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desired by ladies of quality and fashion-except impertinents.

2. That ladies coming to the ball appoint a time for their footmen coming to wait on them home, to prevent disturbance and inconveniences to themselves and others.

3. That gentlemen of fashion never appearing in a morning before the ladies in gowns and caps, show breeding and respect.

4. That no person take it ill that any one goes to another's play, or breakfast, and not theirs ;-except captious by nature.

5. That no gentleman give his tickets for the balls to any but gentlemen.-N.B. Unless he has none of his acquaintance.

6. That gentlewomen crowding before the ladies at the ball, show ill-manners; and that none do it for the future-except such as respect none but themselves.

7. That no gentleman or lady take it ill that another dances before them ;-except such as have no pretence to dance at all.

8. That the elder ladies and children be content with a second bench at the ball, as being past, or not come to perfection.

9. That the young ladies take notice how many eyes observe them.-N.B. This does not extend to the Have-at-alls.

10. That all whisperers of lies and scandals be taken for their authors.

11. That all repeaters of such lies and scandal be shunned by all company ;-except such as have been guilty of the same crime.

N.B. Several men of no character, old women, and young ones of questioned reputation, are great authors of lies in these places, being of the sect of levellers.

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Goldsmith says of these rules, rather sneeringly (if his fine nature might be considered capable of a sneer), "were we to give laws to a nursery, we should make them childish laws; his statutes, though stupid, were addressed to fine gentlemen and ladies, and were probably received with sympathetic approbation."

The public balls, now under his management, were conducted with the greatest decorum. They commenced at six, and concluded at eleven: this rule he maintained so rigidly, that the Princess Amelia once applying to him for one dance more after his authoritative finger had given the signal for the band to withdraw, was refused, with the remark that his laws were like those of Lycurgus, which would admit of no alteration without an utter subversion of all authority. Nash had some difficulty in regulating the dress to be worn at the Assembly; but he went boldly to work, and chid even the most exalted in rank, when they departed from his rules. On one occasion he signified his dislike of the practice of wearing white aprons at the Assembly, by stripping the Duchess of Queensberry of one valued at five hundred guineas, and throwing it at the hinder benches, amongst the ladies' women. The duchess begged his Majesty's pardon, and made him a present of the obnoxious article of apparel,-to our

M.J.

1.-PORTRAIT OF NASH.

mind a rather keen method of retort. He found the gentlemen, however, not so easily controlled. He tried, in vain, for a long time, to prevent the wearing of swords, on the plea that they tore the ladies' dresses; but, in fact, to put a stop to the numerous duels which arose out of the intrigues of gallants, or disputes at the gaming-table. With a deep insight into human. nature, Nash gave out that he wanted to hinder people from doing what they had no mind to. It was not, however, until an encounter took place, in which one of the combatants was mortally wounded, that he succeeded in abolishing the use of the sword in the city of Bath; henceforward, whenever he heard of a challenge, he instantly had both parties placed under arrest.

The gentlemen's boots made the most determined stand against him. The country squires in those days, who must have been a brutal set,-we have a very good type of them, no doubt, in Squire Topehall, with whom Roderick Random had the famous drinking bout at Bath,-would come to the balls in their heavy boots. Nash tried all sorts of stratagems to shame them out of their boorishness, and, among others, he wrote a song in which the rhyme is about equal to the severity, as the reader will perceive:

Frontinella's Invitation to the Assembly.
"Come one and all, to Hoyden Hall,
For there's the assembly this night;
None but servile fools

Mind manners and rules;
We Hoydens do decency slight.

'Come trollops and slatterns,
Cock'd hats and white aprons,
This best our modesty suits;
For why should not we

In dress be as free

As Hogs-Norton squires in boots?"

Finding that his verses told, he followed up his success by inventing a puppet-show, in which 'Punch' comes in, booted and spurred, in the character of a country squire. Upon going to bed with his wife, he is desired to pull off his boots. "My boots," replies Punch, "why, Madam, you might as well pull off my legs! I never go without boots; I never ride, I never dance, without them; and this piece of politeness is quite the thing in Bath." At last his wife gets so tired of him that she kicks him off the stage. There was some real point in this contrivance of Nash's, and the squires were soon shamed out of their boorishness. Sometimes, however, a gentleman, through ignorance or haste, would appear in the rooms in the forbidden boots; but Nash always made up to him, and bowing with much mock gravity, would tell him that he had forgotten to bring his horse.

a few words. I own myself unequal to the task; for even granting it possible to express an inexpressible idea, I am the worst person you could have pitched upon for this purpose, who have received so few favours from the great myself, that I am utterly unacquainted with what kind of thanks they like best. Whether the P- most loves poetry or prose, I protest I do not know; but this I dare venture to affirm, that you can give him as much satisfaction in either as I can." (Signed "A. POPE.") Nash, who doubtless took the very ambiguous compliment at the conclusion of the letter in its most favourable aspect, still pestered the poet until he got the inscription out of him, and a very ordinary affair it is, as might have been expected, from the writer's contempt of both Nash and his "R.H."

We cannot help regarding these obelisks as "standing advertisements" for the town; and Nash evidently used up the two princes in the same manner that Professor Holloway, of Ointment notoriety, does the Earl of Aldborough in the columns of the 'Times.'

But turn we again to the magnificence of Nash in his day of pride. Behold him going forth upon a progress to the colony of Tunbridge he has founded, in Beau Nash, like other potentates, had his crown: his post-chariot and six grays, with outriders, footmen, the old German emperors fumed and fretted under and French horns; and at the side of his equipage his an iron diadem: the king of Bath wore a white hat, famous running footman, Murphy, who thought nothing which he wished to be taken as an emblem of the purity of going a message for his master to London in a day. of his mind! He might be considered to have reached Had not Bath reason to be proud of a king who kept the apogee of his reign between the years 1730-40. such sumptuous state? It might be asked how Nash Within that time, Bath was honoured with the visits managed to support all this extravagance, as he received of two royal personages-the Prince of Orange and no remuneration in consideration of his office as Master the Prince of Wales, both of whom he managed to turn of the Ceremonies. One word will explain all-play to account. Those who have visited Bath have doubt-filled his overflowing purse. less been struck with the prevalence of obelisks in that city, the peculiarly mournful form of which seems to give a character to the place. The stranger who views them would little think that these monuments, which breathe such a solemn spirit, were the handiwork of such a frivolous specimen of humanity as the Beau: such, however, is the case. The obelisk in the Orange Grove was erected by him, to commemorate the visit of the Prince of Orange to the city for the benefit of his health, in 1734. Nash, who appears to have combined a most ecstatic loyalty with a shrewd eye to the benefit of his little kingdom, was so overcome with the miraculousness of the Prince's recovery, that he immediately had this building erected, inscribing a seasonable puff upon it of the virtues of the Bath waters.

Again, in 1738, when the Prince of Wales visited Bath, Nash run up another obelisk in Queen Square, and in order to make it all the more worthy of the personage it was dedicated to, he asked Pope to write its inscription. The poet's answer is a master-piece of irony the monument he was pressed to dignify with his composition is not more cutting and severe in its outline, as the reader will perceive.

"Sir, I have received yours, and thank your partiality in my favour. You say words cannot express the gratitude you feel for the favours of his R. H., and yet you would have me express what you feel, and in

If, under his auspices, the resources of the city for restoring health were fully developed, it cannot be denied that he fostered the vices that ruined the mind; and thousands that came hither to recruit the body did not leave it until they were morally ruined.

Hazard, lansquenet, and loo, were the milder forms of excitement in which the ladies joined; and, according to Anstey, who lashes the folly of the day in his famous New Bath Guide,' had a pretty way of their own of cheating:

"Industrious creatures! that make it a rule

To secure half the fish, while they manage the pool:
So they win to be sure; yet I very much wonder
Why they put so much money the candlestick under;
For up comes a man on a sudden slapdash,
Snuffs the candles, and carries away all the cash;
And as nobody troubles their heads any more,
I'm in very great hopes that it goes to the poor.

The sterner sex indulged in more desperate games, and an incredible deal of money was lost to the sharpers who made the city their head-quarters during the dead metropolitan season. To such a height was gambling carried, that at last the Government interfered, and by Act of Parliament suppressed all the games of chance of the day. Public gaming thus being checked, the whole source of Nash's income was cut off at once. He managed to recover it, however, for a time, but

with a total loss of all honour, and a great portion of that consideration with which his Bath subjects had hitherto treated him. He received this fall through entering into a confederation with the keepers of a new game, called 'E.O.,' set up on purpose to evade the law, a certain portion of the profits of which he pocketed, in consideration of the company he drew to it. Poor Nash was not a bit more corrupt than the mass of society at the time; but his position made it necessary for that society to turn its back upon him to save its own honour! The moral condition of Bath about the middle of last the century, was, we confess, at the lowest ebb, and its intellectual life was melancholy indeed. One forcible contrast will perhaps show the depravity of the period better than a thousand words.

In the year 1760, subscription-rooms were opened for prayers at the Abbey, and gaming at the rooms. At the close of the first day the number of subscribers for prayers was twelve, and for gaming sixty-seven. This circumstance occasioned the following lines at the time:

“The Church and Rooms the other day
Open'd their books for Prayer and Play:
The Priest got twelve, Hoyle sixty-seven ;
How great the odds for Hell 'gainst Heaven!"

Not only in the universal love of gambling was the vice of the period exhibited, but in the shameless intrigues which were carried on, but which Beau Nashwe must do him the justice to say-exerted all his influence to put a stop to. He was the Marplot of Bath; in fact, whenever a clandestine marriage was on the tapis, and as far as lay in his power, he acted as the conscientious guardian of those young ladies of fortune around whom the swindlers of the place constantly gathered. His manner of warning parents was sometimes brusque enough. On one occasion be highly offended a lady of fortune at the Assembly-room, by telling her she had better go home: this speech he continued to repeat to her; and at last, piqued and offended, she did go home, and there discovered the meaning of his apparently rude advice in a coach and six at the door, which some sharper had provided to carry off her daughter. As for the manner in which the company got through the day, a description of it is melancholy enough. The bath occupied the morning; the noon was spent (by the young) in making-believe to drink the waters in the Pump-room, but really in flirting, according to the ingenuous Miss Jenny of Anstey's poem, who admits that the springs she never tastes, but that her chief delight is

"Near the Pump to take my stand,
With a nosegay in my hand,
And to hear the Captain say,
'How d'ye do, dear Miss, to-day ?'"

whilst the old tabbies

"Come to the Pump, as before I was saying, And talk all at once, while the music is playing: 'Your servant, Miss Fitchet :''Good morning, Miss Stote;' 'My dear lady Riggledam, how is your throat?

'Your ladyship knows that I sent you a scrawl 'Last night, to attend at your ladyship's call; 'But I hear that your ladyship went to the ball.' -O Fitchet!-don't ask me-good Heaven's preserve 'I wish there was no such a thing as a nerve : 'Half dead all the night, I protest-I declare'My dear little Fitchet, who dresses your hair? 'You'll come to the rooms; all the world will be there!""

Out of such materials as these Nash managed to construct that social life which made Bath so famous in the last century, and which led to its material reconstruction by the genius of the architect Wood.

We have before dwelt upon the insignificant appearance of the city at the beginning of the eighteenth century: at that time, it contained but two houses fit to receive any personages of condition; but before its close it was one of the most splendidly-built places in Europe. In the few minutes' breathing-time which is allowed at Bath, in the rapid rush from London to the West, the traveller has, from the platform of the railwaystation, a splendid view of the city. The foreground. he sees filled with spires of churches-the Abbey sitting like a mother in the midst; the back-ground closed in by the Lansdowne hills, up which terrace and crescent climb, until they appear almost to kiss the sky. Amid this splendid scene, however, he singles out one mass of buildings immediately beneath his eye, which stands with an air of great dignity, and seems to carry with it recollections of bygone glory. The North and South Parade, which we allude to, was one of the earliest works of Wood. Its broad and ample terraces,—where now but a few invalids catch the warmth of the sunny South, or breathe the bracing air of the Downs; in the time of Nash, and still later, was the resort of all the fashion of the land. What a sidling of hoops, a clopping of delicate red-heeled shoes, a glistening of swordhilts, a raising of cocked hats, and a display of black solitaires, and patches à la Grecque, was there once here, of which a dusty death has long swallowed up all! Wood commenced these buildings about the year 1730; and soon after, Queen Square, with its very marked and noble style of architecture, the Circus, and a crowd of other elegant buildings, which we shall notice hereafter, followed, displacing meaner erections, spreading far out into the then country, and supplying that architectural magnificence which the wealth and fashion now filling the city demanded.

Nash died in 1761, and for some time no dispute as to the succession arose ; but in 1769, a civil war took place, in consequence of two Masters of the Ceremonies being elected. The partisans of the rival monarchs, among whom the ladies were most prominent, actually came to blows in the Pump-room, whose walls witnessed the most extraordinary scene that perhaps ever took place in a polite assembly. Imagine, good reader, a crowd of fashionables of the present day falling to pulling noses, and tearing caps and dresses! Yet such deeds took place among the 'mode' in Bath, not seventy years ago:

"Fair nymphs achieve illustrious feats,
Off fly their tuckers, caps, and têtes ;
Pins and pomatum strew the room,
Emitting many a strange perfume;
Each tender form is strangely batter'd,
And odd things here and there are scatter'd.
In heaps confused the heroines lie,
With horrid shrieks they pierce the sky :
Their charms are lost in scratches, scars,
Sad emblems of domestic wars!"

And it was not until the Riot Act had been read three times, that the fury of the combatants was appeased!

The social condition of Bath, which we have been mainly following, continued pretty much the same as Nash left it, until the end of the last century; from that period, however, to the present time, a marked change has slowly been taking place in it. The public life of the city has gradually subsided, and is now pretty well extinct. The gambling spirit of old times has degenerated into shilling whist at the Wednesday night card-assemblies; and the public balls, those magnificent reunions which, in the old time, under Nash, always commenced with a minuet danced by the highest people of 'quality' present, although still well attended, yet shine with a diminished lustre. Bath, in fact, from a place of resort for the valetudinarian, and for the pleasure-seeker during the winter season, has become a resident city of 80,000 inhabitants, in which the domestic life has gradually encroached upon the public life that once distinguished it. Private parties have taken the place, to a considerable extent, of the subscription-balls, and friendly visits between families have emptied the Pump-room of much of that crush of fashion and galaxy of beauty which once trod its floors, when the city was a nest of lodging-houses, and the inhabitants a set of loungers, or a flock of incurables, who only visited it to air themselves in the eyes of the genteel world, or to wash themselves out with the mineral waters before making their final exit.

Another reason why the public amusements of the place have fallen off so of late years is to be found in the religious spirit which has developed itself. The modern history of Bath is but an amplification of the life of many of its fine ladies of old: beginning their career with all kinds of dissipation, progressing amid scenes. of scandal and intrigue, and ending by becoming a devotee what changes the individual underwent within the human pan society has repeated during the flight of a century and a half.

As one passes along the streets and looks into the booksellers' windows, the ascendancy of the evangelical church-party in the city is manifest by the portraits of young clergymen everywhere meeting the eye, and the multitudes of religious books, with third,' or 'fourth,' edition of the tenth,'' twentieth,' or 'thirtieth' thousand inscribed upon their title-pages.

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Many of the publications issued in Bath, when in the heyday of its fame, were lewd and gross in the extreme we ourselves have seen many volumes which any Holywell Street publisher of the present time would

be prosecuted for attempting to vend, so grossly indecent were they yet in those days they were perused openly by maid, wife, and widow,-and doubtless without raising a blush upon the hardened cuticle of the eighteenth century. Without being too pharisaical, the city might compare her present with her past moral condition with much complacency. The tone of manners is immeasurably purer, and the life more moral; than it was in times of old.

THE HOT BATHS.

The Medicinal Baths of this city, so famous in the time of the Romans, appear to have lost all their attractions about the middle of the sixteenth century, mainly owing to the breaking-up of the monastery, in the prior and monks of which they were vested. So little were these baths known throughout the kingdom, and so few did they attract to their healing waters, that Dr. Turner, who wrote a treatise upon the 'Properties of the Baths of England,' in 1562, and which he dedicated to the Duke of Somerset, says, that it was only after visiting the baths of Italy and Germany, “that I hard tel that there was a natural bathe within your father's dukedome:" and farther on, he denounces the "nigardishe illiberallite" of the rich men of England, for not bettering and amending them. "I have not hearde," he tells us, "that anye rich man hath spente upon these noble bathes, one grote these twenty years." The Doctor's reproaches do not seem to have had much effect, for we find that during the reigns of Elizabeth and James the most extraordinary disorder existed in them. The baths, we are told, were like so many bear-gardens, and as for modesty, it was a thing which had no existence in them. The custom of both sexes bathing together in a perfect state of nature existed even a century before. Bishop Beckyngton having endeavoured, in 1449, to remedy the evil by issuing a mandate forbidding men and women to bathe together without "decent clothing;" his efforts, however, did not prove of much effect, for in 1646 we find the scandal grown so great, that the corporation was obliged to interfere and enforce the wearing of bathing-clothes.

The filthy condition of the bath was almost as bad as the morals of the bathers: "dogs, cats, pigs, and even human creatures, were hurled over the rails into the water, while people were bathing in it." By the rigid enforcement of by-laws the corporation amended the nuisance, and the good effect of their interference was seen in the crowds of people who flocked to the city from different parts of England, both for the purpose of bathing and drinking the waters. Pepys, who visited the city in 1668, and of course pried into the baths, did not think them particularly clean, in consequence of the great resort to them. His gossiping sketch is full of interest: "13th (June) Saturday, up at four o'clock, being, by appointment, called up to the Cross Bath, where we were carried one after another, myself, and wife, and Betty Turner, Willet, and W. Hewer. And by-and-by, though we designed to have

done before company came, much company came; very fine ladies; and the manners pretty enough, only methinks it cannot be clean to go so many bodies together in the same water. Good conversation among them that are acquainted here and stay together. Strange to see how hot the water is; and in some places, though this is the most temperate bath, the springs are so hot as the feet not able to endure. But strange to see, when women and men here, that live all the season in these waters, cannot but be parboiled, and look like the creatures of the bath! Carried away, wrapped in a sheet, and in a chair, home; and then one after another thus carried, I staying above two hours in the water, home to bed, sweating for an hour; and by-and-by comes music to play to me, extraordinary good as ever I heard at London almost, or any where: 5s."

the same bath continued down to the present century.
Anstey has a fling at the custom in his satirical poem :

"Oh! 't was pretty to see them all put on their flannels,
And then take the water like so many spaniels:
And though all the while it grew hotter and hotter,
They swam just as if they were hunting an otter;
'Twas a glorious sight to see the fair sex
All wading with gentlemen up to their necks;
And view them so prettily tumble and sprawl,
In a great smoking kettle, as big as our hall;
And to-day, many persons of rank and condition
Were boil'd, by command of an able physician!"

The bath for a long time was a fashionable amusement for the ladies. A foreign traveller, who visited England towards the end of the last century, speaking of those in this city, says, "In the morning the young lady is brought in a close-chair, dressed in her bathingclothes, to the Cross Bath. Then the music plays her in the water, and the women who attend her present her with a little floating-dish like a basin, into which the lady puts a handkerchief and a nosegay, and of late a snuff-box is added. She then traverses the bath, if a novice, with a guide; if otherwise, by herself; and having amused herself nearly an hour, calls for her chair and returns home.". The while the lady thus The fashion of ladies and gentlemen appearing in amused herself with her little floating-dish, she was well

What an amiable picture this! the Clerk of the Acts (an officer filling the post of a modern Secretary to the Admiralty), his wife, and male and female servants, all dipping into one bath together! Somehow or other, the social liberty of those days of despotism was greater than that which exists at present, notwithstanding our free institutions. Fancy a fine lady of 1848 treating her waiting-maid on the like equal terms.

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