a hand-rail merely for the fafety of foot-paffengers. The sketch of it annexed to this section, may serve to point out the humble state of this noble river and its appendages near its fource, as contrafted with its more expanded course and magnificent decorations as it approaches the capital, where "With rapid course it seeks the facred main, FROM this wooden bridge, which is called Eifey bridge, the town of Cricklade forms a pleafing termination of profpect across the intervening meadows, which though flat, and rather uninteresting, are happily relieved and interfected by the winding current of the ftream. Below Water Eaton, there is little variation of prospect, till we reach Castle Eaton, where there is a small bridge and water-mill, so pleasingly combined with other objects of rural and unaffected scenery, as VOL. I. D to to render them worthy the pencil of the first artist. APPROACHING Kempsford, a large village in Gloucestershire, the river quits Wiltfhire, and again enters its native county, dividing it from Berkshire at Inglesham, where the scenery is greatly improved, by the combination of an ancient Gothic church, with its usual appendage, a comfortable vicarage-houfe: these are pleasantly fituated on a verdant slope, rifing from the margin of the Thames, which, though shallow, is yet beautifully transparent, and, as it ripples in its course, displays a sheltered and gravelly bed, where the neighbouring cattle luxuriantly bask themselves in the noon-tide fun. Within this pleasant retreat the Vicarage, we found, not the vicar, but his locum tenens, an humble Welch curate, with a wife and two children, existing on twenty-five pounds a year, |