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CHAPTER III.

BATH.

BATH Rome and Edinburgh — Approach to the City at NightScenic Effect-The WHITE HART-TOPOGRAPHY before Balneography-The Old and the Modern Cicerone at Bath-Origin of its Modern Renown and Prosperity-Doctor GUIDOTT-Plan of Bath in his days and our days-Situation of the City-Surrounding Hills-The AVON-Position of the Hot-springs-CIRCULAR PROMENADE through Bath-Successive Improvements-The two WOODS-LansdowneBathwick-English Florence-Great Pulteney-street-Sir W. Pulteney -Countess of Bath and Duke of Cleveland-Back to where we started-The KING'S and QUEEN'S Public Baths-BATH and BADENBADEN-Old Fashion-What Harm ?-NEW ERA at Bath-Wisdom of the Corporation-Mr. GREEN and Mr. SIMMS-A powerful rescueBath likely to resume its rank in England as "King of the Spas❞— KING'S Public Baths-Quantity of Water from its Source-PUBLIC AND PRIVATE BATHING-Important Suggestions and Valuable Changes -Numerous Contrivances for Invalids-Ample Resources.*

Of all the Christian cities,-Rome excepted, whose ancient edifices and recollections have no parallel,-BATH presents the most striking amphitheatrical spectacle which a traveller can behold, as he approaches it for the first time. Edinburgh might dispute with her the palm of grandeur, as it does that of extent and of singularly beautiful scenery marked by contrast. But it is in that contrast alone which her olden structures offer to the more modern ones that her superiority consists,

* I have drawn the largest portion of the materials of this and two succeeding chapters from another and recent publication of mine on Bath, the correctness of the details of which has been approved by local judges and experienced observers. I therefore offer my information to the readers of the "Spas of England" with increased confidence.

and not in that uniform harmony of imposing edifices, reared in the lapse of scarcely two thirds of a century, and crowning many heights, arranged in concentric and ascending circles, by which "the city of the waters of Pallas" is distinguished.

Viewed in a dark and serene night, Bath awakens in the spectator feelings of surprise, such as even "the Eternal City," under the like circumstances, fails to excite. It was at such a time that I entered Bath on the occasion of my present visit, the third I paid to that city with the intention of studying more particularly its claims and resources as a Spa.

As we approached the city nearer and nearer, coming from the south, a sight burst suddenly upon me, the effect of which seemed as if produced by one of those magic representations of a night-scene introduced into French ballets, where, in the midst of darkness, hundreds of enchanted palaces appear, one placed higher than another, until the highest seems to touch the dark azure vault, and with their glimmering casement-lights mock the dazzling stars of heaven. The twinkling of all the gas-lights, profusely arranged in front of the many terraced edifices and crescents placed on different hills, and alone visible; while the buildings themselves were just distinguishable in the shadows of night; and the splendour thrown over the streets nearest to the steep road down which we rapidly descended into the town, passing at the same time under the high Gothic arch that supports the Great Western railway, to enter Southgate-street-all these things combined, presented to my mind a scene unequalled in any city, except perhaps that of the Scots, before mentioned, when approached from the north in the night time.

I halted for the moment at the White Swan, in Stall-street, a sort of Hatchett's hotel, handy for a traveller who wants only a pied-à-terre for a short time, sufficiently well attended, and convenient from its immediate proximity to the baths-the centre of attraction of the place.

As I hope to be useful not only to English readers but to foreigners also, while writing the present tour through England in search of a particular object which cannot fail to interest the latter, and which, indeed, has already interested them, as I have had means of knowing since the publication of the first volume,—it is important that I should introduce them, in the first instance, to a panoramic view of this magnificent city, ere I proceed to describe those wonderful sources of thermal water which form the origin of its celebrity.

To English readers, indeed, a particular description of Bath might appear superfluous; yet, even to them, or at least to such among them as are likely to have recourse to its mineral springs for the benefit of their health, a topographical account of the place they are to reside in for a temporary purpose, accompanied by opportune reflections on the various aspects and contingencies of the localities best suited for their residence, will probably not be considered as undesirable.

In the early days of the modern reputation of Bath, the task of a cicerone must have been a comparatively easy one. Having, in the first place, pointed out to the stranger in "Stawles-street," the King's and the other baths, and next the Grove, and the Abbey, with two or three sorry houses of entertainment, or the Town-hall, converted at that time into a ball-room as well as a gaming-room, his duty was at once accomplished. When the extraordinary man, who unquestionably was the means of imparting to Bath an European celebrity, first entered that town "he found it one of the poorest cities in England, its buildings being extremely mean and the inhabitants rude and unpolite." "In these days," says a spirited writer in a recent number of the most popular magazine in the North, " Bath was a pretty village: its grand place of association seems to have been a bowling-green; its chief promenade was a double row of sycamores, and its principal employments yawning, and drinking those waters which

nothing but the most extraordinary fear of death, or the most singular insensibility to foulness in taste and smell, could ever have reconciled any human being to touching after the first drop."

This writer who, but for his testifying to the indifferent condition of Bath in the early days of the last century, in confirmation of what I before advanced, I should not have pressed into my service on the present occasion, considering how completely erroneous and the very reverse of reality is his conception of the nature and character of the Bath water -answers my purpose well, and therefore do I quote him; since he too attributes to the same extraordinary individual I have alluded to the beginning and rapid progress of modern Bath. It is, therefore, from the commencement of the reign of upwards of half a century's duration, of the remarkable personage in question, that we must date the origin of that vastness and importance which the Spa about to be considered acquired in recent times, and which consequently call for greater exertions on the part of any modern cicerone.

What reader, on the perusal of the preceding paragraph, does not at once recal to his mind the days of Beau Nash, "the monarch of Bath," and its most renowned arbiter elegantiarum? To the third descendant of a Florentine citizen, Signor Antonio Guidotti, settled in England in the early part of the reign of Edward VI., by whom he was knighted, belongs the credit of having revived the fashion of the Bath water. In his quaint performance of 1676, called "A Discourse of Bathe and the Hot Waters there," Dr. Guidott, the descendant alluded to, a bachelor of medicine of Oxford, strove to bring those waters into repute again, in spite of the great opposition he met with from almost all the faculty. He laboured incessantly, and much against his own pecuniary benefit, in extending the knowledge of the healthgiving qualities of those springs; and thus paved the way

for that brilliant era which began thirty years later, under the roseate wand of Nash, and continued, as before stated, for nearly half a century after him.

By casting a glance at the plan of Bath which accompanies Guidott's book (1676), and then at the fine map of the same city and surrounding suburbs published a few years since, we perceive at once what prodigious, and certainly unprecedented an extension the exertions of a zealous physician, followed by those of a master of the ceremonies (both intent on rendering available certain valuable mineral springs) have been the means of giving to a place which is now five times larger than at the commencement of the last century, and has a population of upwards of seventy thousand inhabitants instead of the previous one of only one-sixth of that number.

Like Baden-Baden, to which as a spa, but not as a city, it may be compared, Bath lies at the bottom of a valley, encompassed by a triple circle of hills, rising higher the farther they are removed from the city. But the valley here is wider and more circular in form than that in which the German Bath is seated; and the lesser or nearest hills are more splendidly grand, from the greater number of striking buildings with which they are studded, as well as for their beautiful verdure, the gardens and plantations which decorate their surface.

From whatever point of the old or new city we cast our glances around, a height, an eminence, or a hill presents itself, with its own peculiar beauties, natural and acquired. Being all of them parts of a great oolitic range, their shapes are gracefully rounded or waving; and whether we trace the steep ascent of Claverton on the east, up to the down or table-land on its summit, raised 600 feet above the sea level -or turn round to the loftier range of 813 feet elevation, called Lansdowne Hill, to the north-west, passing for that purpose over the lovely eminence of Bathwick in the north