9i 
DESCRIPTION of STOURTON. 
If my reafon fhould ever forfake me, as dory fays that, of a 
very wife man once abandoned him, methinks I fhould, like 
him, fooner turn idolater for the fake of a living woman, than 
idolize a dead one. But if the objedt mud be made of wood 
or done, the work of mens hands, fondly fuppofed to reprefent 
fome fuperior agent, it fhould be a nymph like this, arrayed in 
native innocence, feated by the pure waters of a fubterraneous 
bath; not the filken rob’d virgin, arrayed with ribbands, crowns, 
and perriwigs. How often have I feen the datue of the pious 
virgin, placed in lofty grandeur, in folemn temples, hail’d with 
anthems of celedial mufic, but drefTed out in gaudy colors, as 
if fhe had been a harlot, whofe proditutions they meant to 
commemorate ! 
From the grotto of the nymph, we proceeded to that adjoin- 
ing, which is facred to the river god stour, and to him infcrib- 
ed by fome latin verfes. Here he fits in gloomy, awful majedy, 
in a very natural attitude, with one of his legs in a pure bafon 
of water, formed in rock-work, arched after the fame manner, 
at the foot of a deep hill covered with trees, which look vene- 
rably antient. This datue is of lead. 
As one advances, upon a more open and ridng ground under 
the hill, is the temple dedicated to i-iercules. This is a ro- 
tunda or pantheon, calculated to receive in the centre a pededal 
of about three feet high ; and the figure of this heathen deity 
is about eight. It is a beautiful piece of marble-work, and 
weighs about eight tuns: the ingenious Mr. rysbrack, after ten 
years labor, has at length flnifhed it. 
N 2 
Perhaps 
