SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
[Notice in this column does not necessarily preclude subsequent review.)
Bath : its History and Social Tradition. By an Appreciative Visitor. (John Murray. 2s. 6d. net.)—This clever and spirited little book sketches the history of Bath from early British and Roman days to the age of Mr. Pickwick and Mr. Angelo Cyrus Bantam, M.C., whom, with heroic self-control, the author refrains from mentioning. Queen Catherine of Braganza and Queen Mary of Modena seem to have been the first Royal personages to patronize Bath, and Queen Anne's repeated visits gave it pre-eminence over Epsom and Tunbridge Wells. Then Ralph Allen, the shrewd capital- ist; John Wood, the architect; and Beau Nash, the organizer of amusements, by their united efforts made Bath the centre of fashion, and one of the most attractive cities in Europe. The author glances • The Promise of Air. By Algernon Blackwood. London : Macmillan and CO. lea, net.] at a few of the innumerable people of interest who are associated with eighteenth-century Bath, and devotes a page or two to Beck- ford, who, dying there in 1844, had seen Bath deserted for the Continental spas. It is probable, as he says, that Beckford sold Fonthill because he was tired of its sham Gothic splendours rather than because he was embarrassed. He lived like a prince in Lana- down Crescent, attended always by three grooms when he rode out, and at his death had an income of £80,000 a year. The author might have added that just as Bath was ruined by the Peace of 1815, so it has benefited by the Great War, which has made the Con- tinental watering-places inaccessible to English people.
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