Sitting there one day, thinking of nothing, I was gradually
awakened to a feeling almost of astonishment at the sight of
the extraordinary number of memorial tablets of every
imaginable shape and size which crowd the walls. So numerous
are they and so closely placed that you could not find space
anywhere to put your hand against the wall. We are accustomed
to think that in cathedrals and other great ecclesiastical
buildings the illustrious dead receive burial, and their names
and claims on our gratitude and reverence are recorded, but in
no fane in the land is there so numerous a gathering of the
dead as in this place. The inscription-covered walls were
like the pages of an old black-letter volume without margins.
Yet when I came to think of it I could not recall any Bath
celebrity or great person associated with Bath except Beau
Nash, who was not perhaps a very great person. Probably
Carlyle would have described him as a "meeserable creature."
Leaving my seat I began to examine the inscriptions, and found
that they had not been placed there in memory of men belonging
to Bath or even Somerset. These monuments were erected to
persons from all counties in the three kingdoms, and from all
the big towns, those to Londoners being most numerous. Nor
were they of persons distinguished in any way. Here you
find John or Henry or Thomas Smith, or Brown, or Jones, or
Robinson, provision dealer, or merchant, of Clerkenwell, or
Bermondsey, or Bishopsgate Street Within or Without; also many
retired captains, majors, and colonels.
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