The Historical and local new Bath guide : containing an accurate description of the public buildings, institutions, and amusements of the city; with observations on the medicinal virtues, and directions for the use of the hot waters.

Date:: 1823

Credit: The Historical and local new Bath guide : containing an accurate description of the public buildings, institutions, and amusements of the city; with observations on the medicinal virtues, and directions for the use of the hot waters. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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$As soon as matters were prepared for the journey, the Prince and his master sat out tor the palace of L\id Hudi- bras; and after their arrival there, it was not long before Bladud found an opportunity, while the king and queen were dining in public, of putting the ring his mother had given him into a glass of wine that was presented to her; which the queen, after drinking the liquor, no sooner per- ceived at the bottom of the glass, than she knew it to be the token she had given her son; and with rapture cried out, Where is Bladud my child! At these words an universal consternation overspread the whole assembly; and while the people were looking at one another with surprise and amazement, the prince made his way through the crowd, and prostrating himself before the king and queen, he was thereupon, to the great as- tonishment and satisfaction of his master, received by them and all the nobles present, though in his shepherd's clothes, with the utmost transports of joy, as the heir apparent to the British crown; but could not be prevailed upon to tell where or how he got his cure. When the rejoicings were over on the happy event of Bladud's return from exile, and the young prince had sent his master home loaded with presents, he begau to solicit his father's leave to take a journey into foreign parts, not only to improve himself in the knowledge of things, but to be out of the way of those who had been the cause of his banishment from court, the better to stifle his resentment for such cruel usage; and the king approving of his son's designs and reasons, resolved upon sending him to Greece, as he was a youth of extraordinary genius, to be instructed in the learning for which the Grecians were then eminent through all the world. Ambassadors were therefore immediately appointed to go to those learned people, and notify to them the king's in- tention ; Lud Iludibras at the same time ordering a nunie-^. rous retinue, arrayed in the most splendid manner, to attend his son. But Bladud besought his father to omit all this, and instead of sending him abroad as the heir-ap- parent of the British crown, to permit him to set out on his travels as a private person dressed in a habit of a student, desirous of nothing but the attainment of knowledge. The king after many persuasive arguments, complied$