It was a far cry from Bladud to Nicholas Jardine! A goodly span, too, from the time when a great statesman was carried through the streets of Bath, swathed in flannels; his livid face, peering through the windows of the sedan chair, the fierce eyes staring from beneath his powdered wig. One can almost see his ghost in Milsom Street, and hear the whisper spread from group to group: "There he goes! the great Commoner, Mr. Pitt!" And now through the streets of the same town they wheeled a very different sort of statesman; and yet, perhaps, the product, by slow processes of inevitable evolution, of that very time "when America thrust aside the British sceptre, when the ingenious machine of Dr. Guillotine removed the heads of King and Queen in France, when Ireland rose in rebellion, when Napoleon grasped at the dominion of the Western World, when Wellington fought the French Marshals in Spain," and when, God be thanked! Nelson triumphed in Trafalgar Bay. Just as the inhabitants and visitors of Bath used to take off their hats to William Pitt in his sedan chair, so now the new generation saluted Nicholas Jardine, when, seated in his bath-chair, he was drawn through the streets to the baths. For though times were changed, the President in his way was a great personage--such a remarkably successful man; and in all times it has been proved true that nothing succeeds like success. Jardine, when he acknowledged these salutations, showed an awkwardness unknown to those to the Manor born. It disconcerted him to be stared at, especially now that he was ill. He hated traversing the public streets, and often sat with closed eyes until his chair entered the bathing establishment. Once there he became alert and interested--but not in the reminiscences of Georgian functions and the manners and customs of the fops and flirts of that vanished period. What appealed to him, as a trained mechanic, was the heritage of far remoter days. The brain of the Roman Engineer and the skilled hand of the Roman Architect and Mason had left these signs and wonders for future generations to look upon. The great rectangular bath had only been uncovered about sixty years earlier. The Goths and Vandals of an earlier period had built over it their trumpery shops and dwelling-houses. But the present bath, with its modern additions, actually was built upon the ancient piers. The very pavements, or scholæ, that bordered it were those which the Roman bathers had trod. The recesses or exedræ corresponded with those at Pompeii, and had been used for hanging the clothes of the Roman bathers or for resting places. The floor of the bath was coated with lead, and in all probability that lead was brought from the Roman mines in the Mendip Hills, where had been discovered the imperial emblems of Claudius and Vespasian.