Page:A tour through the northern counties of England, and the borders of Scotland - Volume I.djvu/14

Rh letters from the West,* you see me once more preparing to tax your time and patience in a similar manner, though to a greater degree, by pressing upon your notice the fruits of a much more extensive tour into the North. As an excuse, however, for the increased bulk of my communications, I flatter myself I shall be enabled to offer you novelty and variety in an equal proportion; since my present expedition will embrace several subjects which could not present themselves to my notice in a journey through a part of England more remarkable for the beauties of nature, than rich in the productions of the fine or useful arts. Commerce, œconomics, and manufactures, will now occasionally claim our attention, and an increased interest will be given to my correspondence, by descriptions of classical sculpture, accounts of the productions of the Italian and Flemish schools, and biographical notices of characters great and distinguished in their day, who now only live in the page of the historian, or the portrait-galleries of their descendants.

Directing our attention first to Bristol, we quitted Bath by the lower road, which takes for the most part the level, and in a great measure the course, of the river Avon, nearly the whole of the