130 Bath in its relation to Education. 



times in which Bath awoke from its long sleep were at all 

 favourable to the acquisition of knowledge. In this respect 

 the seventeenth century was greatly inferior to the two 

 immediately preceding. The mental quickening through- 

 out Christendom, caused by the revival of learning, had 

 already begun to droop in England. No spirit like that 

 which distinguished the Court and the country in the reigns 

 of Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Elizabeth could now be 

 seen either at Whitehall or elsewhere. Anstey, Fielding, 

 and Smollet give descriptions, not less faithful than amusing, 

 of the squires and their wives who came to the City of the 

 Springs ; and other writers show that even the clergy and 

 justices were content with the literature suppUed by the 

 daily post-boy. "A great scholar," 'says Macaulay, "would 

 he be thought who had Hudibras and the Seven Champions 

 of Christendom lying amongst his fishing-rods and fowling- 

 pieces; while as to the ladies of his household, the most 

 highly-born and bred were unable to write without such 

 faults of spelling as would disgrace a modern charity girl." 



Even over King Edward's School there came 

 King Edward's ^ ^^^^ ^^ ^^^^^^_ -j-j^g Trustecs of the 



School. ' •' ... 



property shamefully perverted, it, acting, m 

 fact as if there were no trust. Mere scanty crumbs fell to 

 the young and the poor for many years, until courts of 

 law and the still stronger legislature stopped the iniquity. 

 Then, under a succession of competent masters, the school 

 revived. A clergyman possessing the advowson of Charl- 

 comb, near Bath, presented it as an addition to the original 

 endowment. In 1754 a new site was purchased, and the 

 present handsome building erected at a cost altogether of 

 between four and five thousand pounds. A century later 

 the three hundredth anniversary of the school was cele- 



