Miss SPENCE being gone from Harrogate, and finding myself very ill from having drank too hard the preceding night, I mounted my horse, and rode to Oldfield-Spa, a few miles off, as I had heard an extraordinary account of its usefulness after a debauch. There is not so much as a little ale-house there to rest at, and for six days I lodged at the cottage of a poor labouring man, to which my informer directed me. I lived on such plain fare as he had for himself. Bread and roots, and milk and water, were my chief support; and for the time, I was as happy as I could wish.

O Nature! Nature! would man be satisfied. with thee, and follow thy wise dictates, he would constantly enjoy that true pleasure, which advances his real happiness, and very rarely be tormented with those evils, which obstruct and destroy it; but, alas! instead of listening to the voice of reason, keeping the mind free of passions, and living as temperance and discretion direct, the man of pleasure will have all the gratifications of sense to as high a pitch, as an imagination and fortune devoted to them can raise them, and diseases and calamities are the consequence. Fears, anxieties and disappointments are often the attendants, and too frequently the ruin of health and estate, of reputation and honour, and the lasting wound of remorse in reflection, follow. This is generally the

case of the voluptuary. Dreadful Case! He runs the course of pleasure first, and then the course of produced evils succeed. He passes from pleasure to a state of pain, and the pleasure past gives a double sense of that pain. We ought then surely, as reasonable beings, to confine our pleasure within the bounds of just and right.

As to the place called Oldfield-Spa, it is seven miles from Harrogate, and four from Rippon, lies on a rising ground, between two high hills, near an old abbey, about five yards from a running stream, and in a most romantic delightful situation, which resembles Matlock in Derbyshire, so very much, that one might almost take it for the same place, if conveyed there in a long deep sleep. The same kind of charms and various beauties are every where to be seen; rocks and mountains, groves and vallies, tender shrubs and purling currents, at once surprise and please the wandering eye.

As to the mineral water at Oldfield-Spa, it is an impetuous spring, that throws out a vast quantity of water, and is always of the same height, neither affected by rain or drought. It is bright and sparkling, and when poured into a glass, rises up in rows like strings of little beads. It has an uncommon taste, quite different from all other mineral waters that ever came in my way; but it is not disagreeable. What impregnates it I know not. Dr.

Rutty I suppose never heard of this water, for it is not in his valuable quarto lately published; and Dr. Short, in his excellent History of Mineral Waters, printed in two quarto volumes in 1734, says little more than that there is a medicinal spring there. What I found upon trial is, that two quarts of it, swallowed as fast as I could drink it in a morning, vomits to great advantage; and that four quarts of it, drank by degrees, at intervals, works off by siege or stool, and urine, in a very beneficial, manner. I was apprehensive of a high fever from my night's hard drinking at Harrogate, which I could not avoid; and the Oldfield-water, operating as related, carried off the bad symptoms, and restored me to sanity in two day's time. This is all I can say of this fine water. It is very little in respect of what it deserves to have said of it.

By the way, it is to me a matter of great admiration, that so many rich and noble persons not only endure the fatigues and hazards of sailing and travelling to remote countries, but waste their money, to drink spa-waters abroad, when they can have as good of every kind in England, by riding a few miles to the most delightful places in the world, in summer time. Our own country has healing waters equal to the best in France, Italy, and Westphalia. Harrogate-water, in particular, has all the

virtues of the famous baths of Aponus, within a mile of Padua in Italy, and is in every respect exactly alike. See the analysis of Aponus-water by Fallopius and Baccius, and the analysis of the English sulphur-spa by Dr. Rutty. It is injustice then to our country to visit foreign nations upon this ac

count.

The mineral waters called Moffat-waters, which are as good as any in the known world, are found at the distance of a long mile northward from Moffat, a village in Annandale, thirty-five miles S. W. of Edinburgh. The springs are situated on the declivity of a hill, and on the brow of a precipice, with high mountains at a distance, and almost on every side of them. The hill is the second from Hartfield, adjoining the highest hill in Scotland.

range

A vein of spar runs for several miles on this of hills, and forms the bottom and lower sides of the wells. It is of a greyish colour, having polished and shining surfaces of regular figures, interspersed with glittering particles of a golden colour, which are very copious and large.

There are two medicinal springs or wells, which are separated from one another by a small rock, the higher well lies with its mouth south east. It is of an irregular square figure, and about a foot and a half deep. The lower well is surrounded with naked

rocks, forming a small arch of a circle. Its depth is four feet and a half, and by a moderate computation, the two springs yield forty loads of water in twenty-four hours, each load containing sixty-four or sixty-eight Scotch pints; a Scotch pint is two English quarts. The higher shallow well is used for bathing, as it is not capable of being kept so clean as the lower well, on account of the shallowness and the looseness of its parts.

These waters are strongly sulphureous, and resemble the scourings of a foul gun, or rotten eggs, or a weak solution of sal polychrestum, or hepar sulphuris. The colour of the water somewhat milky or bluish. The soil on every side of the wells is thin, and the hills rocky, only just below the wells there is a small moss, caused by the falling of water from the hill above it.

Great is the medicinal virtue of these waters, in relieving inwardly, cholics, pains in the stomach, griping of the guts; bilious, nephritic, nervous and hysteric cholics; the gravel, by carrying off the quantities of sand, though it does not dissolve the slimy gravel, clearing the urinary passages in a wounderful manner; curing ischuries, and ulcerated kidneys; the gout, the palsy, obstructions of the menses, old gleets, and barrenness; it is a sovereign remedy in rheumatic and scorbutic pains, even