448 



BATHOS B ATOM. 



gluttony, ami also :tfl r having lieen expos, il to any 

 iiiniMUil exercise or fatigue. After the time of Pom- 

 pey, they appear to liave carried the practice to an 

 absurd anil ridiculous excess, insoiuiich that one of 

 Uieir emperors, Tims, is said to liave fallen a victim 

 to it; ami at length Hadrian, liy a public edict, im- 

 posed a restraint upon the immoderate use of bath- 

 ing. The Romans were in the. habit, of bathing at 

 three o'clock in the afternoon, and this is perhaps 

 the best hour in our own country, as the stomach is 

 then empty. Hut when the warm hath is employed 

 as a remedy, for the purpose of producing perspira- 

 tion, it is better to enter it at nine o'clock in the 

 evening, and go to bed immediately on coming out. 

 Delicaie persons and children ought not to bathe in 

 the sea sooner than ten or eleven o'clock in the 

 morning, nor ought they to go in fasting, or remain 

 in it longer than a few minutes ; and, indeed, young 

 children should not he suffered to continue in the 

 water longer than is necessary for a single plunge. 

 Whenever the cold bath produces shivering, we may 

 conclude that it disagrees. Bathing in rivers and 

 cold streams is generally more dangerous than in the 

 open sea, owing to the greater coldness of the for- 

 mer, and the tendency of fresh water to evaporate 

 more quickly from the skin. The greatest impru- 

 dence a person can commit is to use a cold bath in 

 the morning after any debauchery or excess in eating 

 or drinking the preceding evening. Most of the 

 fetal accidents arising from cold bathing are to be 

 traced to this source. Even Alexander the Great is 

 said to have lost his life from this imprudence. The 

 tlangers attending the warm bath are attributable to 

 using water at too high a temperature, as, for exam- 

 ple, all baths heated above 105 ; and apoplexy and 

 death have been known to follow immediately after 

 the tise of a very hot bath, particularly when entered 

 with a full stomach. It may be of consequence, 

 however, to remark, that there are some persons 

 endued with so singular a sensibility as to teel a bath 

 of 110 not too warm, and to be absolutely chilled 

 by a bath of 100" ; and, in such cases, it is probable 

 that at 105 the pulsations of the heart would not be 

 materially accelerated. But these are rare and ex- 

 treme cases, quite out of the course of our experience. 

 Most authors who write on bathing recommend 

 that, in using the cold bath, the head should be 

 plunged in first, and where there is reason to appre- 

 hend headache, this may be a proper precaution, 

 otherwise it is of little moment. Cold bathing ought 

 to be avoided by all persons who have any tendency 

 to spitting of blood or consumption, or where there 

 is any latent visceral disease or tendency to apoplexy. 

 Gouty people, also, cannot use the cold bath without 

 danger ; but, on the other hand, there are few per- 

 sons to whom a tepid bath is of greater service. The 

 great Achilles was probably a delicate, rickety 

 child, and, as his mother held him by the heel while 

 she plunged him in the cold waters of the Styx, it is 

 probable, that she contented herself with giving him 

 a single plunge at a time. Horace tells us that in 

 his clays the Romans were apt to exceed in cold 

 bathing in the Tiber, and warns his countrymen 

 against the danger of such heroism as swimming 

 thrice across that river. The Serpentine river in 

 London is dangerous to bathers, chiefly from the icy 

 coldness of the springs with which it abounds, which 

 produce an instantaneous palsy or cramp in the mus- 

 cles and limbs of the best swimmers. There are 

 dangerous spots, generally, in all deep rivers, and it 

 is proper to warn all young persons of the existence 

 of such places, as hundreds of lives are lost annually 

 from an ignorance of the cause of such fatal accidents. 

 BATHOS ( Greek) signifies depth. We now use this 

 word to signify a low, tame, and creeping style. 



This application of the word was introduced by Swift, 

 who, in his Art of Sinking in Poetry, opposes the 

 Initlius to the sublime. 



BATHURST; a settlement on the west coast of Af- 

 rica, formed by the British, within a few years, on 

 the island of St Mary's, near the mouth of the Gam- 

 bia ; lat. 13 25' N. It was formed in connexion 

 with the colony of Sierra Leone ; the oliject being to 

 establish an equitable commerce, instead of the slave 

 trade. Population, in 1819, exclusive of the garri- 

 son, upwards of 1000. The settlement has been 

 prosperous. The exports consist of wax, ivory, gold, 

 bides, gum,&c. The duties on the amount exported 

 to Britain, in 1819, were upwards of- l 1,000. 

 There is a town of the same name in New Holland, 

 in the region of Botany Bay, 140 miles from Sydney. 



BATHHKST, Allen, earl, the son of Sir Menjaniin 

 Bathurst, was born in London, in 1684. He was 

 educated at Oxford, and represented the borough of 

 Cirencester, in two parliaments, during the reign of 

 Anne, whose tory administration he strongly sup- 

 ported ; and, in return, was raised to the peerage, 

 in 1711. He was a warm opponent to Sir Robert 

 Walpole, and, in 1757, was appointed treasurer 

 to prince George, then prince of Wales, on whose 

 accession to the throne he obtained a pension of 

 _s>000 per annum. He received nn earldom in 

 1772. Lord Bathurst is distinguished as the intimate 

 friend of Bolingbroke, Addison, Pope, Swift, Gay, and 

 all the celebrated wits of the nge, and was himself a 

 man of bright parts and convivial disposition. He 

 died in 1775, at the advanced age of ninety-one. 



BATHVLLUS ; a native of Alexandria, rival of Pyla- 

 des as a pantomime, particularly distinguished in 

 lively and voluptuous representations. He was a 

 slave of Maecenas, who gave him his liberty, and, 

 according to the testimony of Tacitus, the object of a 

 licentious attachment on his part. In Anacreon's odes, 

 a handsome boy is mentioned under the name of B. 

 Also, a poet of this name lived in the reign of Augustus. 



BATISTE ; cambric ; a very fine, thick, white, linen 

 cloth. It is made of the best white flax, called rame, 

 which is cultivated in the French Hainault. In the 

 13th century, this manufacture is said to have been 

 brought into vogue by Baptista Chambrai, in Flan- 

 ders, and the linen afterwards received from him the 

 name of batiste, or cambric (toilc de Chambrai). 

 Others think that the first appellation is derived from 

 the fine linen which we receive from India, where it 

 is called bastas. Different kinds of batiste are called 

 linons, claires, cambrics, &c., and manufactured not 

 only in France and the Netherlands, but also in 

 Switzerland, in Bohemia, and Silesia. The best come 

 from India. See Cambric. 



BATMAN ; a kind of weight, used at Smyrna, con- 

 sisting of six okes. Forty batmans make a camel's load, 

 and amount to about 720 pounds in English weight. 

 There are four different kinds of this weight a small 

 and large Turkish, and a small and large Persian one. 



BATON ROUGE; a post-town and capital of East 

 Baton Rouge parish, Louisiana, on the east bank of 

 the Mississippi. It contains a court-house, a jail, a 

 market-house, a Catholic church, a printing office, 

 and upwards of 200 houses. It is pleasantly situated 

 on the first eminence that is seen on the Mississippi, 

 in ascending it from its mouth. 



BATONI, Pompeo Girolamo ; born at Lucca, in 1708; 

 died at Rome in 1787. This famous restorer of the 

 modern Roman school had no rival but Mengs. All 

 his pieces are taken from nature. The manner in 

 which he executed his paintings was peculiar. He 

 covered his sketch with a cloth, and began to paint 

 the upper part on the left hand, and proceeded gra- 

 dually to-wards the right, never uncovering a new 

 place before the first was entirely finished. Boni, 



