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Discovery of the Springs
cable, to return to Eridge House to take a course of the waters. Whether, however, their advice was based upon their belief in the efficacy of the mineral properties of the spring, or whether they took advantage of their patient's belief in its qualities to persuade him again to lead for some time a restful life, who shall say ? Who shall say, either, whether it was the waters or the quiet life that effected the cure—may it not be, perhaps, that the diagnosis of the physicians was wrong ?—but after three months at Lord Abergavenny's seat the young nobleman returned to the metropolis in robust health. Although he forthwith plunged again into the gallantries in which he found so much pleasure, and although he persevered in indulgence in the pleasures of the town for many years, he never afterwards showed any further sign of the disorder from which he was supposed to have suffered, never again, though he lived to the ripe old age of fourscore and five.
This story of the discovery of the waters at Tunbridge Wells has never been disputed, and therefore it may be put on record even in this sceptical age that, as the old chronicler, Burr, the first historian of Tunbridge Wells, quaintly
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