ABOUT three miles from this village is fituated the town of Fairford, rendered famous by its church and painted windows. Its founder, John Tame, was a confiderable merchant, and in the fifteenth century commanded a large vessel, in which he captured a Spanish ship bound for Rome. The cargo, among other valuables, confifted of a great quantity of painted glass, intended for his holiness the pope; this part of the prize he brought to his patrimonial estate, where he erected the church, a handsome structure, purposely to depofit these paintings, which confist of twenty-eight in number, and are intended to illustrate some striking paffages in the Old and New Testament. They are handed down to us as the works of Albert Durer, which, contrary to the received opinion, I by no means credit. The original designs may poffibly have been by him; if so, much of their excellence has been loft by their being copied on the glafs, as in point of draw drawing they are very defective. The figures of the prophets are in every respect, in my estimation, by much the best part of the work. On the whole, though there is much clearness and brilliancy in the colouring, yet they are much inferior to what I expected, from the high eulogiums I had often heard on their merit. THE river from Kempsford increases confiderably in width as it approaches the town of Lechlade, a distance of about fix miles, in which courfe are feveral weirs, and one large wooden bridge at Hannington, from whence Highworth church and village appear in the distance, forming a pleasing object. ABOUT three miles below Hannington is Inglesham, where the Severn canal unites with the Thames, which is there confiderably improved, by being cleared of its weeds and other impediments to navigation, through the the attention of the public-fpirited proprietors in this undertaking. LECHLADE is a large town in Gloucesterfhire, fituated on the confines of Berkshire and Oxfordshire. The ground on which it stands was formerly called the Lade, from which appellation, conjoined with that of the contiguous river Lech, it derives its compound name, Lechlade. That river here empties itself into the Thames, which, at this place, is so much encreased by the junction of the rivers Colne and Churn, as to be capable of navigating veffels from ninety to an hundred tons burthen. In a meadow, near Lechlade, was lately discovered a large fubterraneous building, supposed to have been a Roman bath; it is near fifty feet in length, forty in breadth, and four feet in height; and is supported by pillars pillars of brick, and curiously inlaid with ftones of variegated colours. In the lower church-yard, at Cricklade, is a curious ancient crofs, of which, though I have not been able to procure the history, the annexed sketch will give some idea. SEC |