of Marlborough sent to the tower.  The reservoirs on the hill supply the city.  The late Mr. Selwyn governed the borough by them-and I believe by some wine too.  The Bishop’s house is pretty, and restored to the Gothic by the late Bishop.  Price has painted a large chapel-window for him, which is scarce inferior for colours, and is a much better picture than any of the old glass.  The eating-room is handsome.  As I am a Protestant Goth, I was glad to worship Bishop Hooper’s room, from whence he was led to the stake:  but I could almost have been a Hun, and set fire to the front of the house, which is a small pert portico, like the conveniences at the end of a London garden.  The outside of the cathedral is beautifully light; the pillars in the nave outrageously plump and heavy.  There is a tomb of one Abraham Blackleach, a great curiosity; for, though the figures of him and his wife are cumbent, they are very graceful, designed by Vandyck, and well executed.  Kent designed the screen; but knew no more there than he did any where else how to enter into the true Gothic taste.  Sir Christopher Wren, who built the tower of the great gateway at Christ Church, has catched the graces of it as happily as you could do:  there is particularly a niche between two compartments of’ a window, that is a masterpiece.

But here is a modernity, which beats all antiquities for curiosity:  just by the high altar is a small pew hung with green damask, with curtains of the same; a small corner cupboard, painted, carved, and gilt, for books, in one corner, and two troughs of a bird-cage, with seeds and water.  If any mayoress on earth was small enough to enclose herself in this tabernacle, or abstemious enough to feed on rape and canary, I should have sworn that it was the shrine of the queen of the aldermen.  It belongs to a Mrs. Cotton, who, having lost a favourite daughter, is convinced her soul is transmigrated into a robin-redbreast; for which reason she passes her life in making an aviary of the cathedral of Gloucester.  The chapter indulge this whim, as she contributes abundantly to glaze, whitewash, and ornament the church.

King Edward the Second’s tomb is very light and in good repair.  The old wooden figure of Robert, the Conqueror’s unfortunate eldest son, is extremely genteel, and, though it may not be so ancient as his death, is in a taste very superior to any thing of much later ages.  Our Lady’s Chapel has a bold kind of portal, and several ceilings of chapels, and tribunes in a beautiful taste:  but of all delight, is what they call the abbot’s cloister.  It is the very thing that you would build, when you had extracted all the quintessence of trefoils, arches, and lightness.  In the church is a star-window of eight points, that is prettier than our rose-windows.

A little way from the town are the ruins of Lantony Priory:  there remains a pretty old gateway, which G. Selwyn has begged, to erect on the top of his mountain, and it will have a charming effect.