hood; but all the inhabitants, elder or younger, without any distinction, seemed to claim Dr. Baines as the general father. He reigned in the hearts of all.

Full of taste and information he avoided every thing that approached to controversy, and addressed himself to the topics most likely to interest his hearers, as if they had been precisely those most interesting to himself. He showed me Miss Agnew's outline engravings, speaking of her "Geraldine" (then recently published) with high but discriminating praise, and regretting her retirement to a convent, a thing he rarely saw cause to recommend. He showed me a little volume of Latin hymns, the hymns Sir Walter Scott liked so well, and told me that Mr. Moore, on his last visit to Prior Park, had, at his request, taken away a copy. 'I hope," said he, "that that great artist in words may give us an English version of some of the few poems, professedly religious, which have always had attractions for poets. It would be a happy close of a literary life, the prayer before going to rest."

He gave a most amusing account of Cardinal Mezzofante—a man in all but his marvelous gift of tongues as simple as an infant. "The last time I was in Rome," said he,

66 we went together to the Propaganda, and heard speeches delivered in thirtyfive or thirty-six languages by converts of various nations. Among them were natives of no less than three tribes of Tartars, each talking his own dialect. They did not understand each other, but the Cardinal understood them all, and could tell with critical nicety the points in which one jargon differed from the others. We dined together; and I entreated him, having been in the Tower of Babel all the morning, to let us stick to English for the rest of the day. Accordingly he did stick to English, which he spoke as fluently as we do, and with the same accuracy not only of grammar but of idiom. His only trip was in saying, 'that was before the time when I remember,' instead of 'before my time.' Once, too, I thought him mistaken in the pronunciation of a word. But when I returned to England," continued Dr. Baines, “I found that my way was either provincial or oldfashioned, and that I was wrong and he was right. In the course of the evening his servant brought a Welsh Bible which had been left for him. 6 Ah,' said he, this is the very thing! I wanted to learn Welsh !' Then he remembered that it was in all prob

ability not the authorized version.

don't think it will do me any harm.'

'Never mind,' he said, 'I

Six weeks after, I met the

Cardinal, and asked him how he got on with his Welsh. replied he, 'I know it now. I have done with it.'"*

'Oh !'

I do believe that, had Dr. Baines been spared, his wisdom, his spirit of conciliation and his thorough knowledge of the temper of England, would have prevented the disastrous feud which must grieve all who hold the great Christian tenets of charity and love.

Traces of the manner in which people lived at Bath while it was a small inconvenient town much resorted to by the sick and the idle, may be found scattered up and down a great variety of books. The list that crowds upon me would fill many pages. Letter-writers, dramatists, poets, biographers, all, first or last, betake themselves or their heroes to "the Bath.' Sheridan has made it the scene, not of his most famous, but of his most charming play; and Bob Acres with his courage oozing out of his fingers' ends, and the comfortable suggestion that "there is snug lying in the abbey," will last as long as comedy exists.

Perhaps the best description of Bath in its heyday of fashion and popularity a century ago, is to be found in the verse of Anstey, burlesque although it be.

"The New Bath Guide," written in a light and tripping manner, well adapted to the subject and little previously known, had an immense vogue in its day; a vogue all the greater that some of the characters were supposed to be real, and the poignancy of personal satire was added to general pleasantry. It is so far forgot ten by the general reader, that the extracts upon which I may venture will probably be as good as new. I do not apologize for a few omissions rendered necessary by the better manners of our times.

The plan of the work is very simple: Mr. Simkin Blunderhead, the good-humored, gullible, but not silly heir of a north country knight, is sent with his sister Prudence, his cousin Jenny, and their waiting-maid, to drink the waters and look at the world. The story is told in letters from Simkin to his mother, and from Miss Jenny to a female friend.

*M. Kossuth, who, though no Mezzofante, either in simplicity or the gift of tongues, has a command over our language very rare in a foreigner, says that he learned English in a Turkish prison from three books, Shakspeare, the Bible, and an Hungarian dictionary..

We are all at a wonderful distance from home,
Two hundred and sixty long miles have we come!
And now you'll rejoice, my dear mother, to hear
We are safely arrived at the sign of "The Bear."
As we all came for health, as a body may say,
I sent for a doctor the very next day;

And the doctor was pleased, though so short was the warning,
To come to our lodgings the very next morning.

He looked very thoughtful and grave to be sure,
And I said to myself-There's no hope of a cure!

But I thought I should faint when I saw him, dear mother,
Feel my pulse with one hand, with a watch in the other;
No token of death that is heard in the night
Could ever have put me so much in a fright;
Thinks I-'tis all over-my sentence is past,
And now he is counting how long I shall last.

Then follows a good deal of medical detail and of doctor's Latin very comically dragged into the verse. In a subsequent letter, Mr. Anstey, who seems to have had as great a horror of the faculty as Molière himself, gives a report of a consultation and its consequences:

If ever I ate a good supper at night,

I dreamt of the devil and waked in a fright;
And so as I grew every day worse and worse
The doctor advised me to send for a nurse,
And the nurse was so willing my health to restore,
She advised me to send for a few doctors more;
For when any difficult work's to be done,
Many heads can dispatch it much better than one;
And I find there are doctors enough in this place
If you want to consult in a dangerous case.
So they all met together and thus began talking:
"Good doctor I'm yours-'tis a fine day for walking;
Sad news in the papers-heaven knows who's to blame!
The colonies seem to be all in a flame-

This Stamp Act no doubt might be good for the crown,
But I fear 'tis a pill that will never go down.—
What can Portugal mean ?-Is she going to stir up
Convulsions and heats in the bowels of Europe?
"Twill be fatal if England relapses again

From the ill-blood and humors of Bourbon and Spain."
Says I: "My good doctors, I can't understand
Why the duse you take so many patients in hand;
No doubt ye are all of ye great politicians,

But at present my bowels have need of physicians,

Consider my case in the light it deserves

And pity the state of my stomach and nerves." .
But a tight little doctor began a dispute

About administration, Newcastle and Bute,
Talked much of economy-

So thus they brushed off, each his cane at his nose,
When Jenny came in who had heard all their prose:
"I'll teach them," says she, "at their next consultation
To come and take fees for the good of the nation."
I could not conceive what the duse 'twas she meant,
But she seized all the stuff that the doctor had sent
And out of the window she flung it down souse,
As the first politician went out of the house.
Decoctions and syrups around him all flew,
Pills, boluses, jalap, and apozem too;
His wig had the luck an emulsion to meet
And squash went a gallipot under his feet.

Having turned out the doctors, the whole party improve both in health and spirits; Miss Jenny picks up a military lover, under whose auspices Simkin turns beau :

No city, dear mother, this city excels

In charming sweet sounds both of fiddles and bells,

I thought, like a fool, that they only would ring

For a wedding, or judge, or the birth of a king;

But I found 'twas for me that the good-natured people

Rang so hard that I thought they would pull down the steeple:

So I took out my purse as I hate to be shabby

And paid all the men when they came from the abbey.

Yet some think it strange they should make such a riot
In a place where rich folk would be glad to be quiet.

Tabitha Rust, the waiting-maid, takes a bath:

'Twas a glorious sight to behold the fair sex
All wading with gentlemen up to their necks;
And to-day many persons of rank and condition
Were boiled by command of an able physician.
Dean Spavin, Dean Mangy and Doctor De Squirt
Were all sent from Cambridge to rub off their dirt;
Judge Bore and the worthy old Counselor Pest
Joined issue at once and went in with the rest;

Old Baron Vanteaser, a man of great wealth,

Brought his lady the Baroness here for her health;
Miss Scratchit went in and the Countess of Scales,
Both ladies of very great fashion in Wales;
Then all on a sudden two persons of worth,
My Lady Pandora Macscurvy came forth
With General Sulphur arrived from the North.
So Tabby you see had the honor of washing
With folks of condition and very high fashion;
But in spite of good company, poor little soul,
She shook both her ears like a mouse in a bowl.

This description of the two sexes bathing in common in the chief water-drinking place of England so recently as during the American War, would seem incredible if it were not confirmed by an almost cotemporary writer, Smollett, in his last, and incomparably his best novel, "The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker."

Our friend Simkin prepares for a ball:

Thank Heaven, of late, my dear mother, my face is
Not a little regarded at all public places:

For I ride in a chair with my hands in a muff,

And have bought a silk coat, and embroidered the cuff;
But the weather was cold, and the coat it was thin,

So the tailor advised me to line it with skin.
But what with my Nivernois hat can compare,
Bag-wig and laced ruffles and black solitaire ?
And what can a man of true fashion denote

Like a yard of good ribbon tied under his throat?
My buckles and box are in exquisite taste;

The one is of paper, the other of paste;

And my stockings of silk are just come from the hosier,

For to-night I'm to dance with the charming Miss Toser.

He goes to the ball. After two or thee pages of rhapsodies:

But hark! now they strike the melodious string,

The vaulted roof echoes, the mansions all ring;

At the sound of the hautboy, the bass and the fiddle,

Sir Boreas Blubber steps forth in the middle,

Like a hollyhock, noble, majestic and tall,

Sir Boreas Blubber first opens the ball.

Sir Boreas, great in the minuet known,

Since the day that for dancing his talents were shown
Where the science is practiced by gentlemen grown.
How he puts on his hat with a smile on his face