Clifton

from a village, which strove to combine rustic simplicity with the quality of a fashionable watering-place, into the extensive and populous West-end of the neighbouring city. The Clifton of to-day occupies nearly a square mile of surface, bounded on the east and north-east by Bristol and its northern suburbs; on the south by the floating harbour of Bristol; on the south-west by the Avon in its deep and picturesque gorge ; and on the west and northwest by the same, but with the interposition of those high and breezy limestone plateaux, covered with short sweet grass and dotted with hawthorn bushes, all blushing and fragrant in the month of May, which are called Clifton and Durdham Downs.