The city itself abounds in interest.  It is a gem of Georgian art, with a complete homogeneous architectural character of its own which makes it singular and unique.  It is full of memories of the great folks who thronged its streets, attended the Bath and Pump Room, and listened to sermons in the Octagon.  It tells of the autocracy of Beau Nash, of Goldsmith, Sheridan, David Garrick, of the “First Gentleman of Europe,” and many others who made Bath famous.  And now it is likely that this unique little city with its memories and its charming architectural features is to be mutilated for purely commercial reasons.  Every one knows Bath Street with its colonnaded loggias on each side terminated with a crescent at each end, and leading to the Cross Bath in the centre of the eastern crescent.  That the original founders of Bath Street regarded it as an important architectural feature of the city is evident from the inscription in abbreviated Latin which was engraved on the first stone of the street when laid:—­

PRO
VRBIS DIG:  ET AMP: 
HAEC PON:  CVRAV: 
SC: 
DELEGATI
A:  D:  MDCCXCI. 
I:  HORTON, PRAET: 
T:  BALDWIN, ARCHITECTO.

which may be read to the effect that “for the dignity and enlargement (of the city) the delegates I. Horton, Mayor, and T. Baldwin, architect, laid this (stone) A.D. 1791.”

It is actually proposed by the new proprietors of the Grand Pump Hotel to entirely destroy the beauty of this street by removing the colonnaded loggia on one side of this street and constructing a new side to the hotel two or three storeys higher, and thus to change the whole character of the street and practically destroy it.  It is a sad pity, and we should have hoped that the city Council would have resisted very strongly the proposal that the proprietors of the hotel have made to their body.  But we hear that the Council is lukewarm in its opposition to the scheme, and has indeed officially approved it.  It is astonishing what city and borough councils will do, and this Bath Council has “the discredit of having, for purely commercial reasons, made the first move towards the destruction architecturally of the peculiar charm of their unique and beautiful city."[42]

  [42] The Builder, March 6, 1909.

Evesham is entirely a monastic town.  It sprang up under the sheltering walls of the famous abbey—­

        A pretty burgh and such as Fancy loves
        For bygone grandeurs.

This abbey shared the fate of many others which we have mentioned.  The Dean of Gloucester thus muses over the “Vanished Abbey":—­