hovers round the dwelling-place of man, the noblest are those that spring from the arts of painting, music, sculpture. They lead us to the shadowy confines which separate the real from the unreal, and seem to lift for an instant the curtain that veils from us immortality. It is in their power to give a faint outline of that for which our better nature longs. They have descended from on high amongst the most precious of God's gifts. They may be perverted from their proper use; but they only shine in their true splendour when they are directed towards ameliorating the condition of our fellow men, when they aid in spreading the beauty of Christianity, and in furthering the glory of God.

AS

THE TALE OF THE TUB.

S Dr. Johnson considered himself "a clubbable man," so we are apt to flatter ourselves that we are a tubbable people. And certainly the English gentleman is generally a splashing and sponging personage: he carries that India-rubber impostor, which so ill replaces the spacious metallic or wooden tub of his home, to all climes and countries, so that the stray Frenchman in the British lines at Sebastopol might be heard exclaiming, Hein! qu'est ce donc? as the unwonted sound of the morning douche startled his ears, accompanied sometimes by those wild shouts and screams whereby true tubbers give occasional vent to the excitement and exhilaration which the noble exercise produces, and which our Turkish dry-bathers are not quite right in supposing to flow peculiarly from their own-transpiration. A friend of ours who found himself at Zurich unprovided with one of these necessaries of life, objecting to the pie-dish as usual offered him as a substitute, consulted the chambermaid as to the possibility of getting any thing larger: "Mais, Monsieur, il y a le lac," she answered, implying, as he thought, that the next size was the lake, though it appeared that there were some baths there which might possibly be meant by his informant. We have seen the pretty apparatus from Sèvres which accompanied

Napoleon I. to Moscow, and wondered how so great a man could wash in so small a pie-dish. Quot libras sub duce summo! Great pains are sometimes bestowed upon the training of the youth of England in this respect. We remember in ancient times, when William Fourth was king, on a magnificent sheet of brownish water, gracefully named Duck Puddle, a select little coterie of waterfunks (the title sufficiently explains itself— Etonicè frousts) would be unjustifiably but carefully placed on two old punts, or on a punt and an unhinged door, massive as that of Gaza, and on those treacherous rafts committed like Danae to the mercy of the waves. Then were told off, to swim

and shove, two small armies of uncompromising devotees in the cause of education; and then began the battle of Egospotamos. The shock of the meeting triremes was tremendous, and in a moment the poor little hydrophobes were spluttering in the pond :-"the very mothers that them bore" would probably have carried them off on the instant had they witnessed the accident; but the patients were supposed thus to imbibe an unaffected love of the element, and a genuine and enthusiastic tubbability, which never afterwards left them. Of the people of modern England generally, however, at any rate till within the last few years, we fear it could not justly be said, that with them, as with the Japanese, tubbing was a popular pastime even in the towns of France and Germany, the small shopkeeping class at least, it is to be feared, knew more of bains publics and bains à domicile than the same class among ourselves; but in ten years an immense change has taken place, as the statistics of the baths and wash-houses so happily prove.1 We hope that, before the next invasion of cholera or any other black force of pestilence, a noble volunteer army of tubs may be ready to receive it. Appointing a fast-day is no doubt one very commendable way of meeting plague, but cleanliness is another; lave-toi, et le ciel t'aidera; though St. Blaise prayed a fishbone

1 We doubt even at the present moment whether, among these classes in the north-western districts of England, "tubbing" is yet accepted as a necessity. "Eh," said a Yorkshireman recently in our hearing, "Eh, boot its gwon lung since aw've swum. Aw've nut 'ad a bath these twenty year.-There's naut like it tho'," he added after a moment's reflection; and then, as if a new light had struck him, he said with a chuckle, "Aw'll joost go to Manchester and 'ave a wash !"

out of his patient's throat, we are not told he did not pull as well as pray.

Our Teuton ancestors, according to Tacitus, were indefatigable tubbers; Statim a somno, he says, quem plerumque in diem extrahunt, lavantur, sæpius calidâ, ut apud quos plurimum hiems occupat; and in the Anglo-Saxon laws the tepid bath is spoken of as a necessary of life, aud the prohibition of the tub one of the severest penalties the church could inflict. The wretched Angle who went to sleep at "thirdly" was condemned to be tubless and dirty, and there can be no doubt that this was one of Dunstan's terrors for the unfortunate Edwin; "Your wife or your tub!" we may suppose to have been the stern saint's frightful alternative. Nor can dirt be said to have come over with William the Conqueror, for the Normans (except, perhaps, the regular clergy) were sufficiently tubbable. In a MS. of the 13th century, "Li livres pour la sante garder de tout le cors ensamble," by the learned Aldobrandini of Sienna, a chapter on baths is headed by a charming domestic picture of a husband and wife in their respective tubs, or rather butts, like the malmsey bath of Clarence, conversing through propriety curtains neatly fixed above; the husband to all appearance meekly receiving his bath lecture, and the lady reminding one of the apparition in yellow curl-papers which so disarranged Mr. Pickwick. Toutes les javes (eaux) en coi on se baigne, we learn from this authority, ou eles sunt douces ou eles sunt d'autre manière. Celes ki sunt douces sunt de maintes manières. Si con sunt javes ki ont nature de souffre, autres ki ont nature d'alum, autres ki sunt salées, autres ki sunt amères, autres ki ont nature de selnitre, * autres ki ont nature de

fier (fer), autres ki ont nature d'arain. Aldobrandini objects to eating in the tub, unless the tubber be of a thin and dry habit, in which case indulging that curious fancy may tend to fatten him. Nor should he drink warm water while bathing in it; a very good rule, since its violation might well, one would suppose, have the disagreeable effect which it is said (mistakenly however, it is but fair to remember, according to Athenæus) some nasty Athenians used to provoke when tubbing, by drinking wine to excess in the bath, and playfully called ȧroxorraßile. Our Siennese doctor also disapproves of staying in cold water till it causes

shivering, and advises wearing warm things on coming out. He also charges his patients to eat after bathing; a point in which he differs from a rather later authority, "John Jones, Phisitian," who celebrated Bath and Buxton in two learned treatises, which show not only the early fashionableness of those bathing-places, but the prevalence of tubbing; a fact a little difficult to reconcile with all we know of the squalor and fustiness of the little rush-strewn rooms, and with certain other habits of his day. "J'ai connu force gentilshommes," says Brantôme, "qui, premier que porter leurs bas de soie, prioient leurs dames et maîtresses de les essayer et porter devant eux quelques huit ou dix jours, de plus que de moins; et puis les portoient en très-grande vénération et contentement d'esprit et de corps;" a touching proof of affection even in winter, and in summer, we should say, overwhelming. Can those lovers have been lovers of the tub? We have spoken of the regular clergy, too many of whom (in earlier times) were regularly alive; à Becket, for instance, who was not at all tubbable. The state of things which became visible on the removal of the murdered saint's hair-shirt is too well known, and too graphically described to need repetition. With them water was taboo; and to speak of a tub in the presence of such men, would have been in as bad taste as to speak just now of America in Mr. Bright's company, or of Garibaldi before the interesting exile of Naples. But to return to Dr. John Jones and his "Bathes Ayde, approved by Arte, confirmed by Use, and dayly tried there by Practice for these 2460 yeares or thereabout." So accurate is he about the date of Prince Bladud, whose adventure with the pigs, by the way, another Bath historian, the same who proves that his loved city was in the Roman times of about the same dimensions as Babylon, temp. Cyri, remarks that no sceptic has ever yet disproved. "I will not staye," says Jones, “but proceede forwardes to shewe how the bathes of the Citie of Bathe will ayde such as neede them; and therefore I suppose it is worthily termed Bathes Ayde, if onely to your ayde for wante 1 We have heard of another curious account in monk rhyme, but have not been able to find it, recording

Cum, beati martyris membris denudatis,
Permeabat cameram odor sanctitatis,

Digitis mærentium naso applicatis, &c. &c.

of other remedy you will use them, and not as brutishe and senseles persons frequent them." Rather hard upon those who take too much of a good thing. "The bathes must bee dayly changed, receyving newe or fresh water. See that altogether whyle yee be there, and longer, yee avoyde" this and that. "Tarriance in the bathe in the morning may be longer, in the evening shorter," &c. Repletion is "to be avoyded." This good phisitian gives a prayer "to be saide of all persons disseased, meekely kneeling upon their knees, before they enter into the bathes." He orders exercise before bathing, and would have pleased "Turkish " authorities by his particularity in recommending frication, on which subject he quotes directions de differentiis frictionum, and gives a table of six kinds, hard and soft rubbing, each with three subdivisions. If Jones had praise for Bath, however, for Buxton and its "wholesome ayer" he had enthusiasm. "But Buckstone," he says, "more sweetly, more delicatly, more finely, more daintly, and more temperatly; not bringing halfe so many greevouse accidentes as Bath doth, yet less speedly, but in processe of tyme very effectuousely, more commodiously,". we cannot go through all Buxton's advantages; we see that in all qualities, except occasional rapidity of cure, "Bathes Ayde," with its 2460 years' fame, was left pitiably behind.1

The Greeks were magnificent tubbers. Everybody remembers how Nausicaa and her pretty lady's-maids so gracefully and modestly bathed the fortunate Ulysses, δμωαὶ λοῦσαν καὶ χεῖσαν haiw, and how the same honour was done Telemachus at Pylos, at the hand of the beautiful Polycasta, and again at Lacedæmon, and the rich flowing garments which were thrown over him at the conclusion of the performances. The modern English traveller undergoes the same treatment in Japan. In Greece, however, these fair bathing damsels, σωφρόνως ἁπτομέναι, sometimes took an

The "Buckstone" Treatise is thus prefaced by "Thomas Lupton to the Reader:"

"How many use to bathes abrode far hence with cost to range,

Whereby they may their loathsome lims to helthfull members change!
But such (onlesse they more desire for wil than helth to rome)
They may have help with charges lesse, and soner, here at home,
At Buckstone's bathes," &c. &c.

Very good counsel; but we had no idea "baths abroad" were then so frequented by our ancestors, and more "for will than health."