along the surface of the water, like the
grog-blossomed trunk of the ancient Bardolph, bound up in a Welsh wig,
was truly ludicrous, and produced such an unexpected burst of laughter
from my merry companions, that I feared some of the fair Naiads would
have fainted in the waters from fright, and then Heaven help them,
for decency would have prevented our rushing to their assistance. The
notices to prevent gentlemen ~321~~from swimming in the baths are, in my
opinion, so many inducements or suggestions for every young visitor
to attempt it. Among our mad wags, Horace Eglantine was more than
once remonstrated with by the old bathing women for indulging in this
pleasure, to the great alarm of the ladies, who, crowding together in
one corner with their aged attendants, appeared to be in a high state of
apprehension lest the loose flannel covering that guards frail mortality
upon these occasions should be drawn aside, and discover nature in
all her pristine purity--an accident that had very nearly happened to
myself, when, in endeavouring to turn round quickly, I found the water
had disencumbered my frame of the yellow bathing robe, which floated on
the surface behind me.

[Illustration: page321]

One circumstance which made our party more conspicuous, was, the
rejection of the Welsh wigs, which not all the entreaties of the
attendant could induce any of the wags to wear. The young ladies
disfigure themselves by wearing the black bonnets of the bathing women;
but spite of this masquerading in the water, their lovely countenances
and soul-subduing eyes, create sensations that will be more easily
conceived than prudently described. A certain facetious writer, who has
published his "Walks through Bath," alluding to this practice, speaks
of it as having been prohibited in the fifteenth century. How long such
prohibition, if it ever took place, continued, it is not for me to know;
but if the Bath peripatetic historian had made it his business to have
seen what he has described, he would have found, that the practice of
bathing males and females together in _puris naturalibus_ was still
continued in high perfection, in spite of the puritans, the Vice
Society, or the prohibition of Bishop Beckyngton.{2}

2 It appears, that about the middle of the fifteenth century
it was the custom for males and females to bathe together,
in puris naturalibus, which was at length prohibited by
Bishop Beckyngton, who ordered,