Casting many lingering looks behind, I left Tintern and went to Windcliffe, from the summit of which there is a very fine view; but the Wye, instead of being an embellishment, is an eyesore in the midst of such scenery: it looks like a long, slimy snake dragging its foul length through the hills and woods which environ its muddy stream. We dined in a moss-cottage at the foot of Windcliffe, and then proceeded to Chepstow, a very curious and striking ruin, and which I should have seen with much greater interest and admiration if Tintern had not so occupied my thoughts and filled my mind that I had not eyes to do justice to Chepstow. I went all over the ruins, however, and examined them very accurately; for it is one of the great merits of these different castles, Raglan, Goodrich, and Chepstow, that they are wholly dissimilar, and each is therefore a fresh object of curiosity. I crossed the old passage, as it is called, in a ferry, and came on to Clifton. [Page Head: BATH, SALISBURY CATHEDRAL.] _Bath._--After taking a cursory view of Clifton from the Roman Camp and part of Bristol, I came to Bath, where I have not been these thirty years and more. I walked about the town, and was greatly struck with its handsomeness; thought of all the vicissitudes of custom and fashion which it has seen and undergone, and of the various characters, great and small, who have figured here. Here the great Lord Chatham used to repair devoured by gout, resentment, and disappointment, and leave the Government to its fate, while his colleagues waited his pleasure submissively or caballed against his power, according as circumstances obliged them to do the first or enabled them to do the second. Here my uncle, Harry Greville, the handsomest man of his day, used to dance minuets while all the company got on chairs and benches to look at him, and a few years since he died in poverty at the Mauritius, where he had gone to end his days, after many unfortunate speculations, in an office obtained from the compassion of Lord Bathurst. _Sic transit gloria mundi_, and thus its frivolities flourish for their brief hour, and then decay and are forgotten. An old woman showed me the Pump-room and the baths, all unchanged except in the habits and characters of their frequenters; and my mind's eye peopled them with Tabitha Bramble, Win Jenkins, and Lismahago, and with all the inimitable family of Anstey's creation, the Ringbones, Cormorants, and Bumfidgets--Tabby and Roger.[4] [4] _Humphrey Clinker_ and Anstey's _Bath Guide_. July 5th, 1839, Salisbury {p.223}