72

WILDBAD.

CHAPT. V.

squarc feet, and a natural temperature of 27° of Reaumur. It is built and decorated, (as indeed the whole structure) in the Byzantine style, and most tastefully and luxuriantly fitted up. Five persons may use it simultaneously, for wbich purpose five separate dressing-rooms are attached to it. As the basin is not provided with partitions like the other bath-rooms, it is used by both sexes alternately with an interlapse of an hour betiveen the baths taken, to clean and replenish it. The description Dr. Granville gives of the Fürstenbad, is iuteresting. “I entered the Fürsten or Prin- ce’s bath, he says, after having undressed in an adjoining room, where I found a sofa, chairs, a table with a mirror, a carpet, and w^arm linen. I sejected an hour, when no other person was present. When bathers, of either sex, choose to bathe in common, in their respeclive baths, it is an indispensable rule of the place, that they should wear a roquelaure.

After descending a few steps from the dressing-room into the bath-room, I walked over the warm soft sand to the farthest end of the bath and I laid myself down upon it, near the principal spring, resting my head on a clean wooden pillow. The soothing effect of the water, as it came over me , up to the throat, transparent like the brightest gern or aquamarine, soft, genially warm, and gently mur- muring, I shall never forget. Millions of bubbles of gas rose from the sand, and played around me, quivering through the lucid water as they asccnded, and bursting at the sur- face, to bc succeeded by others. The Sensation produced by these, as many of theni, with their tremulous motion, just effleuraient the surface of the body, like the much vaunted effect of titiilation in animal magnetism, is not to be described. It partakes of tranquillity and exhilaration; of the ecstatic state of a devotee, blended with the repose