_3rd July, 1830._
Just as I was closing my third Lecture (on Saturday night), at Bristol,
to a numerous and most respectable audience, the news of the above event
[the death of George IV.] arrived. I had advertised, and made all the
preparations, for lecturing at Bath on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday;
but, under the circumstances, I thought it would not be proper to
proceed thither, for that purpose, until after the burial of the King.
When that has taken place, I shall, as soon as may be, return to Bath,
taking Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire in my way; from Bath, through
Somerset, Devon, and into Cornwall; and back through Dorset, South
Wilts, Hants, Sussex, Kent, and then go into Essex, and, last of all,
into my native county of Surrey. I shall then have seen all England with
my own eyes, except Rutland, Westmoreland, Durham, Cumberland, and
Northumberland; and these, if I have life and health till next spring, I
shall see, in my way to Scotland. But never shall I see another place to
interest me, and so pleasing to me, as Bristol and its environs, taking
the whole together. A good and solid and wealthy city: a people of plain
and good manners; private virtue and public spirit united; no empty
noise, no insolence, no flattery; men very much like the Yorkers and
Lancastrians. And as to the seat of the city and its environs, it
surpasses all that I ever saw. A great commercial city in the midst of
corn-fields, meadows and woods, and the ships coming into the centre of
it, miles from anything like sea, up a narrow river, and passing between
two clefts of a rock probably a hundred feet high; so that from the top
of these clefts, you _look down_ upon the main-top gallant masts of
lofty ships that are gliding along!