Richard Nash, the first real
Master of the Ceremonies; and he gives a full account of his followers
and successors. He also minutely relates the story of Sheridan's
marriage to his beautiful "St. Cecilia," Elizabeth Ann Linley. A
separate and very interesting chapter is allotted to Lady Huntingdon and
the Methodists, not without levies from the remarkable _Spiritual
Quixote_ of that Rev. Richard Graves of Claverton, of whom an excellent
account was given not long since in Mr. W. H. Hutton's suggestive
_Burford Papers_. Other chapters are occupied with Bath and its _belles
lettres_; with "Squire Allworthy" of Prior Park and his literary guests,
Pope, Warburton, Fielding and his sister, etc.; with the historic
Frascati vase of Lady Miller at Batheaston, which stirred the ridicule
of Horace Walpole, and is still, it is said, to be seen in a local park.
The dosing pages treat of Bath--musical, artistic, scientific--of its
gradual transformation as a health resort--of its eventual and
foredoomed decline and fall as the one fashionable watering-place,
supreme and single, for Great Britain and Ireland.
Note:
[55] Oddly enough--if M. Barbeau's index is to be trusted, and
it is an unusually good one,--he makes no reference to Evelyn's visit to
Bath.
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