At the little village of “Box,” (a snug name for a village, by the bye) commences the two mile tunnel under the chalk hills, and so suddenly do the cars dive into the darkness, that one’s eyes are at a loss to know what to do with the light left in the eyeballs. If a man ever threatens to “knock the daylight out of me” again, I shall have a glimmer of its having been done before—(at Box.) But I predict an awful smash in this tunnel, yet. Chalk and flint-stones are very friable neighbors, and hills are heavy, and the concussion of air, with a train going under ground at the rate of a mile a minute, is enough to sift away particles very speedily. A train might come out with a load of stone it never went in with, and there is gloomy time enough to anticipate it, while one is whizzing and thundering onwards toward the black dark of the Box tunnel.
The villages thicken, and the hills grow steeper as we approach Bath, and at last you are suddenly shot into a bowl of palaces and verdure—the bottom covered with gardens, and the sides with terraced crescents of architecture. I had just time to exclaim with wonder at the unexpected splendor of the hill-sides rounding us in, when the station roof slid over us like an extinguisher, and the conductor’s voice announced that we were at Bath.
Boys by dozens, offering to be our guides, and six or seven rival omnibusses begging us for the hotels.
Leaving cloak and shawl, and ordering dinner at three, at the hotel adjoining the station, we sallied forth to ramble the town over, with three good hours before us—the return-cars leaving at four. As I just now said, the bottom of this vase of hills is laid out in gardens, and we crossed to the other side upon a raised road which looks down upon a beautiful parterre of gravel walks and flowers, free to the public to look at. But the stranger stops at every second step, to gaze about and wonder. I had read very glowing descriptions of Bath, but my anticipation, even of its size, was three fourths less than the reality. Its picturesqueness is theatrical. No scene painter could cluster and pile up palaces, gardens and spires, with more daring extravagance. The abundant quarries of free-stone in the neighborhood, have furnished all their building materials, and _every house_ that is not beautifully antique, is of ornamental architecture. I saw one or two beggars, but I did not see where they could live. Splendid squares, crescents, terraces and colonades, monopolize the town.