CHAPTER I. 66 We stood on a grass-grown platform, high even above the houses which form the beautiful suburban town of Clifton. It was there in former ages the banner of the Roman legions floated in the breeze. Warriors, and men of taste and discrimination!" observed Clifford; "for never have I yet placed foot on any spot marked by the traces they have left than I witness proofs of Nature's beauty or care for man's physical comfort, fresh springs or flowing rivers, with wide protecting woodlands." A word, however, before I vainly endeavour to sketch with the pen that spot engraven in all its abundant charms on my mind. I fear my labour to create a just interest will be in vain; yet my hope is to urge those who may perchance read these pages, and have wandered from Foreign shores, or from other scenes of my native land, to the great capital of England, there to behold the dignity of labour, in this merry month of May, 1851, to pass a summer's day amid these charms. In all truth their eyes will be delighted, as their hearts expanded, in thankfulness to Him who, creating all things, left so bright a landscape on the land. We stood, as I have already said, on a grass platform, fit carpet formed by Nature's loom for the hard and rocky surface, which is thus made pleasant to the tread of man-a spot scarcely to be surpassed in its own peculiar beauties and rarities. Nature in lavish splendour, even to the line of the horizon on all sides, marks this rare and interesting panorama. As I stood calmly contemplating the vale below me, in thanks to God for the benefits thus conferred on the world, an aged man accosted me, and pointing to the deep and rocky precipice which hung over the Avon, remarked in tones of kind feeling and commiseration : "Alas! Sir, it was but yesterday that a young lady, scarcely commencing life, fell from the point of yon rock, and, lacerated by the projections on which she struck, was found a mangled corpse in the valley below. This, Sir, is the third calamity |