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read over the documents purporting to be Osric's time after 

 time, and he could not convince himself that they were 

 genuine or had traces of a genuine origin. The period during 

 which he thought Bath had lain vacant was about 200 years, till 

 the time of Offa, in fact, and then it had been peopled gradually. 

 Then as to the name ; that there had intervened a great blank 

 in the history of Bath the change of name seemed to bear witness. 

 In the great chronicle from which all the local chronicles are 

 derived the name is Bathanceaster. That was so strange, hybrid 

 and unheard of, that he had no more doubt than if he looked over 

 the man's shoulder, that the copyist in the reign of Alfred had 

 altered the first syllable, Akeman, to make the name as he thought 

 more intelligible. Ace was Aquae, the old Latin name of Bath ; 

 the same word appeared in Aix la Chapelle, rendered Achen by 

 the Germans, and in Aix, a town of Provence, and Dax, a town 

 in the Pyrenees. Man was the British word for place, and Ace- 

 man was what the British made of the name Aquae Solis. The 

 Saxons when they took it up added Chester. That was the name 

 before the period of desolation, but when the city reappeared it 

 was called Bath, from " JEt Bathum," the dative plural, or in full, 

 " ^t tham hatum Bathum." Akemanceaster lingered locally, as 

 such words do, and in the poetry of the ninth and tenth centuries 

 they found mention of " Bath, which old wi-iters called Akeman- 

 ceaster." The mediaeval Latin writers took Akeman to be a person, 

 and called it Akemanni Civitas. Mr. Earle continued — in these 

 days of an organised central authority it is easy to force a change 

 of name, and the Post Office can alter Twerton to Twerton-on- 

 Avon, but in those old times nothing was more difficult than to 

 alter the name of a place continuously inhabited, and the change 

 in the name of the city was a strong proof that it lay desolate and 

 uninhabited. The third period he would name was the 12th 

 century. When the late Eector (Mr. Kemble) opened the ground 

 in Orange Grove, to make a coal cellar for the Abbey, he came 

 upon a beautiful tesselated floor, which was of the 13th century, 



