Richard Nash, known as 'Beau' Nash, who is the subject of Mr. Froom Tyler's fourth talk on 'Wise Men of the West,' was connected all his life with the West Country. He was born in 1674 at Swansea, and attended Carmarthen Grammar School. He went to Oxford and then entered the Army; this profession was too strenuous, and he reverted to the law, which meant, for him, dressing well and leading a gay life. Between 1695 and 1705 he lived chiefly by winning strange bets, such as riding naked through a village on a cow. He soon took to gambling and, in pursuit of that, went to Bath in 1705. Bath was then fashionable, but uncomfortable: Nash resolved to reform it, and his organizing capacities soon made him Master of Ceremonies and virtually King of Bath. He provided the Assembly Rooms, drew and posted up a set of rules, stopped the universal habits of wearing swords everywhere, duelling, smoking in the presence of ladies, and checked the rapacity of lodging-house keepers: in short, he made the town less provincial in tone. He was strict in his authority and came down severely on breaches of etiquette. His wisdom amounted to this, and was great for a Beau, but his vanity was enormous: He was surrounded by flatterers, and used to travel in a chariot drawn by six greys. He wore a cream-coloured hat of enormous size, which he explained by saying that it was more difficult to steal than other hats. The laws of 1745 against gambling made his income rather precarious, and he was a poor man for the rest of his life. He had not, however, such a fall as his imitator Beau Brummel, who ruined himself by checking his friend the Prince of Wales.