However, it seemed to be my fate to be still a scandal and an eyesore to all the waiters.  The maid, by the order of her master, showed me a room where I might adjust my dress a little; but I could hear her mutter and grumble as she went along with me.  Having put myself a little to rights, I went down into the coffee-room, which is immediately at the entrance of the house, and told the landlord that I thought I wished to have yet one more walk.  On this he obligingly directed me to stroll down a pleasant field behind his house, at the foot of which, he said, I should find the Thames, and a good bathing place.

I followed his advice; and this evening was, if possible, finer than the preceding.  Here again, as I had been told I should, I found the Thames with all its gentle windings.  Windsor shone nearly as bright over the green vale as those charming houses on Richmond Hill, and the verdure was not less soft and delicate.  The field I was in seemed to slope a little towards the Thames.  I seated myself near a bush, and there waited the going down of the sun.  At a distance I saw a number of people bathing in the Thames.  When, after sunset, they were a little dispersed, I drew near the spot I had been directed to; and here, for the first time, I sported in the cool tide of the Thames.  The bank was steep, but my landlord had dug some steps that went down into the water, which is extremely convenient for those who cannot swim.  Whilst I was there, a couple of smart lively apprentice boys came also from the town, who, with the greatest expedition, threw off their clothes and leathern aprons, and plunged themselves, head foremost, into the water, where they opposed the tide with their sinewy arms till they were tired.  They advised me, with much natural civility, to untie my hair, and that then, like them, I might plunge into the stream head foremost.

Refreshed and strengthened by this cool bath, I took a long walk by moonlight on the banks of the Thames.  To my left were the towers of Windsor, before me a little village with a steeple, the top of which peeped out among the green trees, at a distance two inviting hills which I was to climb in the morning, and around me the green cornfields.  Oh! how indescribably beautiful was this evening and this walk!  At a distance among the houses I could easily descry the inn where I lodged, and where I seemed to myself at length to have found a place of refuge and a home; and I thought, if I could but stay there, I should not be very sorry if I were never to find another.

How soon did all these pleasing dreams vanish!  On my return the waiters (who, from my appearance, too probably expected but a trifling reward for their attentions to me) received me gruffly, and as if they were sorry to see me again.  This was not all; I had the additional mortification to be again roughly accosted by the cross maid who had before shown me to the bed-chamber, and who, dropping a kind of half