aware of being "the cynosure of neighbouring eyes;" for the gallery of the bath was generally the resort of young gentlemen who ogled the fair to their heart's content. There is a story told of a gentleman once looking at his wife while she was bathing in the King's Bath, and who was so charmed with her increase of beauty that he could not help complimenting her upon it, which a king of Bath hearing, he instantly took him by the heels and hurled him over the rails into the water-by way of marking, we suppose, his sense of the impropriety and mauvais ton of admiring one's own partner. The public baths of the city are four in number-the King's Bath, the Queen's Bath, the Hot Bath, and the Cross Bath. The King's Bath is the largest and most important of them all, and royalty has on many occasions disported in its waters. A remarkable circumstance is related to have occurred in it while Queen Ann, consort of James I., was bathing here. A flame of fire, it is said, ascended to the top of the water, spread itself into a large circle of light, and then became extinct. This so frightened her Majesty that she immediately departed for the New Bath, close at hand; which ever afterwards went by the name of the Queen's Bath. Another circumstance, still more singular in connection with it, is mentioned by Stukeley in his 'Itinerarum.' "It is remarkable," says he, "that at the cleansing of the springs, when they set down a new pump, they constantly found great quantities of hazelnuts, as in many other places among subterraneous timber." The comment of this old author upon the circumstance is, however, a thousand times more strange than the thing itself. These," he adds, "I doubt not to be the remains of the famous and universal Deluge, which the Hebrew historian tells us was in autumn; Providence by that means securing the revival of the vegetable world." (!) means of the "great unwashed." The temperature of the water is about 95°. The Hot Bath is so named from the great heat of its springs, the thermometer standing in it as high as 116°: a temperature so great that it seems almost to scald the skin upon the first immersion. In addition to these public baths (which belong to the Corporation), there are a number of private bathing-establishments, fitted up with every elegance and improvement that the present day has suggested. There are also the Abbey Baths, likewise very commodious, and situated upon the site of the old Roman Thermæ. In 1833, an analysis was made, by the Oxford professor of chemistry, of the gas emitted by the waters, and he found that within the twenty-four hours 222 cubic feet was given off, which contained a variable quantity; viz., from 4 to 13 per cent. of the whole; and the rest consisted of 96 per cent. of nitrogen, and 4 per cent. of oxygen. The learned professor, we are also told, drew the inference so comfortable to Bathonians, that their city owes its hot springs to the action of a volcano immediately beneath it! This is a mere conjecture, however, as philosophers are still entirely in the dark as to the causes of the internal heat of the globe. The old Bathonians had an opinion of their own on the subject: they attribute the springs themselves to the Royal necromancer, Bladud ; and their composition, and the origin of their heat, is set forth in rhyme, which, five centuries ago, was held to be very good reason: we quote the following lines as far as they bear upon the subject: "Two tunne ther beth of bras, In vour well springs the tounes laggeth, This, translated into modern English, means that the redoubtable Bladud buried deeply in the earth at Bath two tons of burning brass and two of glass,the latter of which contained a composition of seven salts, brimstone and wildfire, which precious composi tion being set potwise over the four springs, fermented, and thus caused that great heat which now exists, and is to last for ever! Modern chemists would like to be able to produce perpetual heat on the same terms; it would be finding a motive power at a very cheap rate -indeed it would solve the problem of perpetual old coaching time resounded throughout the day with motion without more ado. the rattle of the stages and mails running between London and the West, gives the stranger no idea of the beauty of the modern town. The gable ends of the houses, the country-town like character of the shops, and the appearance of the inhabitants, presents another world to that which exhibits itself in Milsome Street. As we proceed along Stall Street, architectural beauties begin to unfold themselves. The Pumproom, the crescent-shaped Piazza which commences Bath Street, the King's Bath, and the Colonnade, through which the beautiful west-front of the Abbey is seen, furnish a number of effects all charming in themselves. At this spot the genius of Bath still seems to linger; the chairmen hang about, reminding one of old times, and the lounger, too, seems to love it. The Pump-room, which was built upon the site of the old one, in 1796, presents, in combination with its two wings, the King's Bath and the Colonnade, a very beautiful appearance. Its interior, which is 60 feet long by 56 wide, is noble-looking and elegant. The band, long famous for its performance of ancient music, still attracts much company on Saturday-the fashion The waters are reported to be beneficial in all chronic distempers, with the exception of those arising from diseased lungs, or from hæmorrhage and inflammation. Gout, stone, rheumatism, indigestion, palsy, and bilious obstruction (this accounts, we suppose, for the multitudes of liverless old Indians to be found in Bath ;) and cutaneous diseases are said to be benefited by the use of these springs, whether administered externally or internally. A collection of all the treatises which have been written upon the efficacy of the Bath waters would make a very decent-sized library, as in former times such works were the means by which young physicians introduced themselves to practice. It is not a little amusing to look over the more antique of these productions, published in the days of Brobdignagian type, oceans of margin and rude initial letters, and observe how the old practitioners managed to hide their real ignorance of internal complaints by generalizing them under such appellations as "the grosser humours of the body," or "the vapours which arise to the brain," and which these waters were to drive forth. We do not wonder at Dr. Radcliffe's threat "to cast a toadable day of the season, into the spring," when we consider the outrageous manner in which their waters were quacked by the physicians of a past generation. A WALK THROUGH BATH. The high level at which the Great Western Railway passes through the suburbs enables the traveller to take in a very comprehensive view of the city. It lies before him almost like an Ordnance map, a very dirty corner of which he crosses; for however handsome the allprevalent free-stone is in appearance in buildings of any pretension to architectural effect, yet when employed in the meaner buildings of the artisans it has a very grim and mean appearance, quite melancholy to witness. Across a perfect nest of courts and alleys, the traveller, as we have before said, is hurried, and he cannot witness the wretched poverty at his feet without bitterly contrasting it with the palace-like erections of the Lansdowne Hill-side. If we approach Bath by way of the old bridge which crosses the Avon, we shall gain a juster knowledge of the city than by any other entrance. This bridge, in old times, was quite sufficient for all the traffic which passed over it; but with railroads a new epoch has commenced, and its ancient piers are now made to carry a wooden roadway overhanging on either side. A little higher up the stream, the railroad crosses the river by a skew-bridge, in which Brunel seems to have courted a difficulty merely to vanquish it. As the eye wanders over the complication of iron girders and ponderous beams of which it is composed, it assumes an aspect of daring power, that seems to typify the dauntless spirit of the present age as contrasted with the old bridge which slowly creeps across the river on five cumbersome arches. (Cut, p. 337.) Southgate Street, which in the At the bottom of the room a statue of Nash used to stand, between two busts of Newton and Pope. Lord Chesterfield, who had a keen eye for the ridiculous, let fly an epigram upon the incongruousness of the juxtaposition; the last stanza of which is biting enough: "The statue placed these busts between Gives satire all its strength: But folly at full length," This keen shaft had the effect of separating the trio ; the poet and the philosopher have been banished, and the Beau now holds an undivided reign, not exactly over the scene of his former triumphs-for that vanished with the old room-but still over the spot where the genius of the city still dwells. The modern rooms have few associations, Old Queen Charlotte, when she visited Bath, in 1817, held her morning levees here, at which the chief company of the city and neighbourhood were presented to her. Madame D'Arblay, in her interesting Diary,' gives us an affecting picture of the presentation of her husband to her Majesty, and of the exhaustion of the sufferer, who was in the last stage of disease, when the interview was over. The old king was to have accompanied the queen on this visit, and three houses had been taken for them in the Royal Crescent; but just as he had arranged for the excursion he was afflicted with blindness, and then, as Madame D'Arblay says, he would not come; "for what," said he, was a beautiful city to him who could not look at it." 66 It was whilst her Majesty was sojourning in this city that the melancholy news arrived of the death of the Princess Charlotte, which event hurried her off to Windsor; but she did not much love her Royal grandchild, and three weeks saw her again drinking the Bath waters. The waters issue from the mouth of a marble serpent, and amid the bustle of Stall Street, this poetical idea situated on one side of the room, where the poor vale- of the ascent and descent of angels upon the ladder, tudinarians gather to quaff out of glasses tinctured, by sculptured in enduring stone on each side of the great the medicinal qualities of the water, a deep yellow west window, seems to realize some Scripture dream colour. During the season a fee is demanded of of one's youth, and to lead one back to those days strangers who visit the room while the band is playing, when the white-robed angels, with the brightness of but at all other times it is open as a public promenade. the celestial mansions still surrounding them, descended As we leave the Pump-room, our footsteps are upon earth and formed a link between the Eternal naturally led towards the Abbey Church, the richly- and his earthly creatures. We fear all our praise embellished west-front of which the eye wanders over must be confined to the effect of the west front, as the with delight. There was a monastery situated here at a general design of the building is not beautiful, neither very early date, and a church dedicated to St. Peter and are the details particularly elegant. It was the last St. Paul, which was elevated into a bishopric in 1090, and abbey built in England, and with it Gothic ecclegranted to John de Villola, bishop of Wells, for the pur- siastical architecture, as a really living style, might be pose of enlarging that see; and the two Abbey Churches said to have died. Like the religion with which it and dioceses have ever since remained united under grew up, it had become so debased that its destruction the same episcopal head. This building having fallen was inevitable. Upon the dissolution of the religious into decay, the present church was commenced in 1495, houses, the Abbey was entirely stripped, by Henry's by Oliver King, bishop of the diocese, who, it is as- Commissioners, of the lead, glass, iron, and timber that serted, was prompted to the good work by a vision he it contained, and reduced, in fact, to its naked walls; beheld in his sleep, wherein he saw the Holy Trinity in which condition it remained until 1606, when it was with angels ascending and descending by a ladder, to restored by Bishop Montague, and converted into a which was a fair olive-tree supporting a crown. This parochial church. The Bathonians, with a singular dream the prelate construed into a command from notion of the beauties of Gothic ecclesiastical archiHeaven to restore the Cathedral Church; which he tecture, pride themselves upon the lightness of the immediately set about, but did not live to see it interior of its edifice, which, from its being lit by the completed. (Cut, No. 4.) enormous number of fifty-two windows, is styled 'The Viewed from beneath the Pump-room Colonnade, Lantern of England.' The mid-day glare that meets the eye in the nave, certainly warrants them in giving it this appellation; but they should not deceive themselves with the idea that this is a beauty. The early architects, whose aim seems to have been to produce that "dim religious light" which gives such solemnity to our York and Westminsters, would indeed smile, could they witness the manner in which that simple daylight effect is praised, which they used all their marvellous art to modify and subdue. The Church is crowded with cheap marble-slabs, which give it the most meagre appearance; nay, almost turn it into a marble-mason's shop. Among the multitude of urns, sarcophaguses, weeping willows, and the like mediocre emblems of grief, scarcely more than half a dozen monuments deserve a better fate than to be ground up into marble dust; and yet we can almost forgive them their existence, for the sake of the following capital epigram to which they have given rise: "These walls adorn'd with monument and bust, Show how Bath waters serve to lay the dust." Nash, who was buried here with great pomp, has a monument with an inscription, in which the visitor is requested to consign to his remains "one grateful tear;" what for we know not, as the Beau, during the latter part of his life, at least, was little better than a "hellkeeper." A more interesting monument is that of Quin, the actor, which consists of a finely-carved head and bust of the deceased, in marble. Quin contested for a short time the palm with Garrick, as a tragic actor, but was soon driven from the stage by that genius; when he retired to Bath with a handsome annuity, and lived there many years the prince of good fellows, and the sayer of good things. Bon mots were not the only invention of his brain: he seasoned his viands as well as his conversation, and his Blood-Sauce was a famous condiment among his friends. As he grew feeble, he used to be wheeled along the South Parade, where, as he basked in the sun, he would declare "that Bath was the finest place in the world for an old cock to go to roost in." Garrick, who saw him off the great stage of life, as well as off that of London, wrote his epitaph; but it is a poor hybrid affair. Dryden has one of his beautiful mortuary inscriptions to Mary Frampton, which is quite delightful to read after the mass of affected and strained lines which everywhere meet the eye. So exquisite is this epitaph that we cannot forbear quoting it: "Below this humble monument is laid All that Heaven wants of this celestial maid: us, Each thought was visible that roll'd within,-- But Another interesting monument is that to the memory of Lady Jane Waller, wife of the Parliamentary General. On the tomb lies the effigy of the knight in armour, in a mourning attitude by his wife's side, and two children in the like position. The old sextoness, who shows you the lions of the Abbey, draws your attention to a fracture in the knight's face, which, she informs you, was made by James II., who passing through the church, and happening to espy Waller's obnoxious effigy, drew his sword, and knocked off its nose. unfortunately for this very pretty tale, Pepys spoils it, for he inspected the Abbey on his visit to Bath in 1668 long enough before James was king; and, as he tells "looked over the monuments, when, among others, Dr. Venner, and Pelling, and a lady of Sir W. Waller's ; he lying with his face broken." Warner, in his History of the city, gives another story respecting James and the Abbey, which is perhaps true. It seems certain that shortly after his succession to the throne, he visited and made some stay in Bath; and that, among his other attendants, he brought with him his confessor and friend, Father Huddlestone, the Jesuit. As the tale goes, this friar, by James's orders, went to the Abbey and exhibited on the altar all the paraphernalia of the Romish ritual; and then wrathfully denounced all heretics, at the same time exhorting them to an immediate change from the errors of Protestantism, to the true faith from which this country had apostatised. Among the number of his listeners was Kenn, then bishop of the diocese, and the consistent and firm supporter of the Reformed religion. Fired with indignation at this open display of hatred to his faith and to the established religion of the land, the bishop, as soon as Huddlestone had concluded his sermon, mounted a stone pulpit which then stood in the body of the church, and desiring the departing congregation to remain for a little while, he preached an extempore sermon in answer to Huddlestone, exposing his fallacies and displaying the errors of his church and the absurdity of its ceremonies in a strain From Milsom Street we might either climb the ascent of Belmont and Belvedere (two very fine ranges of houses), until we reach Lansdowne Crescent, which circles the fair forehead of the city, or by turning off to the left along Bennet Street, enter the Circus, which might be called her zone: choosing the latter way, let us pause for a moment at what might, at the present time even, be considered the chief attraction of Bath the Assembly-room. This magnificent building was erected by Wood the younger, in 1771, several years after the death of Nash; consequently, none of the associations connected with him and his days are to be sought within its walls. The Assemblyroom over which he reigned stood upon the site of the Literary Institution: it was destroyed by fire in 1810. When both buildings were in existence, they were presided over by distinct masters of the ceremonies, and were distinguished by being called the Upper and Lower Rooms. Upper and Lower Rooms. We question if the metropolis can boast so noble a suite of apartments as the Upper Rooms. The Ball-room is 106 feet long by 42 wide, and is finished in that elegant yet solid manner that prevailed towards the latter end of the last century. The Master of the Ceremonies receives the company in an octagon of 48 feet in diameter, and vaulted at a great height. The walls are surrounded with portraits of defunct kings of Bath, among whom Nash, with his white hat, stands conspicuous; but the artistic eye is more attracted by one of Gainsborough's lifelike heads. This artist was driven from London by the competition of Sir Joshua Reynolds, who was all the fashion of the day, and something more; yet we question whether his noble manner was after all as true a thing as the fine nature of his less successful competitor. Gainsborough, like Quin, retired to Bath from his rival, and lived and painted here for some time. of such fervid eloquence as astonished his congregation | The tone of a city can generally be ascertained from and confounded Huddlestone and the Royal bigot. the character of its shops: in Milsom Street we see Such is the tale as it goes; but it does seem rather at once that Bath is entirely a place of 'genteel' resort strange that a Romish priest should be allowed to play and independent residents. The perfumers, milliners, such pranks in a cathedral of the Established Church, tailors, printsellers, circulating libraries, &c., which and in the very presence of its bishop. There are some wholly occupy the principal streets, proclaim it a city monuments by Bacon and Chantrey in the church, but of easy and elegant life. nothing very striking; and Bishop Montague, who repaired the building, has an imposing tomb in the fashion of James the First's time. Prior Bird's Chapel is the architectural gem of the building, the delicate tracery of which has lately been restored. The roof of the nave is formed of lath-and-plaster work, and in a style which comes, we suppose, under what is called 'Modern Gothic,' which includes anything that a master mason might imagine. The roof of the choir, however, is as beautiful as that of the nave is common. Those who have seen that of Henry the Seventh's Chapel at Westminster will have seen this; for they are both of the same age and style. The clustered pillars spreading out into a fan-like tracery, which covers the roof. Two long galleries totally deface the appearance of the choir. We wonder that in this age of restorations, when it is the fashion to rail at churchwarden barbarity, they have not been removed. The exterior of the building was repaired in 1833 (a period anterior to that in which most of the intelligent revivals have taken place), or rather botched in a most disgraceful manner. The pinnacles on the tower are such gross absurdities, that their having been allowed to remain astonishes us. Returning again into Stall Street, the main artery of the city, a short walk up Union Street brings us into Bond Street-a locality which reminds one of the West end of London, from the elegance of the merchandise in the shops and the general metropolitan air of the place. This paved court (for it has only a footway for passengers) is but the ante-chamber to what might be justly called the pulse of modern Bath Milsom Street. This promenade is one of the most, if not the most, elegant and pleasant streets in the kingdom; not so long as Regent Street in the metropolis, or Sackville Street of Dublin, yet just the length to form a pleasant promenade. Its architecture, too, is noble and cheerful, and its shops are crowded with elegant novelties. Milsom Street is, in fact, the fashionable lounge of the city, and in the season the scene it presents more resembles the walk in Kensington Gardens than anything else that we know of. To the ladies it must be pleasant indeed; for here they mingle the two great joys of female life flirting and shopping: when tired of their beaux they can drop in at the milliner's, when, fitted with a charming bonnet, they can issue forth again and smile gaily to the "How do's" that shower upon them from the mob of fine gentlemen who seek 66 renown By walking up in order to walk down." The street being situated upon a slight ascent, a full view of its bright scenes is gained from either extremity. The Octagon-room and another, 70 feet in length by 27 feet in width, are devoted to cards. A guinea is the sum paid for the season Subscription Balls, and five shillings extra to the Card Assembly; and sixpence each is all the charge for tea. Moderate prices these, for admittance to one of the most polite assemblies in the kingdom. "Nobodies," however, must not expect to mingle with the "somebodies" of high life on such easy terms. Certain rules are drawn up, by which all retail traders, articled clerks of the city, theatrical and other public performers, are excluded from its saloons. The Master of the Ceremonies goes on the principle, we suppose, of Dickens's barber, who refuses to shave a coal-heaver, remarking, 66 we must draw the line somewhere we stops at bakers." It must be confessed, however, that the term "public performers" is rather a |