condition of the will. The institution, which occupies a lovely position on the margin of Newbridge Hill, was opened in 1826. The provisions of the deed are in favour of thirty decayed gentlewomen, each of whom, in addition to a good residence, has an annuity of £30, the condition being that she must possess, and not exceed, a similar private income of her own, or secured to her. Of the thirty ladies, ten of the number must be widows or daughters of clergymen of the Church of England. There is a domestic chaplain, and the general management is under the direction of thirteen trustees, of whom the Bishop of the Diocese is one and also the visitor.

THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL.

The Grammar School is one of many similar institutions which were established by Edward VI. by means of the revenues of the dissolved monastic and other religious houses. In common with most of these endowed schools, that of Bath suffered by the peculation and imperfect administration of the governing body-the Corporation. When the Bath Grammar School was established, there was a house' on the west angle of the West Gate, assigned, in addition to the endowment, as a School-house, which was used as such for little more than one hundred years. The school was then removed to the nave of St. Mary's Church, at the east corner of the North Gate, the tower of the church being used as the city prison. After

1 Of which a representation is now before us. It was two stories in height, apparently of considerable depth, and contained many rooms. In later representations of the West Gate we miss this house, which, we think, might have been removed when that gate was fortified against the Puritan party by Charles I. This would have been about the time when the school was removed to the old church of St. Mary, intra muros, desecrated after the Reformation.

many vicissitudes and gross abuses, an enquiry, in 1734, led to some improvement. In 1738, too, through the vigorous and honest efforts of the then master, the Rev. Walter Robins, a further reform was brought about. When the St. Mary's Church, with the walls and gates, was removed, the present building in Broad Street was erected, in 1752, during the mayoralty of Francis Hales. To augment the resources of the school the Court of Chancery, in 1738, annexed the benefice of Charlcombe, and it appears that until 1811 this, together with some fees not strictly legal, was the master's entire remuneration, in which year £80 per annum was added.

The education provided by these schools was very much the same in all of them-the rigid classical curriculum. This has now been much modified. In 1872 a scheme was sanctioned by which the benefice of Charlcombe was to be sold and the purchase money capitalized. The school is under a board of governors, consisting of citizens, partly elective, partly co-optative, and partly ex-officio, to whom Mr. Ernest Shum is the secretary.

The letters patent of Edward VI. founded by the same document (of surpassing beauty as a work of penmanship) the Grammar School and St. Catherine's Hospital, otherwise the Black Alms. By the scheme of 1872 the two institutions were separated to the extent that they are administered by different bodies, but the governors of the school receive the entire income derivable from the property of the old foundation, and pay a fixed annual sum of £280 to the Trustees of the Hospital, which is now governed by a scheme settled by the Charity Commissioners on June 29th, 1877.

The Headmaster receives £150 per annum and a third of the capitation fees, the scale of which is £9 per annum in the senior and £5 in the junior department. The fees are remitted to boys who gain exhibitions.

WEYMOUTH HOUSE SCHOOLS.

These Schools are in connection with the parishes of St. Peter and St. Paul and St. James. At present something like four hundred children are educated. The history and origin of the Schools are as follows:

Henry Southby, Esq., a gentleman, of Bath, succeeded in establishing there, in the year 1785, Sunday Schools, for the instruction of the children of the poor in that knowledge which alone "maketh wise unto salvation." The regulations upon which it was established expressed, 1st.—That the appointment of the masters and mistresses should be in the rectors of Walcot and Bath. 2nd. That the books of instruction should be such only as are in the list of those recommended by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. 3rd. That the children should attend divine service every Sunday at the Abbey. 4th. That all children recommended from the parishes of Bath, Walcot, Widcombe, and Bathwick, should be admitted into the schools. The children admitted originally amounted to 1000, out of which 160 boys and girls were selected, and received into a house fitted up for the purpose in St James's Street (called the School of Industry) for a certain number of hours every day, where they were to be taught the principles of the Christian religion; and employed in sewing, knitting, and making nets, under the superintendence of proper mistresses, and the occasional inspection of ladies and gentlemen, and clothed in a neat uniform out of the funds of the institution. The remainder of the children were to be divided into separate schools, and instructed on the Sundays only; but from that number the occasional vacancies in the selected children were to be filled up. Upon this plan, and to this extent, the Sunday Schools were carried on for many years.

The Schools have suffered lately from several causes, but it is hoped they may be able to surmount all difficulties, and

long be the means of accomplishing in the future what they have done since they were established.

An ancient Latin writer, an acute observer, and celebrated moralist, of Roman antiquity, has remarked, that pleasure, in all its variety of forms, is constantly to be met with in all those places where hot springs are found. Our own city confirms the truth of the observation: a place in which the Genius of Amusement seems to have erected her many-coloured throne, and which elegant dissipation has singled out for her peculiar residence. Not that we are to conclude it has always been so remarkable for its variety of elegant diversions as it is at present. For these we are mostly indebted to the active exertions of fancy in modern times, ever on the stretch to satisfy the insatiable appetite of fashionable life, for new modes of destroying time, and fresh inventions for obviating ennui. For many centuries after the practices of Roman and British dissipation had sunk, together with their elegant baths, before the fury of the Saxon invaders, the hot waters of this city were chiefly frequented by the diseased and infirm, to whom public amusements would be useless, because they could not be enjoyed. But as soon as curiosity had brought the great and the idle to its springs, diversions to employ that tedious leisure which a disinclination to intellectual pursuits induces, were naturally introduced. These, however, suited the grossness and simplicity of our times; and the pranks of mountebanks, the feats of jugglers, tumblers, and dancers, the jests of itinerant mimes or mummers, and the dangerous amusements of the quintane, diversified occasionally by the pageant and the masque, or the elegant pastimes of bull-baiting, cock-fighting, pig-racing, bowling, foot-ball, grinning through a horse-collar, and swallowing scalding hot frumenty, were the

sports which sufficiently satisfied our ancestors to the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries. But as national manners gradually refined, the ideas of elegance were proportionably enlarged, and public amusements insensibly approximated to the taste and splendour which they at present exhibit; balls, plays, and cards, usurping the place of those rude athletic sports, or gross sensual amusements, to which the hours of vacancy had before been devoted. This improvement in manners and opinions produced the erection of the first Assembly Room in Bath in the year 1708. Temporary booths had hitherto been the only places in which the company could drink their tea and divert themselves with cards; but Mr. Harrison, a man of spirit and speculation, perceived that a building of this nature was much wanted, and would probably make him a very suitable return, undertook (at the suggestion of Mr. Nash) to erect a large and commodious room for the purpose of receiving the company. The success of this attempt induced a similar one in the year 1728, when another large room was built by Mr. Thayer. A regular system of pleasurable amusements commenced from this period, and the gay routine of public breakfasts, morning concerts, noon card-parties, evening promenades, nocturnal balls, and a good deal more besides, which is described in our "General Sketch," rolled on in an endless and diversified succession.

The variety of diversions which Bath held out to the vacant and the gay, naturally induced a constant efflux of company to it, so that Mr. Harrison's rooms being found not sufficiently large to accommodate the numerous visitors, an additional one was erected in the year 1750. In the meantime, as order and regularity of conduct and decorum and etiquette in manners, were the only bonds by which that mixture of society which found their way to Bath, and mingled together as one large family, could be kept united and harmonious, a code of ceremonial laws were drawn up by Beau Nash, approved of by the chief characters at Bath in the