In
merely mentioning these slight interruptions of its sluggish stillness,
I seem to myself to disturb too much the atmosphere of quiet that
brooded over the spot; whereas its impression upon me was, that the
world had never found the way hither, or had forgotten it, and that the
fortunate inhabitants were the only ones who possessed the spell-word of
admittance. Nothing could have suited me better, at the time; for I had
been holding a position of public servitude, which imposed upon me
(among a great many lighter duties) the ponderous necessity of being
universally civil and sociable.
Nevertheless, if a man were seeking the bustle of society, he might find
it more readily in Leamington than in most other English towns. It is a
permanent watering-place, a sort of institution to which I do not know
any close parallel in American life: for such places as Saratoga bloom
only for the summer season, and offer a thousand dissimilitudes even
then; while Leamington seems to be always in flower, and serves as a
home to the homeless all the year round. Its original nucleus, the
plausible excuse for the town's coming into prosperous existence, lies
in the fiction of a chalybeate well, which, indeed, is so far a reality
that out of its magical depths have gushed streets, groves, gardens,
mansions, shops, and churches, and spread themselves along the banks of
the little river Leam.
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