be authentic, would at once settle all the doubts of the naturalist with respect to the frequent appearance of the Cornua Ammonis in these parts, by accounting very satisfactorily for their production. A Welch lady, by name Keyna, daughter of the king of Brecknockshire, lived in the year 490, and being very beautiful as well as rich, suitors poured in to her from all quarters of Cambria. A rash vow, however, which she had made of living and dying a virgin, precluded the possibility of her listening to any of them; and in order to avoid solicitations which became irksome to her, and to indulge her fondness for meditation and solitude, she secretly quitted the court of her father, crossed the Severn, and wandering into the neighbourhood of Keynsham, pitched upon the banks of the Avon at that place for the scene of her solitary devotions. It was necessary, however, for her to request permission of the chieftain of the district to reside there; which he (too well bred to refuse the request of a lady) immediately gave, lamenting at the same time, that the place was so infested with serpents, as to render a residence upon it extremely dangerous. To this the virgin replied, that she had no doubt of being able to destroy the whole race in a short time by her prayers, the efficacy of which had often produced

equal wonders. She accordingly took possession of the place, and setting actively to work, exorcised in a short time the whole family of snakes, and like another Medusa, converted them into the serpent-stones which now strew the surface of the country in this neighbourhood.

In after times Keynsham became again, for some centuries, the theatre of lying miracles and gross superstition; William Earl of Gloucester founding an abbey of Black Canons in the year 1170, which, being enriched by several earls of that family, disgorged its wealth into the coffers of Henry VIII. in the year 1539. No vestige of it remains at present, but the fine broad flat meadow in which it stood, washed by the waters of the Avon, evinces that it enjoyed a pleasing and judicious situation. After the destruction of the conventual buildings, a noble house was erected on its scite by a branch of the Bridges family, into whose possession Keynsham came by grant from Edward VI. in 1452. Chiefly constructed with the materials of the abbey-church, where the bodies of several of the earls of Gloucester and other great men were interred, the manor-house, "built in the eclipse," and marked by sacrilege, did not endure so long as its massiveness or grandeur promised or deserved, but was taken down,

and every vestige of it removed, in the year 1776. Many of the former possessors of the manor of Keynsham, after it had passed into the Bridges' family, have been buried in the noble Gothic church placed in the centre of the town; a most immaculate race, were we to believe their epitaphs, each individual exhibiting a pattern of every human excellence! But sepulchral adulation is so com-. mon, that I will not tire you with any examples of what every tomb-stone may afford you; the following epitaph has another claim to your attention, that of singular quaintness and conceit. It is only to be regretted, that the tomb does not cover the remains of a butcher, as the wit would then be compleat:

"Grim Death the eater meate doth give;
"By that which did me kill, I live.

"The grave devours me, but I shall
"Live to see its funeral;

"After some ages more are spent,

"The gluttonous grave shall keep a Lent."

To that striking feature in the natural history of Keynsham, mentioned above, the profusion of Cornua Ammonis which it produces, may be added two other curious circumstances attached to it; the quantities of that precious dying plant the woad, produced round the town, and a luxury which its inhabitants occasionally enjoy in the

early season of the year, when the tide, whose influence is perceived as far up as Keynsham, comes accompanied thither by that delicious little fish called the elver.

On passing through Brislington, two miles from Bristol, we could not help smiling at an instance of modern credulity which an inscription on an ancient stone in the church-yard hands down to posterity. About thirty years ago, the active churchwardens of Brislington, in clearing the church-yard and its accompaniments, discovered on an old tomb the following notification of a remarkable instance of longevity: " 1542. Thomas "Newman, aged 153." With due regard to the preservation of so curious a fact, they had the tomb repaired and brushed up, and the following inscription added to the original one: "This stone "was new faced in the year 1771, to perpetuate the great age of the deceased." It was not till their official authority to repair and beautify, pull down and remove, had ceased, that they understood the figure I had been prefixed by a wicked wit; and themselves duped by this false addition, which gave an antediluvian age to an honest man who died before he had reached his grand climacteric!

Frequent evidences of the wealth of Bristol occur on all sides as we approach that city, in nu

merous handsome mansions, the quiet retreats of its successful citizens, forming a rich picture of rural decoration; in which, however, it must be confessed, that expence, generally speaking, is more predominant than taste. But all elegance is confined to the outside of the city, for its entrances are bad, and its streets for the most part ill-built and inconvenient, and rendered, indeed, in some degree dangerous by the formidable sledges which are used here instead of carts; and which, pursuing a zig-zag course, threaten to crush or overturn any lighter carriage they may chance to encounter in their devious way. Standing partly in

the county of Somerset, and partly in that of. Glocester, Bristol belongs to neither of those shires, but is a county in itself, and has its own magistracy and peculiar jurisdiction.

The situation of this place is at once pleasant and salutary, a rising ground between the rivers Avon and Frome, up the northern acclivity of which the city has gradually crept, and was still extending its progress, when some failures among the principal adventurers suddenly checked its growth, and left a large proportion of the most elegant edifices that Bristol could boast, in a state of incompletion. Nor is it probable that these additions to the parent city will ever be finished;