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 382 BATH Sept. 24, 1864. At the age of 15 he entered the counting-house of William B. Gray in Bos- ton, and by his remarkable capacity soon at- tracted the notice of Mr. Gray's father, who sent him to the north of Europe to protect his interests there. In 1826, through the influence of Messrs. Baring Brothers and company, he formed a house in London, in connection with Mr. John Baring, son of Sir Thomas Baring, under the firm of Bates and Baring. On the death of Mr. Holland these gentlemen were both made partners in the house of Baring Brothers and company, of which Mr. Bates re- mained till his death an active member. In 1854 Mr. Bates was appointed umpire in the English and American commission which had been arranged by the two governments to settle claims held by the citizens of one coun- try against the government of the other. In 1852 he chanced to read the official report of a plan for establishing a free public library in Boston, and wrote immediately to the mayor of Boston offering to contribute $50,000 toward the scheme, on condition that the income of his fund should annually be spent in the pur- chase of books of permanent value, and that the city should always provide comfortable accommodations for their use, both day and evening, by at least 100 readers. The building was dedicated in 1858, and up to that time he had given to the library between 20,000 and 30,000 volumes over and above all that had been purchased by the resources of his fund. Mr. Bates was married in 1813 to Lucretia Augusta Sturgis, by whom he had one surviving child, Madame Van de Weyer, wife of an emi- nent diplomatist of Belgium. BATH, a place or vessel for washing the body. Besides the employment of natural streams and bodies of water, the artificial bath has been used from the earliest times of which we have any record. It is mentioned in Homer, the vessel for bathing being described as of polished marble, like many of the basins which have been found in the Roman baths. Even the warm bath is referred to in the Iliad and Odys- sey, but it is spoken of as effeminate. In the historical periods of Greece there were numer- ous baths in Athens and the other large cities ; but we know little of their arrangement, and they appear never to have attained the magnifi- cence afterward reached in Rome. At Rome, in the time of the second Punic war and of the vigor of the republic, the baths, according to Seneca, were dark, small, and inconvenient. It was only with the beginning of the empire that they began to be among the most magnificent buildings of the city, the immense ruins which still exist testifying to the almost unparalleled luxury of their arrangements. The public bath at Pompeii (uncovered in 1824), though inferior in size and appointments to those of the capital, was similar probably to them in its internal ar- rangements. It occupied an area of about 10,- 000 sq. ft., and contained two distinct bathing establishments, of which the smaller is believed to have been appropriated exclusively to the women. In the men's baths is first a court, about 60 ft. long, bounded on two sides by a Plan of Pompcian Bath. Doric portico, in which those who were waiting their turn for admission to the thermos might walk or repose upon the benches placed along the wall. From this court there was a com- munication by means of a corridor with a small- er room, frigidarium, in the walls of which holes are observed, which served for the inser- tion of pegs on which the clothes of the bathers might be hung. This room was the apodyte- rium (the place where the clothes were left) for those who intended to take the natatio, or cold bath. From it another door opened into an apartment in which was placed the natato- rium, or the piscina, a basin for the cold bath. The piscina itself occupies the centre of the room; it is of white marble, circular, 12 ft. 10 in. in diameter, and a little more than 3 ft. in depth ; 10 in. below the lip, and 2 ft. 4 in. from the bottom, it is surrounded by a marble seat, 1 1 in. in width. The water was conducted into the Ground Plan. Frigidarium in a Bath at Rome. basin by a bronze spout, the remains of which can still be discerned in the wall of the cham- ber. In the bottom was an outlet, by which the water could be let out and the piscina cleaned, while the rim is furnished with a waste pipe. From ihe frigidarium a door opened into a simi- lar room, which appears to have been warmed by a large portable fireplace, and was furnished with bronze seats placed along the wall. This