of the flat country in its neighbourhood, to a considerable extent. The stone is deposited in beds from three to six inches in depth; and these strata are so uniform in thickness, as to afford materials for building, equal in regularity to brick, without any other process, than that of merely breaking them into masses small enough for the purpose. The lias takes a polish sufficiently fine to render it applicable to the uses which marble usually serves. It also produces many elegant specimens of the Mytilus, Cornu Ammonis, Cochlea, &c. enriched by those splendid pyritical crystallizations which are common to organized fossils of a similar habitat. We found the inhabitants of the country around us deeply deploring the effects of a storm that had recently occurred; nor did their lamentations appear to be unfounded. They described the circumstances of this tempest (whose violence was almost unprecedented in the records of modern English meteorology) in terms which proved that its visitation had made a deep and awful impression on their minds. It occurred on Friday the 15th of July, , and seemed to approach them from the East; when, having exercised its fury chiefly on their neighbourhood, it sailed slowly away in a Westerly direction, towards the mouth of the Bristol Channel. The thunder that attended it, unlike that customary accompaniment of a tempest in the Temperate Zones, was not intermittent, but continuous; roaring uninterruptedly for upwards of three hours; whilst quickly-succeeding streams of lightning wrapped the atmosphere in a perpetual blaze. But the most tremendous circumstance connected with it was a shower of hail-stones, or rather of masses of ice, which rattled down for upwards of forty minutes. Irregular in shape, and unusual in magnitude, (for many of them measured nine inches in circumference,) these masses appeared to be fragments of a vast plate of ice, formed by sudden congelation in some very high and intensely cold region of the atmosphere, which, as it descended, had been broken into the smaller portions that covered the ground. During the whole of this terrifying scene, the progress of the tempest was opposed by a strong wind from the north-west, peculiarly hollow and mournful in its sound, affording no incomplete idea of what Ossian calls," the voice of the Spirit of the Storm.' Its course was marked by ruin and destruction. The labours of the husbandman fell an early and an easy prey to its violence. Promising harvests were in a short time totally destroyed: and we saw many corn-fields in which there was little more appearance of grain, than if they had just yielded their riches to the hand of the reaper. Those windows of dwelling-houses which stood in the direction of its march, had scarcely a single pane unbroken; the glass of every hot-house was smashed to atoms; the smaller plants and shrubs were beaten to the ground; many trees were nearly stripped of their foliage; and the roads were strewed with the smaller branches of others. Nor was its havock confined to inanimate nature alone. Several cattle were killed or injured: two or three labourers were struck by the lightning; and no less than five hundred rooks were destroyed by the masses of ice, within the circumference of four miles round Piper's-Inn. In a word, it appeared to have been one of the most terrible storms that this country had ever experienced; and to have realized that sublime description of an elemental tumult, which our Bard of Nature, when he penned the picture, probably only intended as a creation of fancy: "Down comes a deluge of sonorous hail, "Or prone-descending rain. Wide-rent the clouds 66 Ragged and fierce, or in red whirling balls, « A lifeless group, the blasted cattle lie: « In fancy's eye; and there the frowning bull, "Resign their aged pride. The gloomy woods "Wide flaming out, their trembling inmates shake.”— in my At Piper's-Inn we quitted the road I had taken former tour, and pursued the new one, which was formed three or four years ago, for the purpose of saving six miles between this place and the town of Taunton. It runs in nearly a strait line for about fourteen miles, crossing the moors in its course, and joining the old turnpike at Warborne Lodge. Of this distance six miles are entirely new road, made over a low and flat country, which heretofore in the winter time had been generally covered with water. The road is raised above the level, and spread on a thick layer of faggots, so that it bids fair to be sufficiently durable. There is no doubt that much convenience is gained by this recent alteration. Time and expence are both saved; which is of course a sufficient recommendation to the private traveller to take it in preference to the old turnpike; though, as it does not include Bridgewater in its course, the public vehicles still continue to run the former stages. With this conviction of its convenience on our minds, you will be surprised perhaps at the weakness of our judgment, or the singularity of our scepticism, when I say, that whilst we availed ourselves of the short cut which it afforded us to the place of our destination for the night, we could not help doubting whether or not the great improvements which had been made of late years in the English public roads, could be fairly considered as promotive of the real happiness of our country. Are they not, said we, the means by which luxury spreads her poison from large towns into the quiet retreats of rural simplicity? Have they not a tendency to injure the morals and pervert the manners of the country, by importing thither the vices and habits and fashions of corrupted cities? Do they not enable the idle and the dissipated to overwhelm the sequestered abodes of contented industry, and by exhibiting new and dazzling modes of life, to excite expensive emulation, or envicus dissatisfaction? And are not the visits of the rich and extravagant ramblers, who by these means penetrate with ease into the most remote recesses of the island, invariably attended with a rise in the cost of every article of life, in the places to which they are |