and crane-necked springs will carry you back again over the deplorable
roads ("so _sidelum_ and _jumblum_," one traveller calls them) to your
town-house, or your country-box, or your city-shop or chambers, as the
case may be. Here, in due course, you will begin to meditate upon your
next excursion to THE BATH, provided always that you have not dipped
your estate at "E.O.", or been ruined by milliners' bills;--that your
son has not gone northwards with a sham Scotch heiress, or your daughter
been married at Charicombe, by private license, to a pinchbeck Irish
peer. For all these things--however painful the admission--were,
according to the most credible chroniclers, the by-no-means infrequent
accompaniment or sequel of an unguarded sojourn at the old jigging,
card-playing, scandal-loving, pleasure-seeking city in the loop of "the
soft-flowing Avon."

It is an inordinate paragraph, outraging all known rules of composition!
But then--How seductive a subject is eighteenth-century Bath!--and how
rich in memories is M. Barbeau's book!




A WELCOME FROM THE "JOHNSON CLUB"

To William John Courthope, _March 12, 1903_


When Pope came back from Trojan wars once more,
He found a Bard, to meet him on the shore,
And hail his advent with a strain as clear
As e'er was sung by BYRON or by FRERE.[57]