On the right were some elegant houses for the bathing company,
and lesser cottages suspended like birds' nests in a high rock; to
the left, deep in the bottom, there was a fine bold river, which was
almost hid from the eye by a majestic arch formed by high trees,
which hung over it. A prodigious stone wall extended itself above a
mile along its border, and all along there is a singularly romantic
and beautiful secret walk, sheltered and adorned by many beautiful
shrubs.
The steep rock was covered at the top with green bushes, and now and
then a sheep, or a cow, separated from the grazing flock, came to
the edge of the precipice, and peeped over it.
I have got, in Milton's "Paradise Lost," which I am reading
thoroughly through, just to the part where he describes Paradise,
when I arrived here and the following passage, which I read at the
brink of the river, had a most striking and pleasing effect on me.
The landscape here described was as exactly similar to that I saw
before me, as if the poet had taken it from hence
" - delicious Paradise,
Now nearer, crowns with her enclosure green,
As with a rural mound, the champion head
Of a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides
With thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild,
Access denied." - Book IV.
