>From Worcester I went to see Malvern Abbey.  It is situated half way up an immense mountain of that name:  the mountain is very long, in shape like the prints of a whale’s back:  towards the larger end lies the town.  Nothing remains but a beautiful gateway and a church, which is very large:  every window has been glutted with painted glass, of which much remains, but it did not answer; blue and red there is in abundance, and good faces; but the portraits are so high, I could not distinguish them.  Besides, the woman who showed me the church would pester me with Christ and King David, when I was hunting for John of Gaunt and King Edward.  The greatest curiosity, at least what I had never seen before, was, the whole floor and far up the sides of the church has been, if I may call it so, wainscoted with red and yellow tiles, extremely polished, and diversified with coats of arms, and inscriptions, and mosaic.  I have since found the same at Gloucester, and have even been so fortunate as to purchase from the sexton about a dozen, which think what an acquisition for Strawberry!  They are made of the natural earth of the country, which is a rich red clay, that produces every thing.  All the lanes are full of all kind of trees, and enriched with large old apple-trees, that hang over from one hedge to another.  Worcester city is large and pretty.  Gloucester city is still better situated, but worse built, and not near so large.  About a mile from Worcester you break upon a sweet view of the Severn.  A little farther on the banks is Mr. Lechmere’s house; but he has given strict charge to a troop of willows never to let him see the river:  to his right hand extends the fairest meadow covered with cattle that ever you saw — at the end of it is the town of Upton, with a church half ruined and a bridge of six arches, which I believe with little trouble he might see from his garden.

The vale increases in riches to Gloucester.  I stayed two days at George Selwyn’s house called Matson, which lies on Robin Hood’s Hill:  it is lofty enough for an Alp, yet is a mountain of turf to the very top, has wood scattered all over it, springs that long to be cascades in twenty places of it:  and from the summit it beats even Sir George Lyttelton’s views, by having the city of Gloucester at its foot, and the Severn widening to the horizon.  His house is small, but neat.  King Charles lay here at the siege; and the Duke of York, with typical fury, hacked and hewed the window-shutters of his chamber, as a memorandum of his being there.  Here is a good picture, of Dudley Earl of Leicester in his latter age, which he gave to Sir Francis Walsingham, at whose house in Kent it remained till removed hither; and what makes it very curious, is, his age marked on it, fifty-four in 1572.  I had never been able to discover before in what year he was born.  And here is the very flower-pot and counterfeit association, for which Bishop Sprat was taken up, and the Duke