Tired as I was, I yet could not resist joining in a work of kindness. Moreover, as I had come to see and learn, it struck me that an improvisé ball was as likely to teach me the humours of such an assembly at Harrogate as one more deliberately got up.

The Doric temple shows off to great advantage by night, like many of the ladies who figured in it; and with a superior company, such as we meet here at a more advanced period of the season, a ball, in it, must be a mighty fine thing for killing time at Harrogate.

The place was not crowded; but a good sprinkling of people of almost every sort was scattered over the floor, or occupied the different ottomans in the recesses. Some were dressed as for an evening party, for there had been sufficient notice given in the afternoon of this impromptu. Others had not thought it worthwhile to go home to dress, and the ladies appeared sans facon, in morning bonnets, with their partners en frac. Amidst these heterogeneous groups, the six or eight stewards, with their white rosettes and smart coats, appeared like so many turkey-cocks strutting among the motley inhabitants of la basse cour.

My first introduction was to Colonel Sir --, a gay cosmopolitan Scotch baronet of 62, once a dragoon, who hardly ever opens his lips but to spout distichs, either in praise of Harrogate water, which had cured him of a liver complaint, or on his birthday, and on his having been forsaken so young (poor thing!) by the fair sex !

My next acquaintance was a young man of, property, fashionably attired, who had also derived great benefit from his visit to this Spa. He is one of the sommités in Cheshire, with whom I felt much pleasure in conversing at some length, on his intended journey through Greece and Turkey, for which he was preparing himself, by laying in an additional stock of health.

With the history of a few more of the young men present, with whom. I had thus suddenly contracted that sort of acquaintance which one is not loth to form under circumstances like the present, I became sufficiently versed in the course of the evening, as they whisked by me, with their fair partners in the mazy rounds of a waltz. There was Mr. --, the son of Sir Thomas --, a Cheshire man also, a marriageable youth, much ogled by the ladies' mothers; and also a penniless ci-devant roué, a wreck in health and fortune, though allied to high noble blood, who could now not boast of as many pence as he once had pounds.

Wales, as well as Cheshire and Lancashire, had supplied its humorous contributions to the soirée's entertainment, and I was much amused with the minute details of important warlike matters from an old militia colonel, a short punchy man, who had changed his name for a fortune, and acknowledged St. David for his patron.

The fair exhibited rather to advantage, though almost all of them inconnues. Three or four were decidedly pretty, and a couple of them perhaps might have been called élégantes. Indeed all seemed surprised that so goodly a display should have been brought together at such short notice, considering bow few names of any importance there were on the Spa books.

The thing is done somewhat more splendidly, and certainly more gaily, further on in the season-when the regular balls at the Crown, on every Wednesday evening, and at the other principal hotels, on other days in the week, take place by mutual agreement; or whenever, by some sudden frisk or inspiration, "The ladies and gentlemen at the Granby or Dragon present their compliments and request the favour of the company of the ladies and gentlemen at the Crown," or vice versa. But on the whole what I saw may be taken as a fair specimen of all the rest.

Dancing is the principal amusement for the company at Harrogate; and it is one that greatly conduces to aid the mineral waters in their effect. There is scarcely any other occupation for the invalid and visitor, except excursions to the neighbourhood, and a promenade, de long en-large, from one well to another.

The lords of the creation have also the billiard-table, and the cigar; the weaker sex a circulating library; and occasionally a concert is concocted, or an itinerant lecturer comes amongst them to unravel the wonders of the heavens, or display the beauties of nature.

These are so many godsends to shorten ennui, for the preventing of which Harrogate is but ill provided. And yet no watering-place in England ought to have more sources of amusement; for Harrogate is "a genuine Spa."

To the Montpellier Gardens I repaired the following morning, anxious to become personally acquainted with a spring, which had apparently worked such wonders as I beheld the preceding evening in the persons of our dancers. I followed the throng, who took the direction of a small and neat octagonal building, covered with a projecting Chinese roof, and surrounded with flower-beds and grassy banks, between and over which undulating footpaths afford a limited and circuitous promenade to the water-drinkers.

Within the building two pumps, side by side, supply the sulphur and the saline waters; the latter of which, as I before observed, has been but very recently discovered. This system of pumping mineral waters is decidedly bad, and need never be had recourse to. Why it was adopted in the present instance I know not; but unquestionably the water at the Old Well will always be drunk with greater confidence, for the very reason that there are no leaden pipes to draw it. That few people, comme il faut, avail themselves of that well is simply because what costs nothing is, in their estimation, not worth having; whereas here, at the Montpellier, the large sum of two shillings per week is charged, for each person subscribing to drink the waters and to have the right of parading up and down the grounds.

I shall have occasion to say something more on this system of pumping mineral waters out of the bowels of the earth - a system not adopted in a single instance in Germany, and greatly to be deprecated. At present, I applied myself with a serene countenance and an empty stomach to the quaffing of a large tumbler of the fetid stream, previously warmed by mixing with it some of the same, which is kept constantly heated in stone jars placed on the top of a fireplace.

The water is perfectly colourless and transparent, and almost brisk from the escape of gas. The first impression on the tongue is intensely salt, followed by the peculiar bitter taste of salt water, but leaving an après-goût like that which remains after chewing bitter almonds. It goes down oily, and at the temperature at which I drank it (115°) the sulphureted gas is scarcely perceptible. I repeated the same quantity four times, diminishing each time the artificial temperature until I drank it cold, thermometer then marking 52°, while the external atmosphere was at 60°, and the nauseous taste bad increased with the descending temperature.

The whole quantity I took in four times, I noticed people to drink at twice only, and quite cold. Writers on this water have recommended the latter practice. This is an error which I was sorry to see committed at all the English Spas. There are few stomachs which can bear with impunity the weight of two doses of three-quarters of a pint each of a cold, salt, and sulphureted water, drunk with a short interval between. Few stomachs can stand the slow extrication of the imprisoned gas, which, once ingested with the cold water, is gradually disengaged by the warmth of that organ. It then mounts into the head, and produces a confused, heavy, and unpleasant feeling.

This I have put to the test of my own personal experience. Drunk quite cold, I found the water particularly heavy on the stomach, and in an hour's time my head ached not a little. Some of my younger patients in this place experienced similar effects; and, indeed, upon inquiries among strangers, who were religiously following the recommended practice, I ascertained the case to be precisely the same. At all events the first glass or two should be warmed, but not so much so as to drive off the whole of the sulphur gas.

With respect to quantity, that point has been determined by long experience, and by very competent authorities. It did not appear to me that people on whom devolved the management of the water, at the several Spas I visited in this county, were sufficiently aware of the importance of this consideration. The quantity drunk, at one time, should be such that during the fifteen minutes' walk, which is to elapse between one dose and the next, the stomach may nearly have got rid of the first before it receives the second. Four ounces of liquid ingested will nearly disappear from the stomach in the course of twenty minutes, particularly when assisted by walking exercise.

Such is the opinion and practice at the Spas in Germany, where beakers holding hardly as much as four ounces are used by every invalid, and not the half-pint and whole pint tumblers which we see employed here, at Cheltenham, Leamington, and elsewhere.

I have entered into the consideration of this subject in this place once for all, and I wish to be understood, that I adhere to the German mode of administering mineral water, in opposition to that adopted in this country.

It is yet early morning. A group of young children of various ages, from five to nine years, are just brought in. The maid immediately doles out to them their prescribed modicum of the "nasty" water, and in such large tumblers, full and so cold, that I am not surprised at the children drinking it with reluctance, and making sad grimaces at their nauseous dose. How half a pint of such a liquid is to be swallowed otherwise than with disgust by the babes, at this chilly hour of the morning, when the governess herself takes care to spit out two-thirds of what she drinks, it is not easy to conjecture. Seriously, this is a very objectionable mode of administering the Harrogate water to children.

Day by day I noticed that the physiognomy of the several groups which wandered about the grounds of the Montpellier, was improving in the scale of civilization. Every day has its fresh arrivals. Young ladies are particularly numerous. Old people too are not scanty - many scorbutic, some herpetic, and not a few with pustular noses. These are seen wandering to and from the sulphur spring, not unfrequently extending their walk to the OLD WELL for a last sip, a bonne bouche, as it were, before they return home to breakfast.

To that well I next extended my trial of the water upon another morning. Sallying out for that purpose at 8 AM, I found that "holy temple of Hygeia" thickly surrounded by people of the middle class. No contrast can be stronger than that which exists between the sort of people seen to quaff large goblets of the water here, and at the subscription rooms; and the old women, nearly in tatters, placed in a row behind a species of stone parapet, over the top of which, as upon a counter, the salutary fluid from the well is delivered to every applicant, formed a curious sight to one who had been accustomed to behold the neat, pretty, and alert handmaidens of the Sprudel.

These noisy creatures (who look like so many fishwomen) administer the water either cold, or mixed with some previously heated, and in tumblers, in size nearly a pint.

The well is behind them, and there is no lack of the water, which is squandered profusely at no charge whatever, save perhaps a solitary copper-piece, which some one, more generously disposed than the rest, throws with an air of protection on the stone counter.

I quaffed twice of this second sort of sulphur water, about six ounces each time, and warm. It goes down as oily as the Montpellier, is not quite so intensely salt to the taste, and is decidedly without that après-goût of bitter almond which I think is a pleasant feature of the sulphur-water at the Montpellier; and which, in the latter case, remains adhering to the tongue for some hours after drinking it.

Like the Montpellier, the water of the old well, especially if taken cold, troubles the head, and some days gives the headache; it produces eructation of sulphureted gas, as when one has been eating half a dozen eggs boiled hard, or in a worse state; it acts promptly on the kidneys, and seems to promote the action of the intestines, as well as to influence the character of its secretions in the course of the morning. When neither of these effects are produced, the water is not properly digested, and the head is the more affected.

To render the water at Harrogate perfect of its kind, it should have held in solution about thirty grains of sulphate of soda in each pint. It unfortunately holds none, and therefore it only derives the little of purgative qualities it possesses from the large proportion of common sea-salt it contains, which amounts to one hundred and eight grains in the pint.

If the so-called Cheltenham saline at Harrogate (both the one in the promenade-room, and the other found by the side of the sulphur well in the Montpellier grounds,) had been in reality endowed with the peculiar ingredients known to enter into the composition of the real Cheltenham water, one of which is sulphate of soda or Glauber salt, we might then, by mixing the saline with the sulphur water, render the latter aperient, and consequently more useful and effective. Unfortunately, not only is there no sulphate of soda at all in the soi-disant Cheltenham saline at the Royal Promenade room, and only two grains and a half of it in the Cheltenham saline of the Montpellier Gardens, according to the very recent analysis supplied me by Mr West; but there is in both a largish proportion of oxide of iron, ( I can only afford a note, to mention that in the grounds of the Royal Promenade-rooms, and close to the saline spring, there is a well of pure steel water, which is not used at present, but of which a proper use might be made by serving baths with it, as I suggested to the proprietor, Mr Gordon. ) which at once renders the mixing of the two waters perfectly impracticable.

That the two waters are incompatible, the good lady at the pump-room in the Montpellier occasionally does show, by pumping half a tumbler full of the water from one pipe, and the remainder from the other closely adjoining, - when the mixture is instantly converted into something like ink, much to the amusement of the old and young.

With deference to Dr Hunter, who, I think, first suggested the notion that these so-called saline waters at Harrogate, of recent discovery, "held a middle rank between the waters of Leamington Priors and the saline chalybeate wells at Cheltenham," I must avow my surprise, that he should himself have adopted, and justified in others, the assumption of the name of "Cheltenham saline" or spring, in regard to the water found in the Royal Promenade-room, - when, in reality, there is no similarity between the two. For a very potent ingredient (iron) is largely present in the saline at Harrogate, and totally absent in the Leamington waters, or exists only in a very minute portion in the Cheltenham wells; while another equally effective (and in mineral waters strongly characteristic) ingredient (Glauber salt) is found in sufficiently large proportions, both in the Leamington and the Cheltenham waters, but not in the saline waters of Harrogate. The very minute quantity found since in one of them was unknown to Dr Hunter.

Sir Charles Scudamore, by simply calling the said modern waters of Harrogate "Saline Chalybeates," has avoided falling into the error of viewing them as at all like the waters at Cheltenham. The fact is, that the waters in question are chalybeate springs, holding in solution an unusual quantity of common salt, with some muriates of lime and magnesia; and, as such, they are most valuable combinations, and fully entitled to the commendation bestowed on them, both by Dr. Hunter, and Sir Charles Scudamore.

I partook of both waters in their turn, and in sufficient quantities. The temperature at both wells, after repeated trials, I found to be 60°, external air being 65°. In appearance it is opalescent, and slightly turbid, having a vestige of an ochry tinge. The taste, when drunk cold, is saltish, hardly bitter, and it is soft. The saltish taste continues some time in the mouth.

As I happen to require any thing but steel water, I felt, as I expected, very ill on both the days on which I drank of those saline chalybeates. In the head in particular I suffered greatly, and the state of uneasiness generally produced by this tightening fluid pervading the system, was one of great discomfort, until I betook myself to the soulagement of half a bottle of Pullna, which I always carry with me when travelling.

Both these saline waters and the sulphureted waters are used as baths, with wonderful success at Harrogate. The practice, of course, is as old as the place ; but baths were formerly administered, at the different hotels and lodging houses, in the most inconvenient and unsatisfactory manner. The bath-tubs were placed anywhere, and the water fetched from the adjoining bog-springs was used for two or three baths without being changed. At present, on the contrary, two superb establishments for bathing exist in the place, equal to any thing of the kind at other Spas.

The Montpellier Baths, formerly called the (Crown Baths, come first in point of appearance, though not in priority of existence. The Victoria Baths come next. The building is five or six years old. Hence it is evident that Harrogate, though slow and late, has nevertheless improved in some respects; its baths in particular.

There are six bath-rooms on each side of the building, to which access is had through separate waiting-rooms - the one side being for the ladies, the other for gentlemen. In the hall, or under the portico, in warm weather, a band plays in the morning. The bathing-tanks are exceedingly neat, being of stone of an elegant form, partly sunk into the floor. Inside they are lined with white tiles; externally they are painted and varnished; while the ledge is of polished black marble. They are very deep, and of good length, and admit of the flow of either hot or cold water, by the simple turning of one handle. At the widest end of the bath a band, made of canvas, is hooked across, and serves to support the head, and keep the shoulders away from the cold tiles; a great improvement in all warm bathing.

In two of the rooms on each side of the building the baths are deeper, and are called the upright or sitting baths. In them the bather may sit in such a manner as to be almost standing; a contrivance likely to be of use to certain invalids or elderly people, or to those who, when lying down, may feel the weight of the water on the chest too oppressive.

The water for these baths is drawn from six different springs, by aspiring pumps. A small steam-engine pumps the water through them into a reservoir, where it is heated by steam from the boiler of the engine. The supply of water, both of the sulphur and saline kind, is amply sufficient; nor is the former much deteriorated in its quality by the application of beat, as we might naturally expect; for it is found, when admitted into the bath-tanks, that it retains much of the sulphureted gas.

As if Harrogate had been destined to exemplify publicly the marring influence of legal quibbles, besides what has already been detailed respecting Thackwray's fifth spring, we find a very pleasing and creditable small building of the Ionic order, containing thirteen bath-rooms, sunken below the level of the ground, as if erected at the bottom of a quarry, to which you have access by descending steps, and separate entrances for the ladies and gentlemen. These are now called the Victoria Baths, the first establishment of the sort formed in Harrogate; now the property of a Company, who have spared no expense to render them worthy rivals of the Montpellier Baths.

The reason why these baths were built in, and not above the ground is, that the proprietor, Mr. Williams, was precluded by a clause in the surrender of the plot of ground, from raising any building on the surface of it, and so he dug and erected the baths below it!

This building, however, is perfectly dry, and the arrangement of the baths themselves is very creditable. Although there is not a separate dressing-room to each bath-room, the latter is so large that it admits of a curtain being drawn across, to separate and conceal the bathing-tanks, which are oblong, and ample, and altogether sunken into the floor, and tiled.

They are narrower than those at the Montpellier, and not so smart, yet very comfortable and clean. The terms are three shillings for each warm bath in both establishments. About 4000 are used during the season at the Victoria, and 6000 at the Montpellier.

Almost adjoining to the Victoria Baths is a large promenade-room, with an organ at one end of it, used for public meetings and lectures, and also open to subscribers. It was formerly called the old promenade-room, and was erected in 7.805, at the suggestion of Dr Caley. It now bears the

name of the "Victoria Reading-rooms and Library." It is nearly opposite the Old Well, and is frequented principally by the company who make use of the water of that well.

In order to clear the ground of all I have to say in reference to the mineral springs at Low Harrogate, it is right that I should mention in this place the existence of two mineral waters, totally distinct from the rest, which have been noticed in Dr. Hunter's, and Sir Charles Scudamore's works, as the Crescent Old Well, and the Crescent Hotel Saline Spring.

The former, which, if it ever was really endowed with the properties ascribed to it by Dr. Garnett of old, must have been a most important spring, is now in a state of utter dilapidation and neglect. I could not procure a single drop of the water; but I have induced the proprietor to undertake its cautious restoration. The second is now called Walker's Strong Saline Spring, or Leamington Spa Water. It is obtained by a pump, in a small room adjoining Mr. Walker's extensive wine premises; and as it neither contains sulphur, nor a single trace of iron, with the largest proportion of carbonated soda of any of the springs at Harrogate, the water is, in my opinion, a most valuable one, and might be rendered useful in a variety, of complaints in which no other of the Harrogate waters is suitable.

I find the analysis of this spring on Walker's card, and he assures me that West is the author of it. The same analysis appears in Dr. Hunter's work; it is therefore to be relied upon. Still a fresh analysis is desirable, and I recommended it. Should the composition of the water be as here predicated, I could point out applications of it of the utmost consequence for invalids visiting Harrogate, even supposing them to require the baths of the peculiar water of that Spa.

Walker's saline spring was formerly in the garden of the Crescent Hotel, which hotel has now changed its name for that of Northumberland House.

Harrogate's fetid water is sent to all parts of the kingdom, and every body here professes or undertakes to export it. The Old Well principally supplies the necessary quantity; but the bottling process I there witnessed is imperfect and objectionable. Still, enough of the fetid gas remains to last for some months.

The water, however, does not keep well. Mr. Fryer, assistant at the Montpellier Baths, sends the water of that stronger sulphureted spring in glass bottles, of a pint and a half each, at seven shillings per dozen, bottles included, to all parts of the kingdom.