Chapter I

The Bath is an animal instinct: and, par excellence, a human instinct; it is as much a necessity of our nature as drink. We drink because we thirst—an interior sense. We bathe because water, the material of drink, is a desire of the outward man—an exterior sense. An animal, whether beast or bird, pasturing or straying near a limpid stream, first satisfies the inward sense, and then delights the outward sense. A man, be he savage or civilized, can no more resist the gratification of bathing his wearied limbs in a warm transparent pool than he can resist the cup of water when athirst. Instinct bids him bathe and be clean. To inquire—Who invented the act of drinking? would be as reasonable as to ask—Who invented the bath?

The bath is coeval with the earliest existence of man. Can it be doubted that our first parents bathed their newly-created limbs in the river that "went out of Eden to water the garden"? History teaches us, that the Phœnicians and ancient Greeks of all ranks, from the daughters of their kings down to the poorest citizens, were wont to bathe in rivers and in the sea, for the purpose of cleansing their bodies and refreshing and invigorating their frames. They had recourse to the bath when they ceased from sorrow and mourning, after great fatigues of whatever kind, before and during their meals, and at the conclusion of their battles. Bathing was the first act of their lives, and it was a part of their funereal rites. The birth of Jupiter, the Thunderer, is celebrated by the poet Callimachus in the following lines:—

Again, of Alcestis, when about to lay down her life for her husband Admetus, it is written:—

Plato, also, records how the good old philosopher Socrates, before he drank the fatal cup of hemlock that was to consign him to Hades, bathed and washed himself, that he might save the women, whose duty it was, their troublesome office.[1]

A short stage in the history of the bath leads us to the discovery of springs of hot water, hot vapour, and hot air; and these very possibly suggested to man's inventive mind the means of procuring so great a luxury by his own contrivance. Homer commends one of the sources of the Scamander for its warmth, and tells us how Andromache, with matronly care, prepared a hot bath for her husband Hector, against his return from battle:—

We are taught also that Vulcan, or, as others say, Minerva, discovered certain hot baths ([Greek: Hêrakleea loutra]) to Hercules, that he might replenish his strength after undergoing severe exertion and fatigue. And the Phœdrians, according to Homer, laid great stress upon the importance to the health and happiness of man of frequent changes of apparel, comfortable beds, and hot baths.

It is one of the marvels of the earth's history, that hot springs, or thermal springs, bubble upwards to the light, not only on Mount Ida, the source of the Scamander, but in countless other places and countries on the world's surface. These hot springs would appear to have invited man to their use by their pleasant aspect and by their warmth; and their enjoyment to have suggested the possibility of contriving artificially a similar luxury nearer to his threshold.

The word Hamâm, which is equivalent to thermal springs, is not unfrequently met with in the East as the name of a town or village in or near to which hot springs are found. Hamâm Ali, in the neighbourhood of ancient Nineveh, is an example of this kind. "The thermal spring is covered by a building, only commodious for half-savage people, yet the place is much frequented by persons of the better classes both from Baghdad and Mósul."[2] Captain Kennedy, in his "Travels in Algeria and Tunis," tells us of the hot springs of Hamâm Meskhoutin, which rise to the surface at a temperature of 203° of Fahrenheit, only 9° short of boiling, and are so abundant as to burst forth through any opening made accidentally in the ground. "The thermal waters, in flowing over the bank of the rivulet, have formed a calcareous deposit of great beauty, resembling a cascade of the purest white marble, tinged here and there with various shades of green and orange."

In Italy, near the town of Pozzuoli, are some natural thermal springs—the ancient Posidianæ, now called the Baths of Nero, of which the temperature of the water is 185°, while that of the vapour which rises from it is 122°. The spring is situated in a rocky cavern at the end of a long passage formed by a fissure in the rock, and in this way constitutes a natural bathing house.

In Germany, among others, are the thermal springs of Borcette, with a temperature of 171°; Carlsbad, in Bohemia, 165°; Wiesbaden, Ems, and Schlangenbad, in Nassau; Baden-Baden; Aix-la-Chapelle; Wildbad; and Ischl.

In Iceland are the far-famed Geysers; in the Southern Ocean the hot springs of Amsterdam Island; and many more are dispersed over the Continent of America; while in England there are the thermal springs of Bath, Bristol, Buxton, and Matlock.

The heated rock and the vaporization of water would seem to have originated the primitive idea of a hot-air and hot-vapour bath; and this idea we find carried out simultaneously in various parts of the world and amongst the rudest nations. Mr. Gent, in his "History of Virginia," describes the hot-vapour bath as employed by the American Indians.

"The doctor," he says, "takes three or four large stones, which, after having heated red-hot, he places in the middle of the stove, laying on them some of the inner bark of oak, beaten in a mortar, to keep them from burning; this being done, they (the Indians) creep in, six or eight at a time, or as many as the place will hold, and then close up the mouth of the stove, which is usually made like an oven in some bank near the water-side; in the meanwhile, the doctor, to raise a steam, after they have been stewing a little time, pours cold water on the stones, and now and then sprinkles the men to keep them from fainting; after they have sweat as long as they can well endure it, they sally out, and (though it be in the depth of winter) forthwith plunge themselves over head and ears in cold water, which instantly closes up the pores and preserves them from taking cold." After the bath, they are anointed like the Romans, the pomatum of the Indians being for the most part bear's-grease, containing a powder obtained by grinding the root of the yellow alkanet.

But we find this primitive form of bath nearer home than the American Continent—namely, in Ireland, although both the American and the Irish bath may, Mr. Urquhart suggests, have been derived from the same ancestry—that of the Phœnicians. In a foot-note appended to a page on the universality of the bath, in his "Pillars of Hercules,"[3] Mr. Urquhart gives the following very curious and very interesting account of the practice of sweating employed in former times in Ireland, as reported to him by a lady as a recollection of her childhood:—

"With respect to the sweating-houses, as they are called, I remember about forty years ago seeing one in the island of Rathlin, and shall try to give you a description of it. It was built of basalt stones, very much in the shape of a bee-hive, with a row of stones inside, for the person to sit on when undergoing the operation. There was a hole at the top, and one near the ground, where the person crept in and seated him or herself, the stones having been heated in the same way as an oven for baking bread is, the hole on the top being covered with a sod while being heated, but I suppose removed to admit the person to breathe. Before entering, the patient was stripped quite naked, and on coming out, dressed again in the open air. The process was reckoned a sovereign cure for rheumatism and all sorts of pains and aches."

Dr. Haughton on the same subject remarks that:—"Two varieties of Tig Allui, or sweating-houses, exist in Ireland, one kind being capable of containing a good many persons, and the other only intended for a single occupant." The former is that just described: it is heated in the same way as an oven, by making a large fire of wood in the middle of the floor, and after the wood is burnt out, sweeping away the ashes. Besides the cure of rheumatism, the young girls who have tarnished their complexion in the process of burning kelp or sea-weed for the manufacture of soda, also resort to the Tig Allui for the purpose of clearing their skin. The usual time for remaining in the bath is under the half hour.

The second kind of Tig Allui—namely, that for the reception of a single person only—is described by Dr. Tucker, of Sligo, as follows:—

"It is built of stone and mortar, and brought to a round top. It is sufficiently large for one person to sit on a chair inside, the door being merely large enough to admit a person on his hands and knees. When any of the old people of the neighbourhood, men or women, are seized with pains, they at once have recourse to the sweat-house, which is brought to the proper temperature by placing therein a large turf fire, after the manner of an oven, which is left until it is burned quite down, the door being a flat stone and air-tight, and the roof, or outside of the house, being covered with clay, to the depth of about a foot, to prevent the least escape of heat. When the remains of the fire are taken out, the floor is strewn with green rushes, and the person to be cured is escorted to the bath by a second person carrying a pair of blankets. The invalid, having crept in, plants himself or herself in a chair, and there remains until the perspiration rolls off in large drops. When sufficiently operated on, he or she, as the case may be, is anxious to get out, and the person in waiting swaddles him up in the blankets, and off home, and then to bed. I have heard old people say that they would not have been alive, twenty years ago, only for the sweating-house.... Remains of the Tig Allui are also found in the county Tyrone, of the following dimensions:—five feet in height, nine in length, and four in width, being built of solid masonry, and shaped like a bee-hive at the top."

Another, and a very important step in the progress of the bath was the contrivance of a mode of heating by means of which the temperature might be made uniform, and might be regulated in any manner that should be required. The hot stones of the North American medicine-man were clearly a very bungling and uncertain expedient; little better than the warm skin of a newly-killed animal; and the wood fire of the Irish sweating-houses was more objectionable still, not only on account of the impossibility of regulating the heat, but also from the resulting impurity of the atmosphere and the danger of leaving fragments of the heated ashes on the floor. The next contrivance, and that which has continued to be the practice up to the present day, was the construction of a furnace under the floor—in other words, a hypocaust. Mr. Urquhart, speaking of the existence of baths among the Mexicans and their probable introduction by the Phœnicians, remarks:—"However magnificent their public monuments," their baths were "such as are found in almost every house in Morocco,—a small apartment seven feet square, with a cupola roof five to six feet high, and a slightly convex floor, under one side of which there is a fire, and a small low door to creep in by."

Reviewing the probable rise and progress of the bath, there seems little doubt that the bath took its origin in the East, the dwelling-place of our first parents, the birth-place of civilization and knowledge. It was known at a very early period in Phœnicia. Mr. Urquhart, in his recent work, "The Lebanon,"[4] relates his discovery of a Phœnician temple, or crypt, among the ruins of Baalbeck, or Baalbeth, the House of Baal—the Heliopolis, or City of the Sun, of the Greeks; in which were traces of the existence of the bath. "But the Phœnician crypt was not my only discovery. In a gap opening a few feet into the masonry, I found mortar hard as stone where exposed to the air, but soft within. Yet it was unlike other mortar; it was dark grey, with particles of charcoal; when I brought out some, it was recognised at once, and called kissermil, or ashes from the bath. Those ashes are still used in this country for mortar, which with this addition becomes as hard as stone. According to the old construction, the baths were heated as an oven is, brushwood and dung being used as well as wood. The combustion not being complete, there remain various chemical compounds, alkali, ammonia, sulphate and carbonate of lime, and carbon, which by entering into new combinations, bind the mortar into a distinct substance."

"One thing is clear, there were baths at Baalbeck. In the elaborately finished bath of Emir Beshir at Ibtedeen, one peculiarity struck me as evidencing their high antiquity in this land. It was the absence of cocks; instead of which simple plugs or clots of cloth were used for the pipes which brought the water into the basins. As the Romans and Greeks used cocks, the art of the bath had not been derived from them, but traced beyond them. Still it was curious to observe these ashes in the midst of Cyclopic blocks. And yet why should not the bath have belonged to the very earliest period of human society? It is sufficiently excellent to be from the beginning."

"I remembered that in opening up the pavement of an ancient bath on the western coast of Africa, I had come upon a somewhat similar deposit, in large quantities, under the floor. This was gazul, the product of a certain mountain in Morocco, resembling soapstone, but composed of an admixture of silex, alumina, magnesia, and lime, and which has the peculiar property of polishing the skin when rubbed upon it, and so cleaning off the dead epidermis. Being used for this purpose largely in the baths, the grey deposit under the ruin in question is easily accounted for. Might not this same gazul, mixed with kissermil, have been the deposit which I took for mortar at Baalbeck?"

For the purpose of removing the dead epidermis from the surface of the skin, "four processes have been adopted throughout the families of the human race, and in successive times. The simple, the natural, the first hit upon, was the rubbing down with the ball of the hand, which is still the process used in this country for currying horses of high breed. The three others, of a more refined and, I may say, historical character, are, scraping, rolling, and polishing. The scraping is with the strigil, which we know of from the Romans and Greeks, but which is figured on the tombs of Lycia, and the Roman name of which is derived from Mauritania. The rolling is that which we see to-day practised by the Turks. The polishing is with the gazul, and practised by the Moors, to whom it is confined, and who alone possess the admirable substance which is used for it. Now, if gazul was used by the early inhabitants of Baalbeck, their bathing process belonged to the last of these systems, and they carried on a traffic with Morocco."

From Phœnicia, from the coast of Tyre and Sidon, a knowledge of the bath may have spread along the southern coast of the Mediterranean, through Egypt, Tripoli, and Algiers, to Morocco and the Pillars of Hercules; or it may, as Mr. Urquhart suggests, have been earliest in use among the nations of Mauritania, and have been carried by the Moors into the countries of the East. From Phœnicia, the knowledge of the bath may have followed the line of caravan communication into Russia, Persia, China, and Hindostan; while the ships of the then greatest maritime country in the world would have carried it to Greece, to Ireland, and to America. The bath is a common practice in Russia; it is also well known in Persia, Hindostan, and China; and, as we have already seen, its use in North America, in Mexico, and Ireland, probably dates back to a very early age. Its progress in Europe we shall presently see.

Speaking of the mode of heating the bath in Mexico and Morocco, I have used the word hypocaust; this word is of Greek origin, and signifies under-fire—that is, the fire is placed under the thing to be heated; for example, under the foundation of the bath or of the house. The Greeks and the Romans had no other means of heating their houses than this; there was no open fire, but a fire under the foundation, from which flues were carried upwards in the walls of the building. When a great heat was required, as in the baths, the foundation was supported on short columns (pilæ), and the entire space between the columns was occupied with fire, while numerous ascending flues distributed the heat around the rooms. Now it is curious to find that at the present hour the Chinese continue the same means of heating their houses.

That they also employ the sudatory process of bathing, is shown by the following extract from Mr. Henry Ellis's "Journal of an Embassy to China," published in 1817:—

"Near this temple (at Nankin) is a public vapour bath, called, or rather miscalled, the Bath of Fragrant Water, where dirty Chinese may be stewed clean for ten chens, or three farthings; the bath is a small room of one hundred feet area, divided into four compartments, and paved with coarse marble; the heat is considerable, and as the number admitted into the bath has no limit but the capacity of the area, the stench is excessive; altogether, I thought it the most disgusting cleansing apparatus[5] I had ever seen, and worthy of this nasty nation."

The Baths of Greece are celebrated for their magnificence; they formed parts of buildings of vast extent and grandeur, termed Gymnasia. The gymnasium was an institution of the Spartans of Lacedæmonia or Laconia, and spread thence to other parts of Greece, and notably to the metropolis of Attica, the famed city, Athens. The gymnasium was sufficiently large to accommodate several thousands of persons, and afforded space for the assembly of philosophers, men of science, and poets, who delivered lectures to their scholars and recited their verses; and for the pursuit of the favourite games and exercises of their youths and men—namely, leaping, running, throwing the disc or quoit, and wrestling; the purpose of these exercises being to give strength to the people and make them accomplished warriors.

The different parts of a gymnasium or palæstra, were as follows:—

1. The Porticos, in which were numerous rooms furnished with seats for the professors and their scholars.

2. The Ephebeum, a large space in which the ephebi or youths planned and practised their exercises.

3. The Apodyterium, or undressing room; also called Gymnasterium, or the room for becoming nude.

4. The Elaiothesium, or anointing room, which was equally used by those who were preparing for exercise, and those who had completed their bath.

5. The Konisterium, or dusting room, where the bodies of the wrestlers and other athletæ, after being anointed, were well dusted over; probably as a defence to the skin against injury.

6. The Palæstra, or wrestling courts, which were bedded with sand more or less deep, like the modern circus, in order to break the fall of the combatants when they were thrown to the ground.

7. The Sphæristerium, or court for ball exercise and raquets.

8. The Peristyle, or Piazza, within which was the area of the Peristyle, for walking, and the exercises of leaping, quoits, ball, and wrestling.

9. Then there were Xysti, or covered courts, for the use of the wrestlers in bad weather; Xysta, which were walks between walls open at the top and intended for hot weather; and a Xystic Sylvis, or forest; the intervals of the numerous ornamental columns of the building being so called, and being devoted to walking exercise.

10. Next came the Baths, which were hot, cold, and tepid water baths; and a stove, or Laconicum, named after the city of Laconia and the Lacedæmonians, from whom the Athenians derived their knowledge of the hot-air bath.

11. And lastly, there was the Stadium, a segment of an ellipse, which received its name from being one hundred paces long, equal to six hundred feet, or something less than an eighth of a mile. The Stadium was furnished with rows of seats for spectators, and was intended for the exhibition of feats of running and exercises upon a large scale.

The most remarkable Stadium known was one erected by Lycurgus on the banks of the river Ilissus. It was built of Pentellick marble, and was so magnificent a structure, that Pausanias the historian, in describing it, informs his readers that they would not believe what he was about to tell them, "it being a wonder to all that beheld it, and of that stupendous bigness that one would judge it a mountain of white marble."

There were several gymnasia in Athens, the most noteworthy being, the Lyceum, the Academia, and the Cynosarges.

The Lyceum, founded on the banks of the river Ilissus, was consecrated to Apollo; and not without reason, says Plutarch, but upon a good and rational account, since from the same deity that cures our diseases and restores our health, we may reasonably expect strength and ability to contend in our exercises. The Lyceum is also interesting to us as being the institution in which Aristotle taught philosophy. Aristotle was wont to lecture to his scholars while walking, and his disciples were therefore called Peripatetics; he continued his teaching daily until the hour of anointing, which, with the Greeks, was a preparation for dinner.

The Academia was situated in the suburbs of the city, on a piece of ground that had been reclaimed from the marsh by draining and planting. It was called after an old hero named Academicus. Plutarch informs us that it was beset with shady woods and solitary walks fit for study and meditation; in witness whereof another writer says:—

"In Academus' shady walks;"

and Horace writes:—

"In Hecademus' groves to search the truth."

Plato taught philosophy in the Academia; but having in consequence of the unhealthy nature of the soil caught the ague, he was advised to relinquish it for the Lyceum. "No!" said the old man, "I prefer the Academy, for that it keeps the body under, lest by too much health it should become rebellious, and more difficult to be governed by the dictates of reason; as men prune vines when they spread too far, and lop off the branches that grow too luxuriant."

The Cynosarges was also in the suburbs of Athens, not far distant from the Lyceum. It was dedicated to the god of strength, Hercules; and was interesting from its admission of strangers, and half-blood Athenians. Its name is derived from the circumstance of a white dog seizing upon a part of the victim that was being sacrificed to Hercules by Diomus; and was the origin of the sect of philosophers known as the "Cynics."

Baths of Rome.—When Greece was subjugated by the Romans, the Romans carried back with them to Italy the taste for the bath. They erected thermæ of great magnificence, and in so great number, that at one period there were nearly nine hundred public baths in Rome. Agrippa alone is said to have built one hundred and sixty, while Mecænas has the credit of possessing the first private bath. The most famed of the public baths were those of Titus, Paulus Æmilius, Diocletian, Caracalla, and Agrippa. In these baths was centred all that was most perfect in material, elaborate in workmanship, elegant in design, and beautiful in art. Nothing was thought too grand or too magnificent for their decoration. Superb marbles brought from the most distant parts of the world; the choicest selections from the riches of their conquests, the curious and wonderful in nature and in art; precious gems and metals; and the finest works of the painter and the sculptor. That beautiful production of the sculptor's art, the Laocoon, was discovered among the ruins of the Baths of Titus, and the celebrated Farnese Hercules in those of Caracalla.

The Baths of Agrippa were constructed of brick coated with enamel. Those of Nero were supplied with water from the sea, as well as fresh water. The Baths of Caracalla were a mile in circumference; they possessed two hundred marble columns, sixteen hundred seats of marble, and were capable of accommodating nearly two thousand persons; while those of Diocletian surpassed all others in grandeur, and occupied 140,000 men for many years in their construction.

Within the bath was collected all that contributed to the enjoyment, the luxury, and the gaiety of existence of the Romans. Here they practised their games, their athletic sports; here they came to learn the news of the day, to listen to recitations of poetry and prose,[6] to hear the eloquent harangues of their orators, and to be entranced with the chords of melodious music. There were temples devoted to dancing, to refreshment, to the bath; and in their abundant gratitude they raised up appropriate statues to the gods who were supposed to preside over their several enjoyments. The great hall of their bath was ornamented with the statues of Hercules, the god of strength; Hygeia, the goddess of health; and Æsculapius, the god of medicine.

It is not to be wondered at, that, reared in the midst of the luxury, in the enjoyment of their Balneæ or Thermæ, the Romans should have carried with them their longing for the bath wheresoever they went, wheresoever their victorious armies forced themselves a way; and that, possessing a mastery over England and Wales, which they maintained for nearly four hundred years, they should have founded baths in their chief settlements in this country. Thus we have remains of Roman baths in London, in Chester, in Bath, at Wroxeter (Uriconium) in the neighbourhood of Shrewsbury, at Cirencester (Corinium), at Carisbrooke, in Colchester (Camulodunum), and in several other places besides.

But here we are compelled to draw a line of distinction between those grand institutions of their own metropolis, which comprised, as I have just described, their places of recreation, of exercise, of amusement, of diversion, as well as their temples of health; which were, in fact, a centralization of almost all the public institutions of their city into one—and those particular parts of these institutions which were specially devoted to health. Although the remains of the Roman thermæ in England are large, although their construction evinces a great perfection in many of the arts of social life, particularly in the manufacture of bricks and pottery, yet they scarcely bear comparison with the grander thermæ of ancient Rome, and for this reason: that all that was simply ornamental—or, if I might be permitted to say so, that was superfluous—has been omitted, and nothing but the substantial and the wholesome allowed to remain—that portion, in fact, which was purely devoted to health and strength. We thus prune the bath down to its simpler elements, and we prepare the way for the consideration of the bath as it has been revived amongst us at the present day.

Without some explanation, it would be difficult to understand how an institution which was regarded with so much veneration by ancient Rome, should have totally fallen into decay in modern Rome; and that the thermæ shall have ceased to have an existence in Rome at the present day. It is clear that the games which were once played, and the exercises which were practised, within the narrow limits of the thermæ, grand though they were, have now sought a wider sphere: the paintings of their great artists have been gathered into the ecclesiastical edifices and academies; the statues and sculpture have found their way into museums, or have been applied to the decoration of modern palaces; refreshment is more conveniently obtained in the cafés and restaurants; music and singing have been transferred to the opera; recitation to the theatre; poetry and prose to the library; and dancing to the assemblies; nay, the great hall of the Bath of Agrippa is now, in all its integrity, a place of Christian worship. In a word, the thermæ has become decentralized; whether as the result of the adoption of foreign fashions, or as a matter of convenience, it may be difficult to say; but so it is, and nothing of it now remains but the bath—that temple of the ancient thermæ over which Hercules, and Hygeia, and Æsculapius presided of old, and over which (in its humbler shape) they will continue to preside to the end of time.

The Baths of Titus have fortunately preserved to us a drawing, taken from its walls, which illustrates the construction and the mode of taking the bath among the Romans.

Beneath the bath is shown the furnace, or hypocaustum, for heating the rooms, as also the water used in the latter stages of the process.

Then follows a series of rooms, of which the principal are:—

1. The Apodyterium, Gymnasterium, or Vestiarium: the undressing and dressing-room.

2. The Tepidarium, which is warmed to a moderate temperature, and is intended to prepare and season the body before entering the hotter apartment.

3. The Caldarium, or Calidarium, sometimes called the Sudatorium, and in the figure (Fig. 2), concamerata sudatio, was a room of higher temperature, in which the perspiratory process was accomplished. In this apartment there was commonly a recess, of a higher temperature still, which was intended for special purposes, and was named Laconicum, in compliment to the Spartans of Laconia.

4. After the Calidarium followed a Lavatorium (Lavatrina, Latrina), called in the figure Balneum, in which the body was washed after the process of perspiration was complete. The mode of washing was to sit on the everted edge or lip of a large marble trough—the labrum—and to be rinsed with warm water poured over the body by means of a cup or small basin (pelvis).

5. The bather then went into the Frigidarium, where he received an affusion of cold water, and where he reclined, or sat, or walked about, until he was cool or dry.

6. From the Frigidarium the bather passed into the Elaiothesium, or anointing room, where he was smeared with fragrant oils previously to resuming his dress in the Vestiarium.

Besides these, which were the principal rooms, there were others devoted to additional processes, such as shaving, hair-cutting, depilation, and hair-plucking.

The Romans carried the indulgence and decoration of their baths to so unreasonable a pitch of luxury and extravagance as to call forth State restrictions upon their use, and the reproof of their philosophers. Juvenal levels a shaft of satire against those who make the bath the instrument of gluttony; and Pliny scolds the doctors for declaring that the bath assists digestion, and for withholding their denunciations against its excessive abuse. Moreover, the Emperor Titus is said to have lost his life through excess of the bath, having spent in it many hours of the day. We cannot, therefore, be surprised that the time devoted to bathing should be limited by imperial edict, as happened in the reign of the Emperor Hadrian, the hours when the bath was open to the public being confined to two,—namely, from three until five.

Pliny the Consul, in his admirable letters, speaks in most affectionate language of the bath. "How stands Comum" (meaning Como, his birthplace), says he, "that favourite scene of yours and mine? What have you to tell me of the firm yet soft gestatio,[7] the sunny bath?" In another letter, addressed to a lady, he says:—"The elegant accommodations which are to be found at Narnia ... particularly the pretty bath."

Describing his winter villa, Laurentium, after painting a series of rooms, he continues:—

"From thence you enter into the grand and spacious cooling-room belonging to the baths, from the opposite walls of which two round basins project, large enough to swim in. Contiguous to this is the perfuming-room, then the sweating-room, and beyond that the furnace which conveys the heat to the baths. Adjoining are two other little bathing-rooms, which are fitted up in an elegant rather than costly manner: annexed to this is a warm bath of extraordinary workmanship, wherein one may swim, and have a prospect at the same time of the sea. Not far from hence stands the tennis-court, which lies open to the warmth of the afternoon sun."

"Between the garden and this gestatio runs a shady walk of vines, which is so soft that you may walk barefoot upon it without any injury."

Alluding to the mode of life of one of his friends, he observes:—

"When the baths are ready, which in winter is about three o'clock, and in summer about two, he undresses himself, and if there happens to be no wind, he walks for some time in the sun. After this he plays a considerable time at tennis, for by this sort of exercise, too, he combats the effects of old age. When he has bathed, he throws himself upon his couch till supper[8] time."

Seneca reproves the extravagance and self-indulgence of his countrymen in a memorable letter (his eighty-sixth), which is as follows:—

"I write from the very villa of Scipio Africanus, having first invoked his manes, and that altar which I take to be the sepulchre of so great a man.

"I behold a villa built of squared stone; the wall encloses a wood, and has towers after the style of a fortification; the reservoir lies below the buildings and the walks, large enough for the use of an army; the bath is close and confined, dark, after the old fashion, for our forefathers united heat with obscurity.

"I was struck with an inward pleasure when I compared these times of Scipio with our own. In this nook did that dread of Carthage—to whom our city owes her having been but once taken—wash his limbs, wearied with labour; for, according to the ancient custom, he tilled his fields himself. Under this mean roof did he live—him did this rude pavement sustain.

"But who at this time would submit to bathe thus? A person is held to be poor and sordid, whose house does not shine with a profusion of the most precious materials, the marbles of Egypt being inlaid with those of Numidia; unless the walls are ornamented with an elaborate and variegated stucco, after the fashion of painting; unless the chambers are covered with glass; unless the Thasian stone, formerly a curiosity worthy of being placed in our temples, surrounds the pools into which we cast our bodies weakened with immoderate sweating; unless the water is conveyed through silver pipes.

"As yet, I have confined my remarks to private baths only. What shall I say when I come to our public baths? What a profusion of statues. What a number of columns do I see supporting nothing; but placed as an ornament, merely on account of their expense. What quantities of water murmuring down steps. We are come to that pitch of luxury, that we disdain to tread upon anything but precious stones.

"In this Bath of Scipio are small holes rather than windows, cut through the wall, so as to admit the light without interfering with its resemblance to a fortification.

"But now we reckon a bath fit only for moths and vermin, whose windows are not so disposed as to receive the rays of the sun during his whole career; unless we are washed and sunburnt at the same time; unless from the bathing-vessel we have a prospect of the sea and land. In fact, that which excited the admiration of mankind, when first built, is now rejected as old and useless. Thus it is that luxury finds out something new in which to obliterate her own works.

"Formerly, baths were few in number, and not much ornamented; for why should a thing of common life be ornamented, which was invented for use, and not for the purposes of elegance? The water in those days was not poured down in drops like a shower, neither did it run always as if fresh from a hot spring; nor was its clearness considered a matter of consequence. But, ye gods! what pleasure was there in entering those obscure and vulgar baths when prepared under the direction of the Cornelii, of Cato, or of Fabius Maximus? For the most renowned of the ædiles had, by virtue of their office, the inspection of those places where the people assembled, to see that they were kept clean and of a proper and wholesome degree of temperature; not of a heat like that of a furnace, such as has been lately found out, proper only for the punishment of slaves convicted of the highest misdemeanors. We now seem to make no distinction between being warm and burning.

"How many do I hear ridiculing the simplicity of Scipio, who did not admit the day into his sweating-places, or suffer himself to be baked in a hot sunshine. Unhappy man! He knew not how to enjoy life!

"The water he washed in was not clear and transparent, but, after rain, even thick and muddy. This, however, concerned him but little; he came to the bath to refresh himself after his labour, not to wash away the perfumes of a pomatumed body. What think you some will say of this? I envy not Scipio: he lived in exile indeed, who bathed in this manner.

"Should you be told further, that he bathed not every day—for those who relate to us the traditions of early times, say that our forefathers bathed their whole bodies on market-days only—it will be answered, Then they were very uncleanly. How, think ye, they smelt? Like men of labour and fatigue.

"Since dainty baths have been invented, we are become more nasty. Horace, when describing a man infamous for his dissipation, what does he reproach him with? With smelling of perfumed balls! 'Pastillos Rufillus olet.'"

Of the ancient Roman bath in England, we have several examples, the most interesting being that which has been lately brought to light in the ancient Roman city, Uriconium, in the neighbourhood of Shrewsbury. Uriconium is close to the village of Uroxeter, commonly pronounced Wroxeter, five miles from Shrewsbury. It is situated on the property of the Duke of Cleveland, and is known to have existed at the beginning of the second century of the Christian era, when the Romans held dominion over England, and when England was a part, and a highly-treasured part, of the Roman Empire.

It was of considerable size, having a boundary wall three miles in circumference, and was, doubtless, a flourishing city; but fell a victim to the ravages of fire and the sword during the fifth century, and has since lain buried and unnoticed until the last few years, when a society was formed for the purpose of excavating it.

The walls of the houses are remarkable for their thickness, namely, three feet; while that of the wall of the town is four feet. They are constructed upon a plan commonly adopted by the Romans—namely, a facing of stone on each side, and the space between filled in with rubble and that remarkable stone-like enduring mortar which has suggested the name of a better kind of cement of the present time, known as "Roman cement." The height of the houses was thirty feet; but they had no upper storey, and there is no trace of staircase.

Of the mode of warming the houses and, par excellence, the baths, the Rev. Thomas Wright[9] observes:—"The Romans did not warm their apartments by fires lighted in them.... The floor of the house, formed of a considerable thickness of cement, was laid upon a number of short pillars formed usually of square Roman tiles placed one upon another, and from two to three feet high. Those of the largest hypocausts yet found at Wroxeter were rather more than three feet high. Sometimes these supports were of stone, and in one or two cases in discoveries made in this country they were round. They were placed near to each other and in rows, and upon them were laid, first, larger tiles, and over these a thick mass of cement, which formed the floor, and upon which the tesselated pavements were set. Sometimes small parallel walls forming flues instead of rows of columns supported the floor.... Flue tiles—that is, square tubes made of baked clay with a hole on one side or sometimes on two sides—were placed against the walls endways one upon another so as to run up the walls."

My friend Mr. George Witt, having recently visited the ruins of the ancient Roman bath still existing at No. 117, Bridge-street, Chester, describes it as follows:—

"The most interesting of all the Roman antiquities of this ancient city are the remains of a private Roman bath, showing the Hypocaustum, or heating place beneath, in a state of great preservation. The hypocaust is 18 feet long by 8 feet wide, and 3 feet high. The roof was supported on thirty-two stone pillars (of a single block), broader at the base and the top, and narrower in the middle; of these twenty-eight still remain. On the top of the columns are placed, by way of capitals, strong tiles from 17 to 23 inches square, and 3 inches thick, reaching from pillar to pillar, thus forming, at the same time, the roof of the hypocaust and the floor of the room above. Over all these is a bed of hard concrete, 9 or 10 inches thick, the whole suited to bear any amount of heat. The pillars are made of the red sandstone of the district, and are so far worthy of note, that they differ from the tile-columns of most of the Roman hypocausts found in other parts of England, which are chiefly formed of piles of 8-inch tiles, 2 inches thick.

"The room above the hypocaust, which was the hot-chamber of the bath, called the Caldarium, has unfortunately been so dismantled, that little or nothing can now be learned of its character or proportions, two of the side walls only remain. The walls of these hot-chambers are generally on the inside by ranges of hollow flue-tiles, coming up from the hypocaust below, varying in number, according to the degree of heat required.

"There is nothing whatever here left of the Frigidarium, or cooling-room, nor any other of the apartments of the bath, nor of any of the contrivances used therein, except a sort of tank, 7 feet deep, 10 feet long, and 4 feet wide, situate near the mouth of the furnace, which may have served either as a receptacle for warm water, or as a place for a plunge in cold water, after the previous processes of the bath had been completed.

"Like modern Rome, the present city of Chester stands some feet above the level of the old Roman city; the visitors, therefore, must be prepared to descend into a dark cellar, to inspect the hypocaust and so-called bath! and to emerge therefrom, with a bitter feeling of humiliation and regret, that our forefathers could have so ruthlessly destroyed these interesting evidences of the manners and customs of that wonderful people, who for upwards of four hundred years held dominion over this island—a people to whom we are indebted for the fundamental principles of our social civilization; for the introduction of architecture, sculpture, coinage of money, construction of roads, and for innumerable other arts and adornments of life. There can be no more instructive proof of the mental darkness of those ages which followed the overthrow of the Roman Empire, than the wholesale destruction of the buildings of that great people, of which this is an example; and it is to be lamented that this barbarism, in regard to such monuments of antiquity, has not yet altogether disappeared."

And where, it may be asked, is the bath now; the conquering Romans have ceased to be other than a name, or a weary lesson for schoolboys; the Romans are gone, the Roman bath is lost. But here an eloquent modern author, Mr. Urquhart, helps us in our difficulty with a quotation:—"A people who know neither Latin nor Greek have preserved this great monument of antiquity on the soil of Europe, and present to us, who teach our children only Latin and Greek, this Institution in all its Roman grandeur and its Grecian taste. The bath, when first seen by the Turks, was a practice of their enemies, religious and political; they were themselves the filthiest of mortals; yet no sooner did they see the bath than they adopted it, made it a rule of their society, a necessary adjunct to every settlement, and Princes and Sultans endowed such institutions for the honour of their name." This, then, is the answer to the question—Where is the bath now? The ancient Roman bath lives in its modern offspring, the Turkish Bath—the Turkish Hamâm.

When, therefore, we see the words "Turkish Bath" in grand letters paraded through our metropolis; when we see a human being performing the part of a sandwich, with a broadsheet of Turkish bath in front, and a similar sheet behind, himself representing a flattened anchovy between the two slices, we shall know that the ancient Roman bath, after being kept alive for many centuries by the fostering care of the Turks, has at last come back to revisit its ancient haunts, and to offer to modern Britons the enjoyments from which our forefathers turned away with contempt as a custom of their conquerors. And we are led to recognise the truth of my preliminary proposition—that the bath is an instinct, and that, being an instinct, its survival of a race is no longer a wonder, but is a law of nature—a law of the universe.

Let me now describe the Hamâm, or Turkish Bath as it exists at the present moment in Constantinople; and in this description I shall take as my groundwork the account given of it by Mr. Urquhart. It is a large building, with a domed roof, a square massive body, from which minarets shoot up, and against which wings abut containing side apartments. The essential apartments of the hamâm are three in number—a great hall or mustaby, a middle chamber, and an inner chamber. We raise the curtain which covers the entrance to the street, and we find ourselves in the mustaby, a circular or octagonal hall, maybe a hundred feet high, with a domed roof, and open in the centre to the vault of heaven. In the middle of the floor is a basin of water four feet high, with a fountain playing in the centre, and around it are plants and trellises; and resting against it, at some one point, the stall whence comes the supply of coffee and pipes or chibouques.

Around the circumference of the hall is a low platform, from four to twelve feet in breadth and three feet high. This is divided by dwarf balustrades into small compartments, each containing one or more couches. These compartments are the dressing-rooms, and the couches, shaped like a straddling letter W, and adapted by their angles to the bends of the body, are the couches of repose. It is here that the bather disrobes; his clothes are folded and placed in a napkin, and the napkin is carefully tied up. He then assumes the bathing garb; a long Turkish towel (peshtimal or futa) is wound turban-wise around his head; a second around his hips, descending to the middle of the leg; and a third, disposed like a scarf over one or both shoulders. Two attendants shield him from view while changing his linen, by holding a napkin before him; and when he is ready, the same attendants help him to descend from the platform; they place wooden pattens (called nalma in Turkish, and cob cob in Arabic) on his feet, and taking each arm, lead him to the middle apartment. The wooden pattens are intended to protect the feet from the heat of the inner rooms, and from the dirty water and slop of the passages.

"The slamming doors are pushed open, and you enter the region of steam;" this is the second chamber, it is low, dark, and small; it feels warm without being hot or oppressive, and the air is moistened with a thin vapour. It is paved with white marble, and a marble platform eighteen inches high occupies its two sides, while the space between serves as the passage from the mustaby to the inner hall. A mattress and cushion are laid on the marble platform, and here the bather reclines; he smokes his chibouque, sips his coffee, and converses in subdued and measured tones with his neighbour. This is the Tepidarium of the Roman bath; here the bather courts a "natural and gentle flow of perspiration," and to this end are adapted the warm temperature, the bath coverings, the hot coffee, and the tranquil rest.

"The bath is essentially sociable, and this is the portion of it so appropriated; this is the time and place where a stranger makes acquaintance with a town or village. While so engaged, a boy kneels at your feet and chafes them, or behind your cushion, at times touching or tapping you on the neck, arm, or shoulder, in a manner that causes the perspiration to start."

After a while the bath attendant arrives; he passes his hand under the linen coverings of the bather; if he find the skin sufficiently moist and softened, the bather is again taken by the arms, his feet are replaced in the wooden pattens, another slamming door is opened, and he is ushered into the inner apartment, "a space such as the centre dome of a cathedral," lighted by means of "stars of stained glass in the vault." The temperature of this apartment, the Calidarium or Sudatorium of the Romans, is considerably higher than that of the middle room; the atmosphere is filled with "curling mists of gauzy and mottled vapour," the steam being raised by throwing water on the floor. In the middle of the apartment is "an extensive platform of marble slabs," and on this the bather is laid on his back, his scarf being placed beneath him to protect his skin from the heated marble, and the napkin that served as his turban being rolled up as a pillow to his head.

The bather is now subjected to the process of shampooing—that is, his muscles are pressed and squeezed, his joints are stretched until they snap, and they are forcibly bent in various directions. In the hands of the professional shampooer the process is elevated to an art, and words fail to convey other than a very imperfect idea of its nature.

After the shampooing, the bather is brought to the side of the hall—around which are placed marble basins two feet in diameter, supplied by means of taps with hot and cold water—and made to sit on a board near to one of these basins. The attendant draws on a camel's-hair glove. "He stands over you; you bend down to him, and he commences from the nape of the neck in long sweeps down the back till he has started the skin; he coaxes it into rolls, keeping them in and up till within his hand they gather volume and length; he then successively strikes and brushes them away, and they fall right and left as if spilt from a dish of macaroni. The dead matter which will accumulate in a week forms, when dry, a ball of the size of the fist." In the course of his frictions he pours water from the basin over the skin by means of a copper cup, to rinse off the impurities.

In the next place, a large wooden bowl is placed by the side of the bather; this bowl contains soap and a wisp of lyf, the woody fibre of the Mecca palm, and the body is thoroughly soaped and washed twice over from the head to the feet, and, as a coup de grâce, a bowl of warm water is dashed over the entire body.

An attendant now approaches with warm napkins; the hip-cloth, or cummerbund, is dropped, and a warm dry napkin is selected to supply its place; another is thrown over the shoulders, and the bather is placed on a seat. The shoulder napkin is then raised, a fresh dry one put in its place, and the first over it; a fourth is wrapped around the head; "your feet are already in the wooden pattens. You are wished health; you return the salute, rise, and are conducted by both arms to the outer hall."

In the outer hall, the bather is led to his box; he drops the pattens as he steps on a napkin spread on the matting of the platform; and he stretches his limbs on the couch of repose. "The attendants then reappear, and gliding like noiseless shadows, stand in a row before him. The coffee is poured out and presented; the pipe follows; or if so disposed he may have sherbet or fruit; the sweet or water-melons are preferred, and they come in piles of lumps large enough for a mouthful; and if inclined to make a positive meal at the bath, this is the time. The hall is open to the heavens, but nevertheless, a boy with a fan of feathers, or a napkin, drives the cool air upon him." The linen is twice changed; and when the cooling is complete, "the body has come forth shining like alabaster, fragrant as the cistus, sleek as satin, and soft as velvet. The touch of the skin is electric." "The time occupied is from two to four hours, and the operation is repeated once a week." At the conclusion of the process, "the crispness of the skin returns, the fountains of strength are opened: you seek again the world and its toils; and those who experience these effects and vicissitudes for the first time, exclaim—'I feel as if I could leap over the moon.'"

In reviewing the Turkish Bath and the process of bathing as pursued by the Turks, we are struck by several features which appertain especially to it: for example, its construction of three apartments only, instead of the numerous apartments of the Romans; the three apartments being, the grand hall, corresponding with the Frigidarium of the Romans, and being at the same time the Apodyterium and Vestiarium. Secondly, the presence of vapour in the middle room, corresponding with the Tepidarium of the Romans. Thirdly, the existence of vapour in the third and inner room, the Calidarium and Sudatorium of the Romans. The presence of vapour betokens a low temperature, because watery vapour, as is well known, is scalding at one hundred and twenty degrees of heat; and we have fair grounds for concluding that there was no vapour in the Tepidarium and Caldarium of the Romans, and that the temperature of both was considerably higher. For Seneca, in his celebrated letter, speaks of the importance of maintaining the baths at a "proper and wholesome degree of temperature; not of heat like that of a furnace, such as has been lately found out, proper only for the punishment of slaves convicted of the highest misdemeanors. We now seem to make no distinction between being warm and burning."—This criticism would have been unnecessary had the bath contained watery vapour, as the evil would then have corrected itself, and the vapour, being scalding, could not have been supported. Pliny also, speaks of the "burning pavement of the floor" in his narrative of an act of cruelty practised by the slaves of Largius Macedo on their master. After beating him and trampling upon him, they threw him on the floor of the hot bath, and pretended that "he had fainted away by the heat of the bath."

Another peculiarity of the Turkish bath relates to one of its processes—namely, the absence of the cold douche with which the Romans concluded their bath. The Turks still dash cold water on the feet when the bath is at an end; but they allow the bather to enter the mustaby heated by the process and still perspiring—hence the necessity of a change of linen during the cooling, and the aid of an attendant with a fan to cool the body. Moreover, the process of cooling is in this way considerably lengthened, and we can comprehend how the bath may be prolonged to two, three, or four hours. In the Roman method—that is, concluding with a cold douche or a plunge in cold water—perspiration is immediately arrested by the closing of the pores, the body is cooled more quickly, no change of linen is needed, no fanning is required, and the cooling is accomplished equally well and in a shorter space of time.

The process of bathing, as pursued by the Turks, is also deserving of note. It is as follows:—Firstly, there is the seasoning of the body, in the accomplishment of which the skin becomes warm, soft, and moist. Then follows the shampooing or manipulation of the muscles, and stretching and playing the joints. Next comes the rubbing up and removal of the surface-layer of the scarf-skin. To this succeeds soaping and rinsing; and the process concludes with the cooling and drying of the skin.

"These are the five acts of the drama." The first scene is acted in the middle chamber, the next three in the inner chamber, and the last in the outer hall.

But that which most of all strikes us in the Turkish bath is the order, the decorum, the tranquillity, the dignity, the delicacy of the whole proceeding. A screen is held before the bather while he unrobes; his clothes are carefully folded and tied up; before he leaves the platform, he is clad in a becoming costume, which he retains till the end of the process, and he is guarded by similar decencies until he retires and quits the bath. This is the example which all true admirers of the bath hope to see followed in Britain: it is the Turkish bath which we seek to emulate, not merely in its construction, but also in its manners and management. There is one matter, however, in which we must fail—namely, in the multitude of attendants; but in this particular we must learn to do what we can, and not what we will.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu has afforded us the rare opportunity of seeing the interior of a woman's bath in Turkey: her narrative, it is true, relates to the practice in 1717, nearly one hundred and fifty years back; but probably no great change has taken place since then. The bath she visited was at St. Sophia, "famous for its hot baths, that are resorted to for diversion and health." The bath "is built of stone in the shape of a dome, with no windows but in the roof, which gives light enough. There were five of these domes joined together, the outmost being less than the rest, and serving only as a hall, where the portress stood at the door.... The next room is a very large one, paved with marble, and all round it are two raised sofas (platforms) of marble, one above another. There were four fountains of cold water in this room, falling first into marble basins, and then running on the floor in little channels made for that purpose; ... the next room, something less than this, with the same sort of marble sofas, but so hot with steam ... proceeding from the baths joining to it, it was impossible to stay there with one's clothes on. The two other domes were the hot baths."

The mustaby was already full of women, and Lady Mary remarks on their good breeding. She was dressed in a riding habit; "yet there was not one of them that showed the least surprise or impertinent curiosity, but received me with all the obliging civility possible. I know no European Court where the ladies would have behaved themselves in so polite a manner to such a stranger. I believe, upon the whole, that there were two hundred women, and yet none of those disdainful smiles and satirical whispers that never fail in our assemblies when anybody appears that is not dressed exactly in the fashion. They repeated over and over to me, Guzél, péc guzél, which is nothing but Charming, very charming."

"The first sofas"—that is, the lower platform—"were covered with cushions and rich carpets, on which sat the ladies; and on the second their slaves behind them, but without any distinction of rank by their dress, all being in the state of nature, that is, in plain English, stark naked." There was as little to disturb them in that state as a group of naked children in the nursery; they had practised the usage of the bath from their infancy, and the idea of indelicacy would no more have crossed their minds than it would that of Eve previously to her temptation. "They walked and moved with the same majestic grace which Milton describes our general mother with. There were many amongst them as exactly proportioned as ever any goddess was drawn by the pencil of a Guido or Titian—and most of their skins shiningly white, only adorned by their beautiful hair, divided into many tresses, hanging on their shoulders, braided either with pearl or ribbon, perfectly representing the figures of the Graces.

"I was here convinced of the truth of a reflection I have often made, that if it were the fashion to go naked, the face would be hardly observed. I perceived that the ladies of the most delicate skins and finest shapes had the greatest share of my admiration, though their faces were sometimes less beautiful than those of their companions." The ladies were occupied "some in conversation, some working, others drinking coffee or sherbet, and many negligently lying on their cushions, while their slaves (generally pretty girls of seventeen or eighteen) were employed in braiding their hair in several pretty fancies.... They generally take this diversion once a week, and stay there at least four or five hours, without getting cold by immediately coming out of the hot bath into the cold room, which was very surprising to me."

This latter remark probably explains Lady Mary's refusal to take a bath with her companions. One of the ladies pressed her very hard, until she was at last forced to open her shirt and show them her stays, which, she says, "satisfied them very well; for, I saw, they believed I was locked up in that machine, and that it was not in my own power to open it, which contrivance they attributed to my husband."

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu also illustrates the extravagant decoration and expenditure that were bestowed upon some of the private baths even in Turkey, an extravagance that calls to mind the baths of Rome. Speaking of a bath she visited at Calcedonia, she observes:—"The baths, fountains, and pavements are all of white marble, the roofs gilt, and the walls covered with Japan china. Adjoining to them are two rooms, the uppermost of which is divided into a sofa, and in the four corners are falls of water from the very roof, from shell to shell, of white marble, to the lower end of the room, where it falls into a large basin surrounded with pipes that throw up the water as high as the roof. The walls are in the nature of lattices; and on the outside of them there are vines and woodbines planted that form a sort of green tapestry, and give an agreeable obscurity to those delightful chambers."

The Egyptian Bath is an offshoot of the Turkish bath; and the process, although somewhat different, preserves the general characteristics of its parent. Bayle St. John, in his "Village Life in Egypt,"[10] gives us the following sketch of the Egyptian Bath:—

"We went to the bath to be sweated and scraped, and rubbed and lathered and soused, in company with the respectabilities of Siout—brown-skinned, hairy, rotund gentlemen, who submitted to the operation with a gravity and sedateness at once admirable and ludicrous. Our presence, perhaps, put them upon stilts; but it was evident that, as they lay like porpoises about the slushed benches, enjoying a gentle titillation from the horny palm of the bath servant, or submitting head, back, and breast to the cunning razor, they felt what important people they were—citizens of a place which possessed a real bath, with hararah, faskiyeh, and, above all, a scalding makhtas—the summum bonum of the Egyptian bather; for not all the race of Pharaoh bathe, as not all Frenchmen go to cafés, nor all Englishmen to clubs. From Cairo to Siout we had not found one of these luxurious establishments. In the antechamber, whilst we were being kneaded as if for dough by a coaxing lawingee, one old gentleman, who had doubtless been soaking for hours, came and sat down, wrapped in a sheet, opposite to us."

Mr. St. John fails to tell us to what extent he appreciated the bath; but Thackeray,[11] after a similar bath at Cairo, observes:—"The after-bath state is the most delightful condition of laziness I ever knew, and I tried it wherever we went afterwards on our little tour. At Smyrna the whole business was much inferior to the method employed in the capital. At Cairo, after the soap, you are plunged into a sort of stone coffin, full of water which is almost boiling.[12] This has its charms, but I could not relish the Egyptian shampooing. A hideous old blind man (but very dexterous in his art) tried to break my back and dislocate my shoulders, but I could not see the pleasure of the practice; and another fellow began tickling the soles of my feet."

M. Savary, in his "Letters on Egypt," published nearly a century back, gives a description of the bath which is nearly identical with that of modern writers. The first apartment, he says, is "a great chamber in the form of a rotunda, with an open roof," and a fountain in the centre, which plays into a reservoir. "A spacious alcove, carpeted, is carried round, and divided into compartments, in which the bathers leave their clothes," and to which they return when the bath is over. When undressed, "sandals are put on, and a narrow passage is entered, where the heat first begins to be felt; the door shuts, and twenty paces further a second opens, which is the entrance to a passage at right angles with the first. Here the heat augments, and those who fear to expose themselves too suddenly to its effects, stop some time in a marble hall (middle chamber) before they enter. The bath itself (inner chamber) is a spacious vaulted chamber, paved and lined with marble; beside it are four small rooms: a vapour continually rises from a fountain and cistern of hot water, with which the burnt perfumes mingle."

His notice of the process of shampooing differs somewhat from that of others:—"A gentle moisture diffuses itself over the body; a servant comes, gently presses and turns the bather, and when the limbs are flexible, makes the joints crack without trouble, then masses (touches lightly), and seems to knead the body without giving the slightest sensation of pain.

"This done, he puts on a stuff glove, and continues rubbing long," until the skin "becomes as smooth as satin; he then conducts the bather into a cabinet, pours a lather of perfumed soap on the head, and retires." "The room into which the bather retires has two water-cocks—one for cold, the other for hot water; and he washes himself."

"Being well washed and purified, the bather is wrapped up in hot linen. Being come to the alcove, a bed is ready prepared, on which the person no sooner lies down, than a boy comes, and begins to press with his delicate hands all parts of the body, in order to dry them perfectly; the linen is once more changed, and the boy gently rubs the callous skin of the feet with pumice stone, then brings a pipe and Mocha coffee."

M. Savary then draws the following picture of the sensations of the bath:—"Coming from a bath filled with hot vapour, in which excessive perspiration bedewed every limb, into a spacious apartment and the open air, the lungs expand and respire at pleasure: well kneaded, and, as it were, regenerated, the blood circulates freely, the body feels a voluptuous ease, a flexibility till then unknown, a lightness as if relieved from some enormous weight, and the man almost fancies himself newly-born and beginning first to live. A glowing consciousness of existence diffuses itself to the very extremities; and, while thus yielding to the most delightful sensations, ideas of the most pleasing kind pervade and fill the soul; the imagination wanders through worlds which itself embellishes, everywhere drawing pictures of happiness and delight. If life be only a succession of ideas, the vigour, the rapidity with which the memory then retraces all the knowledge of the man would lead us to believe that the two hours of delicious calm which succeed bathing are an age.

"Such, sir, are these baths, the use of which was so strongly recommended by the ancients, and the pleasures of which the Egyptians still enjoy. Here they prevent or exterminate rheumatisms, catarrhs, and those diseases of the skin which the want of perspiration occasions. Here they rid themselves of those uncomfortable sensations so common among other nations, who have not the same regard to cleanliness."[13]

With the Turkish bath for our model, let us now inquire—What the bath has been doing in Britain? and, How a desire to restore it first came among us? That it is among us is a fact beyond question, and that it has spread through society with marvellous rapidity no longer admits of doubt. In the year 1850, Mr. Urquhart published an interesting work in two volumes, entitled "The Pillars of Hercules; or, a Narrative of Travels in Spain and Morocco in 1848." In the preface to this work occurs the following passage:—"I have no expectation that my suggestions will modify the lappet of a coat, or the leavening of a loaf; but there is one subject in which I am not without hope of having placed a profitable habit more within the chance of adoption than it has hitherto been—I mean the bath." In the second volume of this work there is a chapter (Chapter VIII.) devoted to the bath, and especially to a description of the Turkish and Moorish bath. It is from this source that I have drawn the description which I have just given; and the author refers to it in the conclusion of his seventh chapter in these words:—"A chapter," says he, "which, if the reader will peruse it with diligence and apply with care, may prolong his life, fortify his body, diminish his ailments, augment his enjoyments, and improve his temper; then, having found something beneficial to himself, he may be prompted to do something to secure the like for his fellow-creatures."

Six years after the publication of this work—namely, in 1856—Mr. Urquhart visited Ireland, and made the acquaintance of Dr. Richard Barter, the proprietor of a water-cure establishment at Blarney. Dr. Barter, struck with the conversation of Mr. Urquhart, and delighted with his description of the Turkish bath, which he subsequently read in the "Pillars of Hercules," wrote to him as follows:—"Your description of the Turkish bath has electrified me. If you will come down here and superintend the erection of one, men, money, and materials shall be at your disposal."

Mr. Urquhart, in his zeal for the cause, on which he has so ably and so eloquently written, accepted the invitation, and a month later, the foundation-stone of the Turkish Bath of St. Anne's Hill, Blarney—the parent of numerous baths which have since sprung into existence in Ireland—was laid.

The chiefs of the pioneers of the Bath in England, following the teachings of Mr. Urquhart, are, Mr. George Crawshay, Sir John Fife, Mr. George Witt, and Mr. Stewart Rolland. The first private bath erected in England was that of Mr. Crawshay, in 1857. In the same year, Mr. Urquhart constructed a small bath at his residence at Lytham, and the year following commenced his elegant bath at Riverside. Mr. Witt followed in 1858, and Mr. Rolland in 1859. It was in Mr. Witt's bath that I first took rank as a bather, and on that account, as well as for its comfort and simplicity, and the philanthropic character of its owner, Mr. Witt's bath will always occupy a first place both in my memory and in my heart. Let me describe it.

On the ground-floor of his house in Prince's Terrace, Hyde Park, is a room twenty feet long by ten feet in breadth, and twelve feet high, with a window looking out upon a lead-flat. This room he divided by a partition into two compartments, two-thirds of the room being devoted to the purposes of a cool-room, and the remaining third to a hot-room. The outer room being the Mustaby or Frigidarium; the inner room being the hot-room of the Turkish Hamâm, the Calidarium and Sudatorium of the Romans; there was no space for a middle room, or Tepidarium.

Piercing the wall of the Calidarium near its floor is a furnace of simple construction, opening on the lead-flat outside, and projecting for some distance inside into the room, where it is covered with a casing of fire-brick; the furnace ends in a flue, and the flue, which is one foot square, runs around the room, close to the floor, and close also to the wall, being separated from both the one and the other by a space of a few inches. Having completed the circuit of the room, the flue ascends the angle of the apartment to the ceiling, and terminates by opening into a chimney-shaft. The room is heated by the radiation of caloric from the casing of the furnace, and from the flue; and the flue being thirty-five feet in length, presents a radiating surface of nearly fifty yards.

The other features in the construction of the Calidarium are, a wooden seat, which runs round the room, immediately over the flue; a platform which supports a dureta, or couch of repose; a small tank holding ten gallons of water, kept warm by its position against the chimney-shaft, and two pipes which project into the room, at an elevation of six feet and a half, for supplying warm water from the tank, and cold water from the ordinary house-service; add to this a double door of entrance, a small window, and five circular holes in the wall for ventilation, and the Calidarium is complete.

Let me now conduct the reader through the process of taking a bath.

We enter the Frigidarium; we divest ourselves of our clothing, which we hang on pegs fixed along the end of the room; this is the Vestiarium, or Apodyterium; and here we put off our shoes. We then dress ourselves for the bath: we wind a long strip of Turkish red twilled cotton around our hips, in the fashion of a cummerbund or kilt; it descends nearly to our knees; we fold another strip turban-wise around our head; and behold! we are ready to enter the region of heat. We need no wooden pattens, no cob cob; on the clean India matting of the Frigidarium, where shoe-leather never treads, there is no dust; on the floor of the Calidarium we shall find neither slop nor excessive heat; we may press our naked sole against Mother Earth as we would press palm to palm with our dearest friend.

The question of precedence being settled, the double door is opened, and we enter the Calidarium. How deliciously the warm air seems to fold us in its soft embrace; we look at the thermometer: it is 135°. How very nice! How very agreeable! are the expressions which we hear softly breathed around us, for we are not alone: we are one of five or six "Companions of the Bath." The air is clear—no vapoury mists; it is fresh, for there is a free circulation of air through the room; but how marvellously soothing! All care, all anxiety, all trouble, all memory of the external world and its miserable littleness, is chased from the mind; our thoughts are absorbed in rapturous contemplation of the delights of the New World—the Paradise into which we have just been admitted. The tyrant Pain, even, loses his miscreant power here; the toothache, where is it gone? the headache, gone too; the spasm no longer bides; the grinding aches of craving appetite, the pang of neuralgia, of rheumatism, of gout—all are fled; for this is the region where the suffering find a soothing relief from all their torments; and over the door is it not written:—This is the Calidarium; pain enters not here.

Ten minutes slip away in an enjoyment that seems to last for a lifetime; and what is our condition now? The skin is warm, it is soft, it is moist, for sensible perspiration has commenced. Those parts perspire first which have been most exposed to the air—namely, the forehead, the head, the neck, the chest and shoulders, because these parts, from that very exposure, are in the most normal state. We are shortly, "like Niobe, all tears;" but our tears are tears of bliss. Tears of perspiration collect in beads at the apertures of the pores; tears glide down the surface, and fall from all the salient points of our frame, from our elbows, from our finger-ends; a sweet languor creeps over us, and we feel as though, like a heathen god of old, we were dissolving into a liquid stream.

"Here Fluvius wept; as now a stream declares."

We experience the truth of the saying of Sanctorius, "that melancholy is overcome by a free perspiration, and that cheerfulness, without any evident cause, proceeds from perspiration succeeding well."

It is a curious, but at the same time an obvious fact, with regard to perspiration, that it depends very materially on the habit and training of the skin. The beginner in the use of the bath perspires slowly, languidly, partially, incompletely, while the accustomed bather is known by the freedom of his perspiration. The apprentice-hand has no thirst in the bath, for a small portion only of the excess of watery fluid is abstracted from his tissues and from his blood. But the practised bather has no such excess, his blood yields its diluting water with great freedom, he thirsts in the bath, and he drinks freely. I know a gentleman who sometimes consumes a gallon of water in the bath, but none remains when he comes out: all has been dissipated by perspiration. In a chemical analysis of the perspiration of a group of bathers, recently made, that fluid was found loaded with saline and organic matter in the recruits, but was almost pure in the veteran bather: his blood was washed as clean as that of the working man who eats the bread of labour—that sweetest of all bread, the bread that has been earned with the sweat of his brow.

I hardly know a more curious or more beautiful sight than that of the healthy skin of a practised bather, spangled over with limpid drops of perspiration like dew-drops on the petals of a rose, or like beads of crystal, as I heard a Doctor of Divinity once call them, in the bath. The Reverend Doctor, although a distinguished member of the Protestant Church, was, as a witty friend remarked, "devoutly counting his beads."

Among the labourers in hot rooms, or in proximity with hot furnaces, as in the manufacture of glass, enamel, porcelain, and gas, the working of engines, and the smelting of metals, perspiration is very profuse, and the lost fluid is replaced by the drinking of water, or more commonly of thin gruel; restoring the balance of fluids not by mere water, but actually by a nutritive drink. Look at these men, working in the open air, or in the midst of thorough draughts, with rivers of perspiration streaming down their athletic frames, and ask their history; they are healthy, long-lived and happy. In the copper-smelting works at Swansea, the heat between the furnaces at which the men work is 200° of Fahrenheit; they drink a gallon of thin gruel every hour, working four hours at a stretch, and the ground on which they stand is a pool of perspiration.

I have said that the temperature of Mr. Witt's bath is 135°, and a very agreeable temperature it is; but the temperature of the bath is a point upon which a few observations must be made. The temperature of the Calidarium in Mr. Urquhart's and Mr. Rolland's bath is 170°, and is equally agreeable, equally fresh, equally enjoyable. What then, it may be asked, is the difference between these baths, that renders such a wide range of temperature equally pleasant? It is one of construction. Mr. Witt's Calidarium is small, well ventilated for its size, but a higher temperature than 135° or 140° would be oppressive if more than two or three bathers were present. Moreover, in Mr. Witt's bath, there is an invisible vapour of water in suspension in the atmosphere. Mr. Rolland's bath is larger than Mr. Witt's, and the atmosphere perfectly dry. Size of apartment and dryness of atmosphere are therefore the opposites of restricted space and moist atmosphere. Mr. Urquhart's bath, with a higher temperature than Mr. Rolland's, is fresher than either, because he has been enabled to combine greater size, greater altitude, a fresher material, namely, marble, moisture, and partial heating by means of the hypocaust. So the question of temperature must be regarded as relative, and not positive; a higher temperature will be fresher in a large and well-ventilated bath with few inmates, than a lower temperature in a small and less perfectly ventilated apartment. Whereas, the bath that may be fresh and agreeable in the morning when few bathers are present, may be insufferable in the after part of the day when a succession of bathers has rendered the atmosphere moist, or when many bathers are therein. The effect of many bathers being necessarily to curtail space, infuse moisture into the atmosphere, and deteriorate the ventilating medium. The temperature of a bath must therefore be specially adapted to the particular bath; it must rise or fall with its proportions or with its means of ventilation; it must rise or fall with its number of bathers; it must rise in the morning and fall in the evening. We may fix the temperature of a hot bath, but we cannot determine that of a Turkish bath.

One of the things which strikes the popular mind the most vividly in the British Turkish bath is the high temperature. When we call to mind that a hot bath is scalding at 110°, and a vapour bath at 120°, we are astonished to hear of a bath that is enjoyable at 20°, 30°, and even 50° above the temperature of scalding water. Nay, more, that can be borne without inconvenience at double the temperature of scalding water. Mr. Witt, one evening at a dinner-party, explained the curious difference of action of heat on living and dead organic matter. A few days after, a baronet, who was one of the party, visited Mr. Witt in his bath, and wrote to an incredulous friend as follows:—"I have been at Mr. Witt's bath; all that he told us is true. I cooked a mutton-chop on my knee! and in eating it afterwards the only inconvenience that I experienced was in the matter of the bread—it became toast before I could get it to my mouth." Since I first published this anecdote, a very matter-of-fact gentleman has written to me to say: "Well! I can believe the mutton-chop, but is not the bread changing to toast in its way to the mouth a little too much for credit?" I can best answer my matter-of-fact friend by saying, that in Mr. Urquhart's bath at Riverside, I sat for at least ten minutes, and without the slightest inconvenience, in his Laconicum, at a temperature of 240°—namely, 28° degrees above the boiling-point of water. If I had had bread, or meat, or eggs with me, they must necessarily have been cooked at that heat. But in reality there is nothing wonderful in all this. I am informed that during the Indian mutiny, the heat in the tents was sometimes as high as 140°. Sir Charles Blagden remained for ten minutes in a room heated to 260°. Sir Francis Chantrey's oven, in which his moulds were dried, and which was constantly entered by his men, was heated to 350°. The ovens in the slate-enamelling works of Mr. Magnus, at Pimlico, also habitually entered by the workmen, have a temperature of 350°. And the oven in which Chabert, the so-called Fire King, exhibited in London some years back, was heated to 400° and 500°.

We may therefore pass over the bravery of the exceeding high temperatures as an established fact, and not worthy of a single further remark. Man, who would be scalded by water at a temperature of 110°, and vapour or steam at 120°, can bear for a short time dry air at a temperature of 500° of Fahrenheit, and upwards. But this does not so much concern us as the question—What is the best temperature of bath, for the purposes of health? My answer must be, a moderate temperature—a temperature ranging in medium limits between 120° and 140°. The Romans, who lost the bath, used very high temperatures; the Turks, who have preserved it, who use it to this day, have recourse, as I have already shown, to very moderate temperatures. For further corroboration of the argument, let us glance at the purpose of the bath—its intention is to warm, to relax, to induce a gentle, continuous, and prolonged perspiration. It is obvious that a gentle temperature will effect this object more thoroughly and completely than a burning, parching temperature of 150° and upwards. Our purpose is not to dry up the tissues, to rob the blood of its diluent fluid, but to soften the callous scarf-skin that it may be peeled off, and to take away the excess of fluids pervading the economy, and with this excess any irritant and morbid matters which they may hold in solution.

But all this while I have been infringing one of the rules of the bath; I have been talking in the bath, and talking is of doubtful propriety; the demeanour of the bather while in the bath must be tranquil, composed, calm; he must give himself up to the dissolving process without exertion of muscle or mind; he may rub his skin gently; he may talk gently, sententiously, like a Turk, but he must not allow himself to become animated, and above all, he must not be vociferous. The bath is a practice intended for the body's health, and therefore deserves all our consideration and respect. The rule of Mr. Witt's bath cannot be too closely adhered to—only one talker at a time—and it has the further advantage that the talker knowing himself listened to, takes time to think before he speaks.

In my experience it has rarely happened that a novitiate has felt any inconvenience on his first entrance into the bath. The practised bather is never disturbed from the beginning to the end of the process. But the beginner may, after the first quarter of an hour, or when the perspiration is coming forth in abundance, feel a little oppression, sometimes a little faintness, and sometimes a little increased action of the heart. Whenever this is the case he should step out of the Calidarium; if there be a Tepidarium he will go into it, if not, he may step into the Frigidarium. The uneasy feeling soon passes away, and then he should return to the Calidarium. He may do this as often as he likes, and with the most perfect safety; and with this hint it will be his own fault if he suffer any inconvenience whatever. The remedy is not so simple when, as sometimes happens, the fount of perspiration is as yet unopened, when the bather has never perspired, or to a very imperfect and trifling extent. Here, of course, the relief which is afforded to the system by perspiration is absent, and the bather may be seriously incommoded. He must not persist; force is antagonistic to the animal economy; he must succumb, and essay to bring about perspiration by the steady use of the vapour bath,—by such a bath, in fact, as the middle room of the Turkish bath. I know many persons who have never perspired, to whom the luxury of the bath is consequently lost. I know others who cannot perspire in dry air, but can do so in vapour. How frequently we are brought to reflect on the wisdom of the Turks, who have added so much vapour to their bath since they received it as an inheritance from the Romans.

How long shall I continue in the bath, says Amicus?—As long, my friend, as may be agreeable to yourself. You do not ask me how long you shall eat, nor how long you should sit at table. The instinct that tells you to place your knife and fork across your plate, must also direct you in finishing your bath. Something will depend, it is true, on the temperature, and the rapidity of the process of perspiration. If the temperature have been very agreeable, and perspiration slow, continuous, and efficient, you may pass the best part of an hour in the Calidarium. If it have been too hot, and the process untimely hurried, you must bring your enjoyment more speedily to an end.

We shall suppose that our friends have enjoyed their bath, and have agreeably spent three-quarters of an hour in the Calidarium:—the skin is now warm and moist, and the whole frame, its muscles and its joints, are softened and relaxed. This is the proper state and period, for those operations on the muscles and joints which are called SHAMPOOING. But as the art of shampooing is unknown in this country, or, if attempted, is practised only in the public baths, we must be contented in our private bath to pass over that process, the SECOND of the bath, and betake ourselves to that which follows, the rolling or peeling of the scarf-skin.

We cannot, however, wholly pass by the process of shampooing without a cursory glance at the nature of the operation and the manner of its performance. In the inner room of the Turkish bath, we have, following the description of Mr. Urquhart, seen the bather laid upon his back, on the marble platform under the centre of the dome, his mantle converted into a sheet to protect him from the heat of the marble, and his turban placed beneath his head in the guise of a pillow. The shampooer, or tellak as he is termed—and to perform the operation properly there should be two,—"kneels at your side, and bending over, grips and presses your chest, arms, and legs, passing from part to part, like a bird shifting its place on a perch. He brings his whole weight on you with a jerk, follows the line of muscle with anatomical thumb, draws the open hand strongly over the surface, particularly round the shoulder, turning you half up in so doing; stands with his feet on the thighs and on the chest, and slips down the ribs; then up again three times; and, lastly, doubling your arms one after the other on the chest, pushes with both hands down, beginning at the elbow, and then, putting an arm under the back and applying his chest to your crossed elbows, rolls on you across till you crack. You are now turned on your face, and, in addition to the operation above described he works his elbow round the edges of your shoulder-blade, and with the heel plies hard the angle of the neck; he concludes by hauling the body half up by each arm successively, while he stands with one foot on the opposite thigh. You are then raised for a moment to a sitting posture, and a contortion given to the small of the back with the knee, and a jerk to the neck by the two hands holding the temples."

At Dar el Baida Mr. Urquhart enjoyed the opportunity of "examining a public bath of the Moors belonging to their good times. The disposition varies from that of the ancient Thermæ and the modern Hamâms. The grand and noble portion of the Turkish and the ancient bath was a dome, open to the heavens in the centre." Such a dome, without the opening in the centre, exists in the Moorish bath, but it is the inner and not the outer apartment. "The vault has deep ribs in the fashion of a clam shell, and is supported upon columns with horse-shoe arches spreading between. Instead of a system of flues through the walls, only one passed through the centre under the floor. To get at it, I had to break through the pavement of beaten mortar covering a slab of marble. It was nearly filled up with a deposit, partly of soot and partly of earthy matter, which I imagined to be the residuum of gazul." The examination of this bath awakened a desire to experience the process of the bath as practised among this ancient people. There was a bath in the house of the Governor of the province, but the Governor was away, and it was not until Mr. Urquhart had sustained a long religious argument with the Caid, that he was permitted to complete his experience. His bath attendant and shampooer was the sub-governor; and the occurrence was to be kept secret from the inhabitants of the town on religious grounds. This may explain, perhaps, the roughness of the receptions which Mr. Urquhart met with, and the absence of those refinements and comforts which commonly belong to the Eastern bath.