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newspapers were started in the first quarter of the 18th century. 
Bath, so far as is known, was nearly twenty years later in getting 
a paper of its own. In the meanwhile its wants were supplied by 
a city with which it has now no special connection—Gloucester. 
Robert Raikes, well remembered as the founder of the Sunday 
Schools, started in 1722 “The Gloucester Journal with the most 
”) 
“important Occurrences Foreign and Domestic I have upon 
the table three volumes containing the numbers for the years 
1734 to 1740.* | Raikes boasts therein of the extent to which his 
newsmen circulated his paper, and they appear to have covered a 
district extending as far as Taunton on one side and Salisbury 
the other. This “Gloucester Journal” gives the Bath news almost 
as fully as the regular Bath papers for many years after, and it is 
‘exceedingly interesting for its contemporary accounts of the visit 
of the Prince and Princess of Wales in 1738, of how the Prince 
promised the city a solid gold cup, and how, after many delays, a 
silver gilt one was obtained by the pertinacity of Nash. It also 
records the erection of the obelisks in the Orange Grove and in 
the Queen Square, and members of the Bath and County Club 
may like to know the wonders of the latter structure :—t+ 
“Yesterday an Obelisk was begun to be built in the Center of Queen 
“ Square, in Honour of His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, at the 
“ Charge of Richard Nash, Esq.; Its Height is to be equal to that of 
“the Obelisk described by Pliny, erected in the ancient City of 
“ Heliopolis, by Rameses the then reigning King of Egypt, when Troy 
“was taken, namely, sixty Egyptian Cubits, which exceeds the 
“ Altitude of the famous Obelisk before St. Peter’s Church at Rome. 
“This Obelisk is to be in the Form of a Ray of the Sun, the Egyptians 
“ dedicating to that Luminary these Sort of Monuments, in Token of 
“some great Action, or some extraordinary Cure; and under this 
“Shape, instead of a Statue, the Phcenicians worshipped the Sun ; 
“the Grecians following the same Example, paid their Adorations to 
——_—_ 
* Lent by Mr. William Lewis. 
t+ Gloucester Journal, Nov, 28, 1738. 
