ial. There is
something, too, very stately about the octagon Laura Place, which opens
on to Pulteney Street.

In this point of view Bath is a more interesting city than Edinburgh. Mr.
Peach has written two most interesting little quartos on the "Historic
Houses of Bath;" and Mr. T. Sturge Cotterell has prepared a singularly
interesting map of Bath, in which all the spots honoured by the residence
of famous visitors are marked down. It is very extraordinary the number
and distinction of these personages.

I don't know anything more strange and agreeable than the feeling of
promenading the Parades, North and South--a feeling compounded of awe,
reverence, and exciting interest. The tranquil repose and dignity of
these low, solid houses, the broad flagged Promenade, the unmistakable
air of old fashion, the sort of reality and self-persuasion that they
might in a moment be re-peopled with all these eminent persons--much as
Boz called up the ghosts of the old mail-coach passengers in his telling
ghost story--the sombre grey of the walls, the brightness of the windows:
these elements join to leave an extraordinary impression. The houses on
these Parades are charming from their solid proportions, adapted, as it
were, to the breadth of the Parade. Execrable, by the way, are the
modern attempts seen side by side; feeble and incapable, not attempting
any expression at all. There is a row of meagre tenements beside the
Abbey--attempts at pinnacled gables--which it is a sorrowful thing to
look on, so cheap and starved is it. Even the newer shops, in places
like Milsom Street, with nothing to do but to copy what is before them,
show the same _platitude_. Here and there you are constantly coming upon
one of these beautifully designed old mansions piteously disguised, cut
up in two or three it may be, or the lower portion fashioned into a shop.

II.--The Pump Room and Assembly Rooms

No group of architectural objects is more effective or touches one more
nearly than the buildings gathered about the Baths. There is something
quaint and old-fashioned in the arrangement, and I am never tired of
coming back to the pretty, open colonnade, the faded yet dignified Pump-
room, with the ambitious hotel and the solemn Abbey rising solemnly
behind. Then there is the delightful Promenade opposite, under the
arcades--a genuine bit of old fashion--under whose shadow the capricious
Fanny Burney had often strolled. Everything abou