A brief sketch of Beau Nash and the means adopted will account in some measure for the marvellous change in Bath in the eighteenth century. Nash was educated at Carmarthen Grammar School, and Jesus College, Oxford. He then obtained a commission in the army. This he soon threw up to become a law-student at the Middle Temple. Whilst there he gained much attention by his wit and sociability. These qualities induced his fellow-students to elect him as the president of a pageant that they prepared for William III. The king was so pleased with Nash that, it is said, he offered him a knighthood. This Nash refused unless accompanied by a pension, which was not granted. He was much addicted to gambling, which, in addition to a restless spirit and an empty purse, led him in 1704 to try his luck at Bath, a place which then offered opportunities to a gamester. There he soon became master of the ceremonies, in succession to Captain Webster. Under his authority reforms were introduced which speedily accorded to Bath a leading position as a fashionable watering-place. He formed a strict code of rules for the regulation of balls and assemblies; allowed no swords to be worn in places of public amusement; persuaded gentlemen to discard boots for shoes and stockings when in assemblies and parades, and introduced a tariff for lodgings. As insignia of his office he wore an immense white hat, and a richly embroidered dress. He drove about in a chariot with six greys, and laced lackeys blew French horns. When Parliament abolished gambling it caused a serious check to the visits of fashionable people to the city. However, the Corporation, in recognition of his valuable services, granted Nash a pension of 120 guineas a year, and at his death in 1761 he was buried with splendour at the expense of the town. A year after his demise his biography was anonymously published in London by Oliver Goldsmith. John Wood, the architect, though hardly as well known to posterity as Nash, must not be overlooked. Till he appeared in Bath in 1728, the city had been confined strictly within the Roman limits. The suburbs consisted merely of a few scattered houses. Wood improved and enlarged the city by his architectural efforts, which led to the quarrying of freestone found existing in the neighbourhood. His successors carried on his enterprise. The grand Pump-room, erected in 1797, with a portico of Corinthian columns; the King's Bath, with a Doric colonnade; the Queen's Bath; the Cross Bath, so called from a cross erected in the centre of it; the Hot Bath, on account of its superior degree of heat, were once thronged by fashionable gatherings in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.