who were persons of high rank, to pay him summer visits at Ross, and then to take them down the Wye-- “Pleased Vaga echoing through its winding bounds,”-- which, as well as the town of <g>Ross</g>, had derived a new interest from the lines of Pope. For this purpose, we are told, Dr. Egerton built a pleasure-boat; and, year after year, excursions were made, until it became fashionable in a certain high class of society to visit the Wye. But when the rector of Ross was consecrated to the see of Durham, his pleasure-boat, like that of the Doges of Venice and Genoa, was suffered to rot at anchor; and with no successor of similar means and taste to follow his example, excursions on the Wye became unfrequent, because no longer fashionable. Yet the beauties of the scenery once explored, became gradually more attractive; and some pilgrim of Nature, deviating now and then from the beaten track, spoke and sang of its beauties, until, having again caught the public ear, it was admitted that we had a “Rhine” within our own borders--with no vineyards and fewer castles, but with a luxuriance of scenery peculiarly its own, and with remains of feudal and monastic grandeur which no description could exaggerate. Mr. Whately, a writer on landscape gardening, and an exquisite critic, first directed attention to the new weir at Tinterne Abbey, and one or two other scenes on its banks; and, in 1770, the Wye was visited by William Gilpin, who did good service to taste and the lovers of nature by publishing his tour. The same year, a greater name connected itself with the Wye--for it was visited by the immortal author of the “Elegy in a Country Churchyard.” “My last summer’s tour,” says Gray, in one of his admirable letters to <g>Dr. Wharton</g>, “was through Worcestershire, Gloucestershire, Monmouthshire, Herefordshire, and Shropshire--five of the most beautiful counties in the kingdom. The very principal sight and capital feature of my journey was the river Wye, which I descended in a boat for nearly forty miles, from Ross to Chepstow. Its banks are a succession of nameless beauties.”[35] The testimony thus bequeathed to it by the illustrious <g>Gray</g>, has been confirmed and repeated by <g>Wordsworth</g>, while other kindred spirits, following each other in the same track, have sacrificed to Nature at the same altar, and recorded