Chapter 6

VOYAGE TO ROTTERDAM AND LEYDEN. THE AUTHOR CANNOT TARRY TO DESCRIBE THAT CITY. WHAT HAPPENED THERE TO DANIEL DOVE.

He took great content, exceeding delight in that his voyage. As who doth not that shall attempt the like?—For peregrination charms our senses with such unspeakable and sweet variety, that some count him unhappy that never travelled, a kind of prisoner, and pity his case that from his cradle to his old age he beholds the same still; still, still, the same, the same!

BURTON.

“Why did Dan remain in ships?” says Deborah the Prophetess in that noble song, which if it had been composed in Greek instead of Hebrew would have made Pindar hide his diminished head, or taught him a loftier strain than even he has reached in his eagle flights—“Why did Dan remain in ships?” said the Prophetess. Our Daniel during his rough passage from the Humber to the Maese, thought that nothing should make him do so. Yet when all danger real or imaginary was over, upon that deep

Where Proteus' herds and Neptune's orcs do keep,Where all is ploughed, yet still the pasture's green,The ways are found, and yet no paths are seen:—1

when all the discomforts and positive sufferings of the voyage were at an end; and when the ship,—

Quitting her fairly of the injurious sea,2

had entered the smooth waters of that stately river, and was gliding

Into the bosom of her quiet quay;2

he felt that the delight of setting foot on shore after a sea voyage, and that too the shore of a foreign country, for the first time, is one of the few pleasures which exceed any expectation that can be formed of them.

1B. JONSON, v. 8, p. 37.

2QUARLES.

He used to speak of his landing, on a fine autumnal noon, in the well-wooded and well-watered city of Rotterdam, and of his journey along what he called the high-turnpike canal from thence to Leyden, as some of the pleasantest recollections of his life. Nothing he said was wanting to his enjoyment, but that there should have been some one to have partaken it with him in an equal degree. But the feeling that he was alone in a foreign land sate lightly on him, and did not continue long,—young as he was, with life and hope before him, healthful of body and of mind, cheerful as the natural consequence of that health corporeal and mental, and having always much to notice and enough to do—the one being an indispensable condition of happiness, the other a source of pleasure as long as it lasts; and where there is a quick eye and an enquiring mind, the longest residence abroad is hardly long enough to exhaust it.

No day in Daniel's life had ever passed in such constant and pleasurable excitement as that on which he made his passage from Rotterdam to Leyden, and took possession of the lodgings which Peter Hopkins's correspondent had engaged for him. His reception was such as instantly to make him feel that he was placed with worthy people. The little apprehensions, rather than anxieties, which the novelty of his situation occasioned, the sight of strange faces with which he was to be domesticated, and the sound of a strange language, to which, harsh and uninviting as it seemed, his ear and speech must learn to accustom themselves, did not disquiet his first night's rest. And having fallen asleep notwithstanding the new position to which a Dutch bolster constrained him, he was not disturbed by the storks,

all nightBeating the air with their obstreperous beaks,

(for with Ben Jonson's leave, this may much more appropriately be said of them than of the ravens) nor by the watchmen's rappers, or clap-sticks, which seem to have been invented in emulous imitation of the stork's instrumental performance.

But you and I, Reader, can afford to make no tarriance in Leyden. I cannot remain with you here till you could see the Rector Magnificus in his magnificence. I cannot accompany you to the monument of that rash Baron who set the crown of Bohemia in evil hour upon the Elector Palatine's unlucky head. I cannot take you to the graves of Boerhaave and of Scaliger. I cannot go with you into that library of which Heinsius said, when he was Librarian there, “I no sooner set foot in it and fasten the door, but I shut out ambition, love, and all those vices of which idleness is the mother and ignorance the nurse; and in the very lap of Eternity among so many illustrious souls I take my seat, with so lofty a spirit that I then pity the great who know nothing of such happiness.”—Plerunque in quâ simulac pedem posui, foribus pessulum abdo, ambitionem autem, amorem, libidinem, &c. excludo, quorum parens est ignavia, imperitia nutrix; et in ipso æternitatis gremio, inter tot illustres animas sedem mihi sumo, cum ingenti quidem animo, ut subinde magnatum me misereat qui felicitatem hanc ignorant!I cannot walk with you round the ramparts, from which wide circling and well shaded promenade you might look down upon a large part of the more than two thousand gardens which a century ago surrounded this most horticultural city of a horticultural province, the garden, as it was called of Holland, that is of the land of Gardeners. I cannot even go up the Burgt with you, though it be pretended that the Hengist of Anglo-Saxon history erected it; nor can I stop at the entrance of that odd place, for you to admire, (as you could not but admire,) the Lion of the United Provinces, who stands there erect and rampant in menacing attitude, grinning horribly a ghastly smile, his eyes truculent, his tail in full elevation, and in action correspondent to his mottoPugno pro Patria, wielding a drawn sword in his dreadful right paw.

Dear reader, we cannot afford time for going to Oegstgeest, though the first Church in Holland is said to have been founded there by St. Willebord, and its burial ground is the Campo Santo of the Dutch Roman Catholics, as Bunhill Fields of the English Dissenters. Nor can I accompany thee to Noortwyck and describe to thee its fish-ponds, its parterres, the arabesque carpet work of its box, and the espalier walls or hedges, with the busts which were set in the archways, such as they existed when our Doctor, in his antedoctorial age, was a student at Leyden, having been kept up till that time in their old fashion by the representatives of Janus Dousa. We cannot, dear Reader, tarry to visit the gardens in that same pleasant village from which the neighbouring cities are supplied with medicinal plants; where beds of ranunculuses afford, when in blossom, a spectacle which no exhibition of art could rival in splendour and in beauty; and from whence rose leaves are exported to Turkey, there to have their essential oil extracted for Mahometan luxury.

We must not go to see the sluices of the Rhine, which Daniel never saw, because in his time the Rhine had no outlet through these Downs. We cannot walk upon the shore at Katwyck, where it was formerly a piece of Dutch courtship for the wooer to take his mistress in his arms, carry her into the sea till he was more than knee deep, set her down upon her feet, and then bearing her out again, roll her over and over upon the sand hills by way of drying her. We have no time for visiting that scene of the Batavian Arcadia. No, reader, I cannot tarry to shew thee the curiosities of Leyden, nor to talk over itsmemorabilia, nor to visit the pleasant parts of the surrounding country; though Gerard Goris says, thatcomme la Ville de Leide, entourée par les plaisants villages de Soeterwoude, Stompvic, Wilsveen, Tedingerbroek, Ougstgeest, Leiderdorp et Vennep, est la Cêntre et la Delice de toute Hollande, ainsi la Campagne à l'entour de cette celèbre Ville est comme un autre Eden ou Jardin de plaisance, qui avec ses beaux attraits tellement transporte l'attention du spectateur qu'il se trouve contraint, comme par un ravissment d'esprit, de confesser qu'il n'a jamais veu pais au monde, ou l'art et la nature si bien ont pris leurs mesures pour aporter et entremêler tout ce qui peut servir à l'aise, a la recreation, et au profit.

No, Reader, we must not linger here,

Hier, waar in Hollands heerlijkste oordenDe lieve Lente zoeter lacht,Het schroeiend Zud, het grijnzend NoordenZijn' gloed en strenge kou verzacht;Waar nijverheid en blij genoegen,Waar stilte en vlijt zich3samenvoegen.

3LEYDEN'SRAMP.

We must return to Doncaster. It would not be convenient for me to enter minutely, even if my materials were sufficient for that purpose, into the course of our student's life, from the time when he was entered among the Greenies of this famous University; nor to describe the ceremonies which were used at hisungreening, by his associates; nor the academical ones with which at the termination of his regular terms his degree in medicine was conferred. I can only tell thee that during his residence at Leyden he learnt with exemplary diligence whatever he was expected to learn there, and by the industrious use of good opportunities a great deal more.

But,—he fell in love with a Burgemeester's Daughter.

ARMS OF LEYDEN. DANIEL DOVE, M. D. A LOVE STORY, STRANGE BUT TRUE.

Oye el extraño caso, advierte y siente;Suceso es raro, mas verdad ha sido.BALBUENA.

The arms of Leyden are two cross keys, gules in a field argent; and having been entrusted with the power of those keys to bind and to loose,—and moreover to bleed and to blister, to administer at his discretion pills, potions, and powders, and employ the whole artillery of the pharmacopœia,—Daniel returned to Doncaster. The papal keys convey no such general power as the keys of Leyden: they give authority over the conscience and the soul; now it is not every man that has a conscience, or that chuses to keep one; and as for souls, if it were not an article of faith to believe otherwise,—one might conclude that the greater part of mankind had none from the utter disregard of them which is manifested in the whole course of their dealings with each other. But bodily diseases are among the afflictions which flesh is heir to; and we are not more surelyfruges consumere nati, than we are born to consume physic also, greatly to the benefit of that profession in which Daniel Dove had now obtained his commission.

But though he was now M. D. in due form, and entitled to the insignia of the professional wig, the muff, and the gold-headed cane, it was not Mr. Hopkins's intention that he should assume his title, and commence practice as a physician. This would have been an unpromising adventure; whereas on the other hand the consideration which a regular education at Leyden, then the most flourishing school of medicine, would obtain for him in the vicinity, was a sure advantage. Hopkins could now present him as a person thoroughly qualified to be his successor: and if at any future time Dove should think proper to retire from the more laborious parts of his calling, and take up his rank, it would be in his power to do so.

But one part of my Readers are I suspect, at this time a little impatient to know something about the Burgemeester's Daughter; and I, because of the

allegiance and fast fealtyWhich I do owe unto all womankind,1

am bound to satisfy their natural and becoming curiosity. Not however in this place; for though love has its bitters I never will mix it up in the same chapter with physic. Daniel's passion for the Burgemeester's Daughter must be treated of in a chapter by itself, this being a mark of respect due to the subject, to her beauty, and to the dignity of Mynheer, her Wel Edel, Groot, Hoogh-Achtbaer father.

1SPENSER.

First however I must dispose of an objection.

There may be readers who, though they can understand why a lady instead of telling her love, should

——let concealment like a worm in the budFeed on her damask cheek,

will think it absurd to believe that any man should fix his affections as Daniel did upon the Burgemeester's Daughter, on a person whom he had no hopes of obtaining, and with whom, as will presently appear, he never interchanged a word. I cannot help their incredulity. But if they will not believe me they may perhaps believe the newspapers which about the year 1810 related the following case in point.

“A short time since a curious circumstance happened. The Rector of St. Martin's parish was sent for to pray by a gentleman of the name of Wright, who lodged in St. James' street, Pimlico. A few days afterwards Mr. Wright's solicitor called on the Rector, to inform him that Mr. Wright was dead, and had made a codicil to his will wherein he had left him £1000., and Mr. Abbott the Speaker of the House of Commons £2000., and all his personal property and estates, deer-park and fisheries &c. to Lady Frances Bruce Brudenell, daughter of the Earl of Ailesbury. Upon the Rector's going to Lord Ailesbury's to inform her Ladyship, the house steward said she was married to Sir Henry Wilson of Chelsea Park, but he would go to her Ladyship and inform her of the matter. Lady Frances said she did not know any such person as Mr. Wright, but desired the Steward to go to the Rector to get the whole particulars, and say she would wait on him the next day: she did so, and found to her great astonishment that the whole was true. She afterwards went to St. James' Street and saw Mr. Wright in his coffin; and then she recollected him, as having been a great annoyance to her many years ago at the Opera House, where he had a box next to hers: he never spoke to her, but was continually watching her, look wherever she would, till at length she was under the necessity of requesting her friends to procure another box. The estates are from 20 to £30,000. a-year. Lady Frances intends putting all her family into mourning out of respect.”

Whether such a bequest ought to have been held good in law, and if so, whether it ought in conscience to have been accepted, are points upon which I should probably differ both from the Lord Chancellor, and the Lady Legatee.

SHEWING HOW THE YOUNG STUDENT FELL IN LOVE—AND HOW HE MADE THE BEST USE OF HIS MISFORTUNE.

Il creder, donne vaghe, è cortesia,Quando colui che scrive o che favella,Possa essere sospetto di bugia,Per dir qualcosa troppo rara e bella.Dunque chi ascolta questa istoria meaE non la crede frottola o novellaMa cosa vera—come ella è di fatto,Fa che di lui mi chiami soddisfatto.E pure che mi diate piena fede,De la dubbiezza altrui poco mi cale.RICCIARDETTO.

Dear Ladies, I can neither tell you the name of the Burgemeester's Daughter, nor of the Burgemeester himself. If I ever heard them they have escaped my recollection. The Doctor used to say his love for her was in two respects like the small-pox; for he took it by inoculation, and having taken it, he was secured from ever having the disease in a more dangerous form.

The case was a very singular one. Had it not been so it is probable I should never have been made acquainted with it. Most men seem to consider their unsuccessful love, when it is over, as a folly which they neither like to speak of, nor to remember.

Daniel Dove never was introduced to the Burgemeester's Daughter, never was in company with her, and as already has been intimated never spoke to her. As for any hope of ever by any possibility obtaining a return of his affection, a devout Roman Catholic might upon much better grounds hope that Saint Ursula, or any of her Eleven Thousand Virgins would come from her place in Heaven to reward his devotion with a kiss. The gulph between Dives and Lazarus was not more insuperable than the distance between such an English Greeny at Leyden and a Burgemeester's Daughter.

Here, therefore, dear Ladies, you cannot look to read of

Le speranze, gli affetti,La data fe', le tenerezze, i primiScambievoli sospiri, i primi sguardi.1

Nor will it be possible for me to give you

—l'idea di quel voltoDove apprese il suo coreLa prima volta a sospirar d'amore.1

This I cannot do; for I never saw her picture, nor heard her features described. And most likely if I had seen her herself, in her youth and beauty, the most accurate description that words could convey might be just as like Fair Rosamond, Helen, Rachæl, or Eve. Suffice it to say that she was confessedly the beauty of that city, and of those parts.

1METASIA.

But it was not for the fame of her beauty that Daniel fell in love with her: so little was there of this kind of romance in his nature, that report never raised in him the slightest desire of seeing her. Her beauty was no more than Hecuba's to him, till he saw it. But it so happened that having once seen it, he saw it frequently, at leisure, and always to the best advantage: “and so,” said he, “I received the disease by inoculation.”

Thus it was. There was at Leyden an English Presbyterian Kirk for the use of the English students, and any other persons who might chuse to frequent it. Daniel felt the want there of that Liturgy in the use of which he had been trained up: and finding nothing which could attract him to that place of worship except the use of his own language,—which moreover was not used by the preacher in any way to his edification,— he listened willingly to the advice of the good man with whom he boarded, and this was that, as soon as he had acquired a slight knowledge of the Dutch tongue, he should, as a means of improving himself in it, accompany the family to their parish church. Now this happened to be the very church which the Burgemeester and his family attended: and if the allotment of pews in that church had been laid out by Cupid himself, with the fore-purpose of catching Daniel as in a pitfall, his position there in relation to the Burgemeester's Daughter could not have been more exactly fixed.

“God forgive me!” said he; “for every Sunday while she was worshipping her Maker, I used to worship her.”

But the folly went no farther than this; it led him into no act of absurdity, for he kept it to himself; and he even turned it to some advantage, or rather it shaped for itself a useful direction, in this way: having frequent and unobserved opportunity of observing her lovely face, the countenance became fixed so perfectly in his mind, that even after the lapse of forty years, he was sure, he said, that if he had possessed a painter's art he could have produced her likeness. And having her beauty thus impressed upon his imagination, any other appeared to him only as a foil to it, during that part of his life when he was so circumstanced that it would have been an act of imprudence for him to run in love.

I smile to think how many of my readers when they are reading this chapter aloud in a domestic circle willbring upat the expression ofrunning in love;—like a stage-coachman who driving at the smooth and steady pace of nine miles an hour on a macadamized road, comes upon some accidental obstruction only just in time to check the horses.

Amorosa who flies into love; and Amatura who flutters as if she were about to do the same; and Amoretta who dances into it, (poor creatures, God help them all three!) and Amanda,—Heaven bless her!—who will be led to it gently and leisurely along the path of discretion, they all make a sudden stop at the words.

OF THE VARIOUS WAYS OF GETTING IN LOVE. A CHAPTER CONTAINING SOME USEFUL OBSERVATIONS, AND SOME BEAUTIFUL POETRY.

Let cavillers know, that as the Lord John answered the Queen in that Italian Guazzo, an old, a grave discreet man is fittest to discourse of love-matters; because he hath likely more experience, observed more, hath a more staid judgement, can better discern, resolve, discuss, advise, give better cautions and more solid precepts, better inform his auditors in such a subject, and by reason of his riper years, sooner divert.

BURTON.

Slips of the tongue are sometimes found very inconvenient by those persons who, owing to some unlucky want of correspondence between their wits and their utterance, say one thing when they mean to say another, or bolt out something which the slightest degree of forethought would have kept unsaid. But more serious mischief arises from that misuse of words which occurs in all inaccurate writers. Many are the men, who merely for want of understanding what they say, have blundered into heresies and erroneous assertions of every kind, which they have afterwards passionately and pertinaciously defended, till they have established themselves in the profession, if not in the belief, of some pernicious doctrine or opinion, to their own great injury and that of their deluded followers, and of the commonwealth.

There may be an opposite fault; for indeed upon the agathokakological globe there are opposite qualities always to be found in parallel degrees, north and south of the equator.

A man may dwell upon words till he becomes at length a mere precisian in speech. He may think of their meaning till he loses sight of all meaning, and they appear as dark and mysterious to him as chaos and outer night. “Death! Grave!” exclaims Goethe's suicide, “I understand not the words!” and so he who looks for its quintessence might exclaim of every word in the dictionary.

They who cannot swim should be contented with wading in the shallows: they who can may take to the deep water, no matter how deep so it be clear. But let no one dive in the mud.

I said that Daniel fell in love with the Burgemeester's Daughter, and I made use of the usual expression because there it was the most appropriate: for the thing was accidental. He himself could not have been more surprized if, missing his way in a fog, and supposing himself to be in the Breedestraat of Leyden where there is no canal, he had fallen into the water;—nor would he have been more completely over head and ears at once.

A man falls in love, just as he falls down stairs. It is an accident,— perhaps, and very probably a misfortune; something which he neither intended, nor foresaw, nor apprehended. But when he runs in love it is as when he runs in debt; it is done knowingly and intentionally; and very often rashly, and foolishly, even if not ridiculously, miserably and ruinously.

Marriages that are made up at watering-places are mostly of this running sort; and there may be reason to think that they are even less likely to lead to—I will not say happiness, but to a very humble degree of contentment,—than those which are a plain business of bargain and sale; for into these latter a certain degree of prudence enters on both sides. But there is a distinction to be made here: the man who is married for mere worldly motives, without a spark of affection on the woman's part, may nevertheless get, in every worldly sense of the word, a good wife; and while English women continue to be what, thank Heaven they are, he is likely to do so: but when a woman is married for the sake of her fortune, the case is altered, and the chances are five hundred to one that she marries a villain, or at best a scoundrel.

Falling in love, and running in love are both, as every body knows, common enough; and yet less so than what I shall call catching love. Where the love itself is imprudent, that is to say where there is some just prudential cause or impediment why the two parties should not be joined together in holy matrimony, there is generally some degree of culpable imprudence in catching it, because the danger is always to be apprehended, and may in most cases be avoided. But sometimes the circumstances may be such as leave no room for censure, even when there may be most cause for compassion; and under such circumstances our friend, though the remembrance of the Burgemeester's daughter was too vivid in his imagination for him ever to run in love, or at that time deliberately to walk into it, as he afterwards did,—under such circumstances I say, he took a severe affection of this kind. The story is a melancholy one, and I shall relate not it in this place.

The rarest, and surely the happiest marriages are between those who have grown in love. Take the description of such a love in its rise and progress, ye thousands and tens of thousands who have what is called a taste for poetry,—take it in the sweet words of one of the sweetest and tenderest of English Poets; and if ye doubt upon the strength of my opinion whether Daniel deserves such praise, ask Leigh Hunt, or the Laureate, or Wordsworth, or Charles Lamb.

Ah! I remember well (and how can IBut evermore remember well) when firstOur flame began, when scarce we knew what wasThe flame we felt; when as we sat and sighedAnd looked upon each other, and conceivedNot what we ailed,—yet something we did ail;And yet were well, and yet we were not well,And what was our disease we could not tell.Then would we kiss, then sigh, then look: and thusIn that first garden of our simplenessWe spent our childhood. But when years beganTo reap the fruit of knowledge, ah how thenWould she with graver looks, with sweet stern brow,Check my presumption and my forwardness;Yet still would give me flowers, still would me showWhat she would have me, yet not have me know.

Take also the passage that presently follows this; it alludes to a game which has long been obsolete,—but some fair reader I doubt not will remember the lines when she dances next.

And when in sport with other companyOf nymphs and shepherds we have met abroad,How would she steal a look, and watch mine eyeWhich way it went? And when at Barley-breakIt came unto my turn to rescue her,With what an earnest, swift and nimble paceWould her affection make her feet to run,And further run than to my hand! her raceHad no stop but my bosom, where no end.And when we were to break again, how lateAnd loth her trembling hand would part with mine;And with how slow a pace would she set forthTo meet the encountering party who contendsTo attain her, scarce affording him her fingers' ends!1

1HYMEN'STRIUMPH.

MORE CONCERNING LOVE AND MARRIAGE, AND MARRIAGE WITHOUT LOVE.

Nay Cupid, pitch thy trammel where thou please,Thou canst not fail to catch such fish as these.QUARLES.

Whether chance or choice have most to do in the weighty concerns of love and matrimony, is as difficult a question, as whether chance or skill have most influence upon a game at backgammon. Both enter into the constitution of the game; and choice will always have some little to do with love, though so many other operating motives may be combined with it, that it sometimes bears a very insignificant part: but from marriage it is too frequently precluded on the one side, unwilling consent, and submission to painful circumstances supplying its place; and there is one sect of Christians, (the Moravians,) who where they hold to the rigour of their institute, preclude it on both sides. They marry by lot; and if divorces ever take place among them, the scandal has not been divulged to the profaner world.

Choice however is exercised among all other Christians; or where not exercised, it is presumed by a fiction of law or of divinity, call it which you will. The husband even insists upon it in China where the pig is bought in a poke; for when pigsnie arrives and the purchaser opens the close sedan chair in which she has been conveyed to his house, if he does not like her looks at first sight, he shuts her up again and sends her back.

But when a batchelor who has no particular attachment, makes up his mind to take unto himself a wife, for those reasons to which Uncle Toby referred the Widow Wadman as being to be found in the Book of Common Prayer, how then to choose is a matter of much more difficulty, than one who has never considered it could suppose. It would not be paradoxical to assert that in the sort of choice which such a person makes, chance has a much greater part than either affection or judgement. To set about seeking a wife is like seeking ones fortune, and the probability of finding a good one in such a quest is less, though poor enough Heaven knows, in both cases.

The bard has sung, God never form'd a soulWithout its own peculiar mate, to meetIts wandering half, when ripe to crown the wholeBright plan of bliss, most heavenly, most compleat!But thousand evil things there are that hateTo look on happiness; these hurt, impede,And leagued with time, space, circumstance and fate,Keep kindred heart from heart, to pine and pant and bleed.And as the dove to far Palmyra flying,From where her native founts of Antioch beam,Weary, exhausted, longing, panting, sighing,Lights sadly at the desert's bitter stream;So many a soul o'er life's drear desert faring,Love's pure congenial spring unfound, unquaff'd,Suffers, recoils, then thirsty and despairingOf what it would, descends and sips the nearest draught.1

So sings Maria del Occidente, the most empassioned and most imaginative of all poetesses.

1ZOPHIEL.

According to the new revelation of the Saint Simonians, every individual human being has had a fitting mate created, the one and only woman for every individual man, and the one and only man for every individual woman; and unless the persons so made, fitted and intended for each other, meet and are joined together in matrimonial bonds, there can be no perfect marriage for either, that harmonious union for which they were designed being frustrated for both. Read the words of the Chief of the New Hierarchy himself, Father Bazard:Il n'y a sur la terre pour chaque homme qu'une seule femme, et pour chaque femme qu'un seul homme, qui soient destinés à former dans le mariage l'union harmonique du couple.—Grâce aux lumieres de cette revelation, les individus les plus avancés peuvent aussi dès aujourd'hui sentir et former le lien qui doit les unir dans le mariage.

But if Sinner Simon and his disciples,—(most assuredly they ought to be unsainted!) were right in this doctrine, happy marriages would be far more uncommon than they are; the man might with better likelihood of finding it look for a needle in a bottle of hay, than seek for his other half in this wide world; and the woman's chance would be so immeasurably less, that no intelligible form of figures could express her fraction of it.

The man who gets in love because he has determined to marry, instead of marrying because he is in love, goes about to private parties and to public places in search of a wife; and there he is attracted by a woman's appearance, and the figure which she makes in public, not by her amiable deportment, her domestic qualities and her good report. Watering places might with equal propriety be called fishing places, because they are frequented by female anglers, who are in quest of such prey, the elder for their daughters, the younger for themselves. But it is a dangerous sport, for the fair Piscatrix is not more likely to catch a bonito, or a dorado, than she is to be caught by a shark.

Thomas Day, not old Thomas Day of the old glee, nor the young Thomas Day either,—a father and son whose names are married to immortal music,—but the Thomas Day who wrote Sandford and Merton, and who had a heart which generally led him right, and a head which as generally led him wrong; that Thomas Day thought that the best way of obtaining a wife to his mind, was to breed one up for himself. So he selected two little orphan girls from a charity school, with the intention of marrying in due time the one whom he should like best. Of course such proper securities as could alone justify the managers of the charity in consenting to so uncommon a transaction, were required and given. The experiment succeeded in every thing—except its specific object; for he found at last that love was not a thing thus to be bespoken on either side; and his Lucretia and Sabrina, as he named them, grew up to be good wives for other men. I do not know whether the life of Thomas Day has yet found its appropriate place in the Wonderful Magazine, or in the collection entitled Eccentric Biography,—but the Reader may find it livelily related in Miss Seward's Life of Darwin.

The experiment of breeding a wife is not likely to be repeated. None but a most determined theorist would attempt it; and to carry it into effect would require considerable means of fortune, not to mention a more than ordinary share of patience: after which there must needs be a greater disparity of years than can be approved in theory upon any due consideration of human nature, and any reasonable estimate of the chances of human life.

THE AUTHOR'S LAST VISIT TO DONCASTER.

Fuere quondam, hæc sed fuere;Nunc ubi sint, rogitas? Id annosScire hos oportet scilicet. O bonæMusæ, O Lepôres—O Charites meræ!O gaudia offuscata nullisLitibus! O sine nube soles!JANUSDOUZA.

I have more to say, dear Ladies, upon that which to you is, and ought to be, the most interesting of all worldly subjects, matrimony, and the various ways by which it is brought about; but this is not the place for saying it. The Doctor is not at this time thinking of a wife: his heart can no more be taken so long as it retains the lively image of the Burgemeester's Daughter, than Troy-town while the Palladium was safe.

Imagine him, therefore, in the year of our Lord 1747, and in the twenty-sixth year of his age, returned to Doncaster, with the Burgemeester's Daughter, seated like the Lady in the Lobster, in his inmost breast; with physic in his head and at his fingers' ends; and with an appetite for knowledge which had long been feeding voraciously, digesting well, and increasing in its growth by what it fed on. Imagine him returned to Doncaster, and welcomed once more as a son by the worthy old Peter Hopkins and his good wife, in that comfortable habitation which I have heretofore described, and of which (as was at the same time stated) you may see a faithful representation in Miller's History of that good town; a faithful representation, I say, of what it was in 1804; the drawing was by Frederic Nash; and Edward Shirt made a shift to engrave it; the house had then undergone some alterations since the days when I frequented it; and now!—

Of all things in this our mortal pilgrimage one of the most joyful is the returning home after an absence which has been long enough to make the heart yearn with hope, and not sicken with it, and then to find when you arrive there that all is well. But the most purely painful of all painful things is to visit after a long long interval of time the place which was once our home;—the most purely painful, because it is unmixed with fear, anxiety, disappointment, or any other emotion but what belongs to the sense of time and change, then pressing upon us with its whole unalleviated weight.

It was my fortune to leave Doncaster early in life, and, having passedper varios casus, and through as large a proportion of good and evil in my humble sphere, as the pious Æneas, though not exactlyper tot discrimina rerum, not to see it again till after an absence of more than forty years, when my way happened to lie through that town. I should never have had heart purposely to visit it, for that would have been seeking sorrow; but to have made a circuit for the sake of avoiding the place would have been an act of weakness; and no man who has a proper degree of self-respect will do any thing of which he might justly feel ashamed. It was evening, and late in autumn when I entered Doncaster, and alighted at the Old Angel Inn. “TheOldAngel!” said I to my fellow-traveller; “you see that even Angels on earth grow old!”

My companion knew how deeply I had been indebted to Dr. Dove, and with what affection I cherished his memory. We presently sallied forth to look at his former habitation. Totally unknown as I now am in Doncaster, (where there is probably not one living soul who remembers either me, or my very name,) I had determined to knock at the door, at a suitable hour on the morrow, and ask permission to enter the house in which I had passed so many happy and memorable hours, long ago. My age and appearance I thought might justify this liberty; and I intended also to go into the garden and see if any of the fruit trees were remaining, which my venerable friend had planted, and from which I had so often plucked and ate.

When we came there, there was nothing by which I could have recognized the spot, had it not been for the Mansion House that immediately adjoined it. Half of its site had been levelled to make room for a street or road which had been recently opened. Not a vestige remained of the garden behind. The remaining part of the house had been re-built; and when I read the name of R. DENNISONon the door, it was something consolatory to see that the door itself was not the same which had so often opened to admit me.

Upon returning to the spot on the following morning I perceived that the part which had been re-built is employed as some sort of official appendage to the Mansion House; and on the naked side-wall now open to the new street, or road, I observed most distinctly where the old tall chimney had stood, and the outline of the old pointed roof. These were the only vestiges that remained; they could have no possible interest in any eyes but mine, which were likely never to behold them again; and indeed it was evident that they would soon be effaced as a deformity, and the naked side-wall smoothed over with plaster. But they will not be effaced from my memory, for they were the last traces of that dwelling which is theKeblaof my retrospective day-dreams, theSanctum Sanctorumof my dearest recollections; and like an apparition from the dead, once seen, they were never to be forgotten.

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