Chapter 5

CONCERNING THE WORTHIES, OR GOOD MEN, WHO WERE NATIVES OF DONCASTER OR OTHERWISE CONNECTED WITH THAT TOWN.

Vir bonus est quis?TERENCE.

Let good old Fuller answer the well-known question which is conveyed in the motto to this chapter. “And here,” he says, “be it remembered, that the same epithet in several places accepts sundry interpretations. He is called a Good Man in common discourse, who is not dignified with gentility: a Good Man upon the Exchange, who hath a responsible estate; a Good Man in a Camp, who is a tall man of his arms; a Good Man in the Church who is pious and devout in his conversation. Thus whatever is fixed therein in other relations, that person is a Good Man in history, whose character affords such matter as may please the palate of an ingenuous reader.”

Two other significations may be added which Fuller has not pretermitted, because he could not include them, they being relatively to him, of posthumous birth. A Good Man upon State trials, or in certain Committees which it might not be discreet to designate, is one who will give his verdict without any regard to his oath in the first case or to the evidence in both. And in the language of the Pugilists it signifies one who can bear a great deal of beating: Hal Pierce, the Game Chicken and unrivalled glory of the ring, pronounced this eulogium upon Mr. Gully, the present honorable member for Pontefract, when he was asked for a candid opinion of his professional merits:— “Sir he was the very Best Man as ever I had.”

Among the Good Men, in Fuller's acceptation of the term, who have been in any way connected with Doncaster, the first in renown as well as in point of time, is Robin Hood. Many men talk of him who never shot in his bow; but many think of him when they drink at his Well, which is at Skelbroke by the way side, about six miles from Doncaster on the York road. There is a small inn near with Robin Hood for its sign; this country has produced no other hero whose popularity has endured so long. The Duke of Marlborough, the Duke of Cumberland, and the Marquis of Granby have flourished upon sign-posts, and have faded there; so have their compeers Prince Eugene and Prince Ferdinand. Rodney and Nelson are fading; and the time is not far distant when Wellington also will have had his day. But while England shall be England Robin Hood will be a popular name.

Near Robin Hood's Well, and nearer to Doncaster, the Hermit of Hampole resided, at the place from which he was so called, “where living he was honored, and dead was buried and sainted.” Richard Role, however, for that was his name, was no otherwise sainted than by common opinion in those parts. He died in 1349, and is the oldest of our known Poets. His writings both in verse and prose which are of considerable extent ought to be published at the expense of some national institution.

In the next generation John Marse, who was born in a neighbouring village of that name, flourished in the Carmelite Convent at Doncaster, and obtained great celebrity in his time for writing against—a far greater than himself—John Wickliffe.

It is believed that Sir Martin Frobisher was born at Doncaster, and that his father was Mayor of that place. “I note this the rather,” says Fuller, “because learned Mr. Carpenter, in his Geography, recounts him among the famous men of Devonshire; but why should Devonshire which hath a flock of Worthies of her own, take a lamb from another country.” This brave seaman when he left his property to a kinsman who was very likely to dissipate it, said, “it was gotten at sea, and would never thrive long at land.”

Lord Molesworth having purchased the estate at Edlington, four miles from Doncaster, formerly the property of Sir Edward Stanhope, resided there occasionally in the old mansion, during the latter part of his life. His Account of Denmark is a book which may always be read with profit. The Danish Ambassador complained of it to King William, and hinted that if one of his Danish Majesty's subjects had taken such liberties with the King of England, his master would upon complaint, have taken off the author's head. “That I cannot do,” replied William; “but if you please I will tell him what you say, and he shall put it into the next edition of his book.”

Other remarkable persons who were connected with Doncaster, and were contemporaries with Dr. Dove will be noticed in due time. Here I shall only mention two who have distinguished themselves since his days (alas!) and since I took my leave of a place endeared to me by so many recollections. Mr. Bingley well known for his popular works upon Natural History, and Mr. Henry Lister Maw, the adventurous naval officer who was the first Englishman that ever came down the great river Amazons, are both natives of this town. I know not whether the Doncaster Maws are of Hibernian descent; but the name of M‛Coglan is in Ireland beautified and abbreviated into Maw; the M‛Coglan, or head of the family was called the Maw; and a district of King's County was known within the memory of persons now living by the appellation of the Maws County.

For myself, I am behind a veil which is not to be withdrawn: nevertheless I may say, without consideration of myself, that in Doncaster both because of the principal scene and of the subject of this work

HONOS ERIT HUIC QUOQUE TOMO.

CONTINGENT CAUSES. PERSONAL CONSIDERATIONS INDUCED BY REFLECTING ON THEM. THE AUTHOR TREMBLES FOR THE PAST.

Vereis que no hay lazada desasidaDe nudo y de pendencia soberana;Ni a poder trastornar la orden del cieloLas fuerzas llegan, ni el saber del suelo.BALBUENA.

“There is no action of man in this life,” says Thomas of Malmesbury, “which is not the beginning of so long a chain of consequences, as that no human providence is high enough to give us a prospect to the end.” The chain of causes however is as long as the chain of consequences,—peradventure longer; and when I think of the causes which have combined to procreate this book, and the consequences which of necessity it must produce, I am lost in admiration.

How many accidents might for ever have impossibilitated the existence of this incomparable work! If, for instance, I the Unknown, had been born in any other part of the world than in the British dominions; or in any other age than one so near the time in which the venerable subject of these memoirs flourished; or in any other place than where these localities could have been learnt, and all these personalities were remembered; or if I had not counted it among my felicities like the philosopher of old, and the Polish Jews of this day, (who thank God for it in their ritual), to have been born a male instead of a female; or if I had been born too poor to obtain the blessings of education, or too rich to profit by them: or if I had not been born at all. If indeed in the course of six thousand years which have elapsed since the present race of intellectual inhabitants were placed upon this terraqueous globe, any chance had broken off one marriage among my innumerable married progenitors, or thwarted the courtship of those my equally innumerable ancestors who lived before that ceremony was instituted, or in countries where it was not known,—where, or how would my immortal part have existed at this time, or in what shape would these bodily elements have been compounded with which it is invested? A single miscarriage among my millions of grandmothers might have cut off the entail of my mortal being!

Quid non evertit primordia frivola vitæ?Nec mirum, vita est integra pene nihil.Nunc perit, ah! tenui pereuntis odore lucernæ,Et fumum hunc fumus fortior ille fugat.Totum aquilis Cæsar rapidis circumvolet orbem,Collegamque sibi vix ferat esse Jovem.Quantula res quantos potuisset inepta triumphos,Et magnum nasci vel prohibere Deum!Exhæredasset moriente lucernula flammâTot dominis mundum numinibusque novis.Tu quoque tantilli, juvenis Pellæe, perisses,(Quam gratus terris ille fuisset odor!)Tu tantùm unius qui pauper regulus orbis,Et prope privatus visus es esse tibi.Nec tu tantùm, idem potuisset tollere casusTeque Jovis fili, Bucephalumque tuum:Dormitorque urbem malè delevisset agasoBucephalam è vestris, Indica Fata, libris.1

The snuff of a candle,—a fall,—a fright,—nay, even a fit of anger! Such things are happening daily,—yea, hourly, upon this peopled earth. One such mishap among so many millions of cases, millions ten million times told, centillions multiplied beyond the vocabulary of numeration, and ascending to ψαμμακοσὶα,—which word having been coined by a certain Alexis (perhaps no otherwise remembered,) and latinizedarenagintaby Erasmus, is now Anglicizedsandillionsby me;—one such among them all!—I tremble to think of it!

1COWLEY.

Again. How often has it depended upon political events! If the Moors had defeated Charles Martel; if William instead of Harold had fallen in the Battle of Hastings; if bloody Queen Mary had left a child; or if blessed Queen Mary had not married the Prince of Orange! In the first case the English might now have been Musselmen; in the second they would have continued to use the Saxon tongue, and in either of those cases the Ego could not have existed; for if Arabian blood were put in, or Norman taken out, the whole chain of succession would have been altered. The two latter cases perhaps might not have affected the bodily existence of the Ego; but the first might have entailed upon him the curse of Popery, and the second if it had not subjected him to the same curse, would have made him the subject of a despotic government. In neither case could he have been capable of excogitating lucubrations, such as this high history contains: for either of these misfortunes would have emasculated his mind, unipsefying and unegofying theIpsissimus Ego.

Another chance must be mentioned. One of my ancestors was, as the phrase is, out in a certain rebellion. His heart led him into the field and his heels got him out of it. Had he been less nimble,—or had he been taken and hanged, and hanged he would have been if taken,— there would have been no Ego at this day, no history of Dr. Daniel Dove. The Doctor would have been like the heroes who lived before Agamemnon, and his immortalizer would never have lived at all.

DANIEL DOVE'S ARRIVAL AT DONCASTER. THE ORGAN IN ST. GEORGE'S CHURCH. THE PULPIT. MRS. NEALE'S BENEFACTION.

Non ulla Musis pagina gratiorQuam quæ severis ludicra jungereNovit, fatigatamque nugisUtilibus recreare mentem.DR. JOHNSON.

It was in the Mayoralty of Thomas Pheasant (as has already been said) and in the year of our Lord 1739, that Daniel Dove the younger, having then entered upon his seventeenth year, first entered the town of Doncaster and was there delivered by his excellent father to the care of Peter Hopkins. They loved each other so dearly, that this, which was the first day of their separation, was to both the unhappiest of their lives.

The great frost commenced in the winter of that year; and with the many longing lingering thoughts which Daniel cast towards his home, a wish was mingled that he could see the frozen waterfall in Weathercote Cave.

It was a remarkable era in Doncaster also, because the Organ was that year erected, at the cost of five hundred guineas, raised by voluntary subscription among the parishioners. Harris and Byfield were the builders, and it is still esteemed one of the best in the kingdom. When it was opened, the then curate, Mr. Fawkes, preached a sermon for the occasion, in which after having rhetorized in praise of sacred music, and touched upon the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer and all kinds of instruments, he turned to the organ and apostrophized it thus;—“But O what—O what—what shall I calltheeby? thou divine Box of sounds!”

That right old worthy Francis Quarles of quaint memory,—and the more to be remembered for his quaintness,—knew how toimprovean organ somewhat better than Mr. Fawkes. His poem upon one is the first in his Divine Fancies, and whether he would have it ranked among Epigrams, Meditations, or Observations, perhaps he could not himself tell. The Reader may class it as he pleases.

Observe this Organ: mark but how it goes!'Tis not the hand alone of him that blowsThe unseen bellows, nor the hand that playsUpon the apparent note-dividing keys,That makes these well-composed airs appearBefore the high tribunal of thine ear.They both concur; each acts his several part;The one gives it breath, the other lends it art.Man is this Organ; to whose every actionHeaven gives a breath, (a breath without coaction,)Without which blast we cannot act at all;Without which Breath the Universe must fallTo the first nothing it was made of—seeingIn Him we live, we move, we have our being.Thus filled with His diviner breath, and back'tWith His first power, we touch the keys and act:He blows the bellows: as we thrive in skill,Our actions prove, like music, good or ill.

The question whether instrumental music may lawfully be introduced into the worship of God in the Churches of the New Testament, has been considered by Cotton Mather and answered to his own satisfaction and that of his contemporary countrymen and their fellow puritans, in his “Historical Remarks upon the discipline practised in the Churches of New England.”—“The Instrumental Music used in the old Church of Israel,” he says, “was an Institution of God; it was the Commandment of the Lord by the Prophets; and the Instruments are called God's Instruments, and Instruments of the Lord. Now there is not one word of Institution in the New Testament for Instrumental Music in the Worship of God. And because the holy God rejects all he does not command in his worship, he now therefore in effect says to us,I will not hear the melody of thy Organs. But on the other hand the rule given doth abundantly intimate that no voice is now heard in the Church but what is significant, and edifying by signification; which the voice of Instruments is not.”

Worse logic than this and weaker reasoning no one would wish to meet with in the controversial writings of a writer from whose opinions he differs most widely. The Remarks form part of that extraordinary and highly interesting work theMagnalia Christi Americana. Cotton Mather is such an author as Fuller would have been if the old English Worthy, instead of having been from a child trained up in the way he should go, had been calvinisticated till the milk of human kindness with which his heart was always ready to overflow had turned sour.

“Though Instrumental Music,” he proceeds to say, “were admitted and appointed in the worship of God under the Old Testament, yet we do not find it practised in the Synagogue of the Jews, but only in the Temple. It thence appears to have been a part of the ceremonial Pedagogy which is now abolished; nor can any say it was a part of moral worship. And whereas the common usage now hath confined Instrumental Music to Cathedrals, it seems therein too much to Judaize,—which to do is a part of the Anti-Christian Apostacy,—as well as to Paganize.—If we admit Instrumental Music in the worship of God, how can we resist the imposition of all the instruments used among the ancient Jews? Yea, Dancing as well as playing, and several other Judaic actions?”

During the short but active reign of the Puritans in England, they acted upon this preposterous opinion, and sold the Church organs, without being scrupulous concerning the uses to which they might be applied. A writer of that age, speaking of the prevalence of drunkenness, as a national vice, says, “that nothing may be wanting to the height of luxury and impiety of this abomination, they have translated the organs out of the Churches to set them up in taverns, chaunting their dithyrambics and bestial bacchanalias to the tune of those instruments which were wont to assist them in the celebration of God's praises, and regulate the voices of the worst singers in the world,—which are the English in their churches at present.”

It cannot be supposed that the Organs which were thus disposed of, were instruments of any great cost or value. An old pair of Organs, (for that was the customary mode of expression, meaning a set,—and in like manner a pair of cards, for a pack;)—an old pair of this kind belonging to Lambeth Church was sold in 1565 for £1. 10s.Church Organs therefore, even if they had not been at a revolutionary price, would be within the purchase of an ordinary vintner. “In country parish Churches,” says Mr. Denne the Antiquary, “even where the district was small, there was often a choir of singers, for whom forms, desks and books were provided; and they probably most of them had benefactors who supplied them with a pair of organs that might more properly have been termed a box of whistles. To the best of my recollection there were in the chapels of some of the Colleges in Cambridge very, very, indifferent instruments. That of the chapel belonging to our old house was removed before I was admitted.”

The use of the organ has occasioned a great commotion, if not a schism, among the methodists of late. Yet our holy Herbert could call Church music the “sweetest of sweets;” and describe himself when listening to it, as disengaged from the body, and “rising and falling with its wings.”

Harris, the chief builder of the Doncaster Organ, was a contemporary and rival of Father Smith, famous among Organists. Each built one for the Temple Church, and Father Smith's had most votes in its favor. The peculiarity of the Doncaster Organ, which was Harris's masterpiece, is, its having, in the great organ, two trumpets and a clarion, throughout the whole compass; and these stops are so excellent, that a celebrated musician said every pipe in them was worth its weight in silver.

Our Doctor dated from that year, in his own recollections, as the great era of his life. It served also for many of the Doncastrians, as a date to which they carried back their computations, till the generation which remembered the erecting of the organ was extinct.

This was the age of Church improvement in Doncaster,—meaning here by Church, the material structure. Just thirty years before, the Church had been beautified and the ceiling painted, too probably to the disfigurement of works of a better architectural age. In 1721 the old peal of five bells was replaced with eight new ones, of new metal, heretofore spoken of. In 1723 the church floor and church yard, which had both been unlevelled by Death's levelling course, were levelled anew, and new rails were placed to the altar. Two years later the Corporation gave the new Clock, and it was fixed to strike on the watch bell,—that clock which numbered the hours of Daniel Dove's life from the age of seventeen till that of seventy. In 1736 the west gallery was put up, and in 1741, ten years after the organ, a new pulpit, but not in the old style; for pulpits which are among the finest works of art in Brabant and Flanders, had degenerated in England, and in other protestant countries.

This probably was owing, in our own country, as much to the prevalence of puritanism, as to the general depravation of taste. It was for their beauty or their splendour that the early Quakers inveighed with such vehemence against pulpits, “many of which places,” saith George Keith in his quaking days, “as we see in England and many other countries, have a great deal of superfluity, and vain and superfluous labour and pains of carving, painting and varnishing upon them, together with your cloth and velvet cushion in many places; because of which, and not for the height of them above the ground, we call them Chief Places. But as for a commodious place above the ground whereon to stand when one doth speak in an assembly, it was never condemned by our friends, who also have places whereupon to stand, when to minister, as they had under the Law.”

In 1743 a marble Communion Table was placed in the Church, and— (passing forward more rapidly than the regular march of this narration, in order to present these ecclesiastical matters without interruption,)—a set of chimes were fixed in 1754—merry be the memory of those by whom this good work was effected! The north and south galleries were re-built in 1765; and in 1767 the church was white-washed, a new reading desk put up, the pulpit removed to what was deemed a more convenient station, and Mrs. Neale gave a velvet embroidered cover and cushion for it,—for which her name is enrolled among the benefactors of St. George's Church.

That velvet which, when I remember it, had lost the bloom of its complexion, will hardly have been preserved till now even by the dyer's renovating aid: and its embroidery has long since passed through the goldsmith's crucible.Sic transitexcites a more melancholy feeling in me when a recollection like this arises in my mind, than even the “forlornhic jacet” of a neglected tombstone. Indeed such is the softening effect of time upon those who have not been rendered obdurate and insensible by the world and the world's law, that I do not now call to mind without some emotion even that pulpit, to which I certainly bore no good will in early life, when it was my fortune to hear from it so many somniferous discourses; and to bear away from it, upon pain of displeasure in those whose displeasure to me was painful, so many texts, chapter and verse, few or none of which had been improved to my advantage. “Public sermons”—(hear! hear! for Martin Luther speaketh!) “public sermons do very little edify children, who observe and learn but little thereby. It is more needful that they be taught and well instructed with diligence in schools; and at home that they be orderly heard and examined in what they have learned. This way profiteth much; it is indeed very wearisome, but it is very necessary.” May I not then confess that no turn of expression however felicitous,—no collocation of words however emphatic and beautiful—no other sentences whatsoever, although rounded, or pointed for effect with the most consummate skill, have ever given me so much delight, as those dear phrases which are employed in winding up a sermon, when it is brought to its long-wished-for close.

It is not always, nor necessarily thus; nor ever would be so if these things were ordered as they might and ought to be. Hugh Latimer, Bishop Taylor, Robert South, John Wesley, Robert Hall, Bishop Jebb, Bishop Heber, Christopher Benson, your hearers felt no such tedium! when you reached that period it was to them like the cessation of a strain of music, which while it lasted had rendered them insensible to the lapse of time.

“I would not,” said Luther, “have preachers torment their hearers and detain them with long and tedious preaching.”

DONCASTRIANA. GUY'S DEATH. SEARCH FOR HIS TOMB-STONE IN INGLETON CHURCH-YARD.

Go to the dull church-yard and seeThose hillocks of mortality,Where proudest man is only foundBy a small hillock on the ground.TIXALLPOETRY.

The first years of Daniel's abode in Doncaster were distinguished by many events of local memorability. The old Friar's bridge was taken down, and a new one with one large arch built in its stead. Turnpikes were erected on the roads to Saltsbrook and to Tadcaster; and in 1742 Lord Semple's regiment of Highlanders marched through the town, being the first soldiers without breeches who had ever been seen there since breeches were in use. In 1746 the Mansion House was begun, next door to Peter Hopkins's, and by no means to his comfort while the work was going on, nor indeed after it was completed, its effect upon his chimnies having heretofore been noticed. The building was interrupted by the rebellion. An army of six thousand English and Hessians was then encamped upon Wheatley Hills; and a Hessian general dying there, was buried in St. George's Church; from whence his leaden coffin was stolen by the grave-digger.

Daniel had then compleated his twenty-second year. Every summer he paid a month's visit to his parents; and those were happy days, not the less so to all parties because his second home had become almost as dear to him as his first. Guy did not live to see the progress of his pupil; he died a few months after the lad had been placed at Doncaster, and the delight of Daniel's first return was overclouded by this loss. It was a severe one to the elder Daniel, who lost in the Schoolmaster his only intellectual companion.

I have sought in vain for Richard Guy's tombstone in Ingleton churchyard. That there is one there can hardly, I think, be doubted; for if he left no relations who regarded him, nor perhaps effects enough of his own to defray this last posthumous and not necessary expence; and if Thomas Gent of York, who published the old poem of Flodden Field from his transcript, after his death, thought he required no other monument; Daniel was not likely to omit this last tribute of respect and affection to his friend. But the churchyard, which, when his mortal remains were deposited there, accorded well with its romantic site, on a little eminence above the roaring torrent, and with the then retired character of the village, and with the solemn use to which it was consecrated, is now a thickly-peopled burial-ground. Since their time manufactures have been established in Ingleton, and though eventually they proved unsuccessful, and were consequently abandoned, yet they continued long enough in work largely to encrease the population of the church-yard. Amid so many tombs the stone which marked poor Guy's resting-place might escape even a more diligent search than mine. Nearly a century has elapsed since it was set up: in the course of that time its inscription not having been re-touched, must have become illegible to all but an antiquary's poring and practised eyes; and perhaps to them also unless aided by his tracing tact, and by the conjectural supply of connecting words, syllables or letters: indeed the stone itself has probably become half interred, as the earth around it has been disturbed and raised. Time corrodes our epitaphs, and buries our very tombstones.

Returning pensively from my unsuccessful search in the churchyard to the little inn at Ingleton, I found there upon a sampler, worked in 1824 by Elizabeth Brown, aged 9, and framed as an ornament for the room which I occupied, some lines in as moral a strain of verse, as any which I had that day perused among the tombs. And I transcribed them for preservation, thinking it not improbable that they had been originally composed by Richard Guy for the use of his female scholars, and handed down for a like purpose, from one generation to another. This may be only a fond imagination, and perhaps it might not have occurred to me at another time; but many compositions have been ascribed in modern as well as ancient times, and indeed daily are so, to more celebrated persons, upon less likely grounds. These are the verses;

Jesus permit thy gracious name to standAs the first effort of an infant's hand;And as her fingers on the sampler move,Engage her tender heart to seek thy love;With thy dear children may she have a part,And write thy name thyself upon her heart.

A FATHER'S MISGIVINGS CONCERNING HIS SON'S DESTINATION. PETER HOPKINS'S GENEROSITY. DANIEL IS SENT ABROAD TO GRADUATE IN MEDICINE.

Heaven is the magazine wherein He putsBoth good and evil; Prayer's the key that shutsAnd opens this great treasure: 'tis a keyWhose wards are Faith and Hope and Charity.Wouldst thou prevent a judgement due to sin?Turn but the key and thou may'st lock it in.Or wouldst thou have a blessing fall upon thee?Open the door, and it will shower on thee!QUARLES.

The elder Daniel saw in the marked improvement of his son at every yearly visit more and more cause to be satisfied with himself for having given him such a destination, and to thank Providence that the youth was placed with a master whose kindness and religious care of him might truly be called fatherly. There was but one consideration which sometimes interfered with that satisfaction, and brought with it a sense of uneasiness. The Doves from time immemorial had belonged to the soil as fixedly as the soil had belonged to them. Generation after generation they had moved in the same contracted sphere, their wants and wishes being circumscribed alike within their own few hereditary acres. Pride, under whatever form it may shew itself, is of the Devil; and though Family Pride may not be its most odious manifestation, even that child bears a sufficiently ugly likeness of its father. But Family Feeling is a very different thing, and may exist as strongly in humble as in high life. Naboth was as much attached to the vineyard, the inheritance of his fathers, as Ahab could be to the throne which had been the prize, and the reward, or punishment, of his father Omri's ambition.

This feeling sometimes induced a doubt in Daniel whether affection for his son had not made him overlook his duty to his forefathers;—whether the fixtures of the land are not happier and less in the way of evil than the moveables;—whether he had done right in removing the lad from that station of life in which he was born, in which it had pleased God to place him; divorcing him as it were from his paternal soil, and cutting off the entail of that sure independence, that safe contentment, which his ancestors had obtained and preserved for him, and transmitted to his care to be in like manner by him preserved and handed down. The latent poetry which there was in the old man's heart made him sometimes feel as if the fields and the brook, and the hearth and the graves reproached him for having done this! But then he took shelter in the reflection that he had consulted the boy's true welfare, by giving him opportunities of storing and enlarging his mind; that he had placed him in the way of intellectual advancement, where he might improve the talents which were committed to his charge, both for his own benefit and for that of his fellow-creatures. Certain he was that whether he had acted wisely or not, he had meant well. He was conscious that his determination had not been made without much and anxious deliberation, nor without much and earnest prayer; hitherto, he saw, that the blessing which he prayed for had followed it, and he endeavoured to make his heart rest in thankful and pious hope that that blessing would be continued. “Wouldst thou know,” says Quarles, “the lawfulness of the action which thou desirest to undertake, let thy devotion recommend it to divine blessing. If it be lawful thou shalt perceive thy heart encouraged by thy prayer; if unlawful thou shalt find thy prayer discouraged by thy heart. That action is not warrantable which either blushes to beg a blessing, or, having succeeded, dares not present a thanksgiving.” Daniel might safely put his conduct to this test; and to this test in fact his own healthy and uncorrupted sense of religion led him, though probably he had never read these golden words of Quarles the Emblemist.

It was therefore with no ordinary delight that our good Daniel received a letter from his son, asking permission to go to Leyden, in conformity with his Master's wishes, and there prosecute his studies long enough to graduate as a Doctor in medicine. Mr. Hopkins, he said, would generously take upon himself the whole expence, having adopted him as his successor, and almost as a son; for as such he was treated in all respects, both by him and by his mistress, who was one of the best of women. And indeed it appeared that Mr. Hopkins had long entertained this intention, by the care which he had taken to make him keep up and improve the knowledge of Latin which he had acquired under Mr. Guy.

The father's consent as might be supposed was thankfully given; and accordingly Daniel Dove in the twenty-third year of his age embarked from Kingston upon Hull for Rotterdam, well provided by the care and kindness of his benevolent master with letters of introduction and of credit; and still better provided with those religious principles which though they cannot ensure prosperity in this world, ensure to us things of infinitely greater moment,—good conduct, peace of mind, and the everlasting reward of the righteous.

CONCERNING THE INTEREST WHICH DANIEL THE ELDER TOOK IN THE DUTCH WAR, AND MORE ESPECIALLY IN THE SIEGE AND PROVIDENTIAL DELIVERY OF LEYDEN.

Glory to Thee in thine omnipotence,O Lord who art our shield and our defence,And dost dispense,As seemeth best to thine unerring will,(Which passeth mortal sense)The lot of Victory still;Edging sometimes with might the sword unjust;And bowing to the dust,The rightful cause, that so such seeming illMay thine appointed purposes fulfil;Sometimes, (as in this late auspicious hourFor which our hymns we raise,)Making the wicked feel thy present power;Glory to thee and praise,Almighty God, by whom our strength was given!Glory to Thee, O Lord of Earth and Heaven!SOUTHEY.

There were two portions of history with which the elder Daniel was better acquainted than most men,—that of Edward the Third's reign, and that of the Wars in the Netherlands down to the year 1608. Upon both subjects he washomo unius libri;such a man is proverbially formidable at his own weapon; and the book with which Johnson immortalized Osborne the bookseller, by knocking him down with it, was not a more formidable folio than either of those from which Daniel derived this knowledge.

Now of all the events in the wars of the Low Countries, there was none which had so strongly affected his imagination as the siege of Leyden. The patient fortitude of the besieged, and their deliverance, less by the exertions of man, (though no human exertions were omitted), than by the special mercy of Him whom the elements obey, and in whom they had put their trust, were in the strong and pious mind of Daniel, things of more touching interest than the tragedy of Haarlem, or the wonders of military science and of courage displayed at the siege of Antwerp. Who indeed could forget the fierce answer of the Leydeners when they were, for the last time, summoned to surrender, that the men of Leyden would never surrender while they had one arm left to eat, and another to fight with! And the not less terrible reply of the Burgemeester Pieter Adriaanzoon Vander Werf, to some of the townsmen when they represented to him the extremity of famine to which they were reduced; “I have sworn to defend this city,” he made answer, “and by God's help I mean to keep that oath! but if my death can help ye men, here is my body! cut it in pieces, and share it among ye as far as it will go.” And who without partaking in the hopes and fears of the contest, almost as if it were still at issue, can peruse the details of thatamphibiousbattle (if such an expression may be allowed) upon the inundated country, when, in the extremity of their distress, and at a time when the Spaniards said that it was as impossible for the Hollanders to save Leyden from their power, as it was for them to pluck the stars from heaven, “a great south wind, which they might truly say came from the grace of God,” set in with such a spring tide, that in the course of eight and forty hours, the inundation rose half a foot, thus rendering the fields just passable for the flat-bottomed boats which had been provided for that service! A naval battle, among the trees; where the besieged, though it was fought within two miles of their walls, could see nothing because of the foliage; and amid such a labyrinth of dykes, ditches, rivers and fortifications, that when the besiegers retired from their palisades and sconces, the conquerors were not aware of their own success, nor the besieged of their deliverance!

“In this delivery,” says the historian, “and in every particular of the enterprise, doubtless all must be attributed to the mere providence of God, neither can man challenge any glory therein; for without a miracle all the endeavours of the Protestants had been as wind. But God who is always good, would not give way to the cruelties wherewith the Spaniards threatened this town, with all the insolencies whereof they make profession in the taking of towns (although they be by composition) without any respect of humanity or honesty. And there is not any man but will confess with me, if he be not some atheist, or epicure, (who maintain that all things come by chance,) that this delivery is a work which belongs only unto God. For if the Spaniards had battered the town but with four cannons only, they had carried it, the people being so weakened with famine, as they could not endure any longer: besides a part of them were ill affected, and very many of their best men were dead of the plague. And for another testimony that it was God only who wrought, the town was no sooner delivered, but the wind which was south-west, and had driven the water out of the sea into the country, turned to north-east, and did drive it back again into the sea, as if the south-west wind had blown those three days only to that effect; wherefore they might well say that both the winds and the sea had fought for the town of Leyden. And as for the resolution of the States of Holland to drown the country, and to do that which they and their Prince, together with all the commanders, captains and soldiers of the army shewed in this sea-course, together with the constancy and resolution of the besieged to defend themselves, notwithstanding so many miseries which they suffered, and so many promises and threats which were made unto them, all in like sort proceeded from a divine instinct.”

In the spirit of thoughtful feeling that this passage breathes, was the whole history of that tremendous struggle perused by the elder Daniel; and Daniel the son was so deeply imbued with the same feeling, that if he had lived till the time of the Peninsular War, he would have looked upon the condition to which Spain was reduced, as a consequence of its former tyranny, and as an awful proof how surely, soon or late, the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children.

Oh that all history were regarded in this spirit! “Even such as are in faith most strong, of zeal most ardent, should not,” says one of the best and wisest of Theologians, “much mispend their time in comparing the degenerate fictions, or historical relations of times ancient or modern, with the everlasting truth. For though this method could not add much increase either to their faith or zeal, yet would it doubtless much avail for working placid and mild affections. The very penmen of Sacred Writ themselves were taught patience, and instructed in the ways of God's providence, by their experience of such events as the course of time is never barren of; not always related by canonical authors, nor immediately testified by the Spirit; but oftimes believed upon a moral certainty, or such a resolution of circumstances concurrent into the first cause or disposer of all affairs as we might make of modern accidents, were we otherwise partakers of the Spirit, or would we mind heavenly matters as much as earthly.”

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