Having received my freedom of the bath in the Lavaterina, I commenced a series of visits to all the soft, the warm, the perfumed, the hot, the cool, the cold nooks, that I could find. I rolled in enjoyment on the divan by the side of the _piscina_, watching my "companions of the bath," and especially a little Antinous, or rather an infant Hercules, of five years of age, who one while crept into the fiery tent, and another while disported himself like a young sea-god, with evident delight, in the cold _piscina_. I then took my place in the higher temperature of the torrid zone, on the divan that was breathed over by the sweet expirations of the mignionette; and anon crept into the tent with the scarlet curtains serving as a door, and wondered that I could breathe an atmosphere heated to 240° without inconvenience. It was now approaching the hour of breakfast, and however disinclined I might be to leave the warm world in which I had spent more than an hour, I was ready to acknowledge certain material warnings of the charms of breakfast. Before, however, I could quit the bath, it was necessary that the pores, which had been all this while filtering the waste fluids of the body through their numberless apertures, should be made to close; and with this intent I descended into the pool, to experience and enjoy a new sensation. I crouched under the tap, while a cold torrent poured over me, the little Hercules catching greedily on his head any waste jets that glanced aside, and then shaking his flaxen ringlets over his face and shoulders with a joyous laugh. But my last experience was to come. At the word "Hold firm!" a full pail of hot-water rushed upon me like an avalanche, and was instantly followed by the same quantity of cold; this was repeated in quick succession a number of times, and then, when my host's arms seemed tired of the further repetition, I arose from the pool, and shook my soused frame on the platform above, with a feeling of freshness and vigour that I shall long remember--remember when the bath and all its vagaries shall have become too familiar to suggest a note of their early impressions. I was soon warm enough to quit the region of water, and ascend into that of air--to quit the region of fire, and mount into that of the sun, then smiling beamingly in at the window. My host gave my head a good rub with a warm, soft Turkish napkin, and threw a warm mantle over my shoulders; and it was with a feeling of "divided duty," the bath on one side and the breakfast on the other, that I ascended to the Frigidarium. Throwing myself on a softly-cushioned dureta, a half-hour was spent in suggestive and instructive conversation, and then "to breakfast with what appetite we may." Shades of immortal Shakespeare! Speaking for myself, I should say, with the appetite of a man. Need I say more. This is my memory of the delicious bath at Riverside.