But whatever be the case with respect to the Celtic sovereign, there is,
I presume, no doubt, that the Romans were here, and probably the
centurians and tribunes cast the _alea_ in some pristine assembly-room,
or wagged their plumes in some well-built Pump-room, with as much spirit
of fashion as the full-bottomed-wig exquisites in the reign of King
Nash. At any rate Bath has been in almost every age a common centre for
health-seekers and gamesters--two antipodal races who always flock
together--and if it has from time to time declined, it has only been for
a period. Saxon churls and Norman lords were too sturdy to catch much
rheumatic gout; crusaders had better things to think of than their
imaginary ailments; good-health was in fashion under Plantagenets and
Tudors; doctors were not believed in; even empirics had to praise their
wares with much wit, and Morrison himself must have mounted a bank and
dressed in Astleyian costume in order to find a customer; sack and
small-beer were harmless, when homes were not comfortable enough to keep
earl or churl by the fireside, and 'out-of-doors' was the proper
drawing-room for a man: in short, sickness came in with civilization,
indisposition with immoral habits, fevers with fine gentlemanliness,
gout with greediness, and valetudinarianism--there _is_ no Anglo-Saxon
word for that--with what we falsely call refinement.
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