ancel by a flight of stone steps.

BATH. A city and parliamentary borough on the Avon, 107 m. W. from
London, with a population (in 1901) of 52,751. It has stations both on
the G.W. and the Midland lines. Few cities are more romantically
situated than Bath, but it is not its situation which has given to it
its celebrity. Its prosperity has from time immemorial depended upon
its possession of the remarkable mineral springs in which the
fashionable world has at different periods discerned so many healing
and social virtues. The popular story of their discovery by the
legendary King Bladud is too trite to need re-telling. The real history
of Bath begins as early as A.D. 44, when it is known to have been a
Roman station. Its Latin name was _Aquae Sulis_, Sul being a local
divinity, whose name appears on several inscriptions in the Museum, and
may have some connection with the neighbouring hill of Solsbury. A
temple to this goddess existed on the site of the present Pump Room,
and the extensive ruins of the contiguous bathing establishment bear
eloquent testimony to the use which the Romans made of the waters.
Here, too, converged three of their chief highways, the Fosseway, from
Lincoln to Axminster, the _Via Julia_, which connected it with S.
Wales, and Akeman Street, the main thoroughfare to London. The
after-history of Bath is chequered. In 676 King Osric founded here a
nunnery (eventually transformed into a monastery), and in 973 it was
the scene of Edgar's coronation. After the Conquest it was a bone of
contention in the Norman quarrels, and was burnt to the ground by
Geoffrey of Coutances. After being harried by the sword, Bath passed
under the hammer. Its ecclesiastical importance begins when John de
Villula purchased it of the king, and transferred hither his episcopal
stool from Wells (see further, p. 19). In mediaeval days Bath was a
walled city, and fragments of its fortifications, crowned by a modern
battlement, may still be seen in "Borough Walls"; and two round-headed
arches of the old E. gate are visible in a passage behind the Empire
Hotel, leading to the river. The battle of Lansdown gives Bath a place
in the annals of the Great Rebellion. But the fame of Bath is social
rather than historical. It was not until the 18th cent. that the city
reached the zenith of its importance. The creator of modern Bath was
the social adventurer Nash. By sheer force of native impudence Nash
pushed himself into the position o