gious, and very early espoused the cause of the Parliament against Charles I. His aim was to distress the enemies of his country, let who would govern. He served the Parliament, the Republic, and the Protector with equal zeal and fidelity, and with glorious and uninterrupted success. In 1652, he was made sole admiral, when he defeated the Dutch fleet, commanded by Van Tromp, Ruyter, and De Wit, in three several engagements, in which the Dutch lost 11 men of war, 30 merchant ships, and, according to their own accounts, 15,000 men. He always kept his men and officers united, by representing to them the folly of listening to any land news. "It is not for us," says he, "to mind state affairs, but to keep foreigners from fooling us."

After a long career of success, and a number of astonishingly gallant actions, the last of which was the destruction of the Spanish fleet in the bay of Santa Cruz, finding himself consumed with a dropsy and scurvy, he hastened home, that he might die in his native country. As he came in sight of land he expired. He had a public funeral, and was interred in Henry the Seventh's chapel; but notwithstanding the universally glorious character that all parties have agreed in giving him, such was the miserable malice of royalty, after the Restoration, and the inveterate hatred of merit in a friend of liberty, that, above five years after his decease, his body was taken out of the chapel, and buried in the church-yard. Disin

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terested, generous, liberal, ambitious only of true glory, dreadful only to his avowed enemies, Admiral Blake forms one of the most perfect characters of the age in which he lived. Of such a character any country may be proud.

Bridgewater is at present governed by a mayor, recorder, two aldermen, who are justices of the peace, and twenty-four common-councilmen, and other officers. The town-hall, which is convenient, though not very spacious, stands near the bridge. The church, which is large, has a beautiful spire, said to be the loftiest but two in England. Its altar-piece is a good painting of the taking the body of Christ from the cross. The dissenters have here a very handsome meetinghouse, with a raised seat at one end for the mayor and aldermen, who were formerly almost wholly dissenters, and used to attend in their corporate capacity. Several members of the corporation are still dissenters, but the custom of attending at meeting in a body has been long discontinued. The quakers have a place of worship in this town.

Here is a large free-school belonging to the chamber, and under it are lodgings for the poor of the parish. There is, likewise, a neat almshouse, the gift of Major Ingram, of Westminster, who was a native of this town; but it is inhabited by the poor without endowment. There has, also, been lately erected a very handsome and convenient brick market-house. In the back street are some old shambles called the Cheese-market,`

and confined to the sale of that commodity, Bridgewater cheese being much esteemed in all the west and southern parts of the kingdom.

After about an hour's interview with some very kind friends, and a promise of a longer stay on our return, we again set forward. The stage from Bridgewater to Cross is reckoned one of the easiest for travelling in the kingdom: it is almost entirely a flat, and a firm good road. Some scattered habitations enliven the landscape, and a general appearance of fertility marks the whole. About half-way betwixt Bridgewater and Cross, at what is called Highbridge, the road passes over one of those navigable canals which are now common in our island: it is still in an unfinished state, and there did not appear many hands at it.

work upon

The road, for a mile or two before it reaches Cross, winds in a very picturesque manner, and, on the left hand, has a screen of high and rocky soil, though for the most part covered with verdure. About three miles from Cross are the Cliffs, or, as they are called in the country, the Clieves of Cheddar. The limits we had prescribed to our day's journey did not permit our visiting this curious feature of Somersetshire, but I am sure you will have no reason to regret not having my description of it, when you have read the following animated one from the pen of Mr. Warner of Bath: I quote it from his "Walk through some of the Western Counties of England," Letter II.

"Here indeed Nature, working with a gigantic hand, has displayed a scene of no common grandeur. In one of those moments when she convulses the world with the throes of an earthquake, she has burst asunder the rocky ribs of Mendip, and torn a chasm across its diameter of more than a mile in length. The vast abruption yawns from the summit down to the roots of the mountain, laying open to the sun a sublime and tremendous scene-precipices, rocks, and caverns, of terrifying descent, fantastic forms, and gloomy vacuity. The rugged walls of the fissure rise in many places perpendicularly to the height of 400 feet, and in others fall into obliquities of more than double that elevation. Whilst pacing their awful involutions (through which now runs the turnpike road to Bristol) it requires but little imagination to fancy oneself bewildered amid the ruins of some stupendous castle, the gigantic work of distant times, when a whole nation lent its hand to the enormous labour, and the operation was effected by the united strength of congregated multitudes. The idea of ruined battlements and solitary towers is perpetually suggested by lofty crags and grotesque masses of rock, which stand detached from their parent hills, and lift their butting heads over the distant road below.

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Though the character of this huge chine be in general that of terrific grandeur and rugged sublimity, it has notwithstanding some milder features; Nature, in her passion for variety, hav

ing introduced a few touches of the picturesque, by occasionally throwing over the bare face of the rock a mantle of ivy, and sprinkling here and there, amongst the crags and hollows, the yew, the ash, and other mountainous trees.

"On approaching Cheddar Cliffs, I could not but notice the very pleasing effect produced by a singular contrast. At the entrance all is gentle and beautiful. A brook, clear as glass, rushing from the roots of the rocks, leads its murmuring course by the side of the road, backed by a shrubby wood, at the edge of which rises a humble cottage, the calm retreat of health and peace; and on the opposite side the ground swells into a steep, sufficiently covered, however, with verdure and vegetation, to form a soft feature in the scene; but a step farther, a sudden alteration takes place; the rocks shoot up in all their grandeur, their black summits, scarred with the tempests of heaven, nodding ruin on the head of the gazing spectator. Having surveyed this extraordinary fissure from one extremity to the other, I determined to penetrate into the interior of Mendip, and visit some of the caverns which open in different parts up the side of the steep. A guide offered herself in the person of an old woman, the inhabitant of the cottage at the mouth of the cliffs."

After informing us that they went up a precipitous, dark, and slippery ascent, to the height of an hundred feet, Mr. Warner thus proceeds:

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