THE DOCTOR,

Questo è bene un de' più profondi passiChe noi habbiamo ancora oggi tentato;E non è mica da huomini bassi.AGNUOLOFIRENZUOLA.

CHAPTER LXIV.

DEFENCE OF PORTRAIT-PAINTING. A SYSTEM OF MORAL COSMETICS RECOMMENDED TO THE LADIES. GWILLIM. SIR T. LAWRENCE. GEORGE WITHER. APPLICATION TO THE SUBJECT OF THIS WORK.

Pingitur in tabulis formæ peritura venustas,Vivat ut in tabulis, quod perit in facie.OWEN.

CHAPTER LXV.

SOCIETY OF A COUNTRY TOWN. SUCH A TOWN A MORE FAVOURABLE HABITAT FOR SUCH A PERSON AS DR. DOVE THAN LONDON WOULD HAVE BEEN.

Be then thine own home, and in thyself dwell;Inn any where;And seeing the snail, which every where doth roam,Carrying his own home still, still is at home,Follow (for he is easy paced) this snail;Be thine own Palace, or the World's thy jail.DONNE.

CHAPTER LXVI.

MR. COPLEY OF NETHERHALL. SOCIETY AT HIS HOUSE. DRUMMOND. BURGH. GRAY. MASON. MILLER THE ORGANIST AND HISTORIAN OF DONCASTER. HERSCHEL.

All worldly joys go lessTo the one joy of doing kindnesses.HERBERT.

CHAPTER LXVII.

A MYTHOLOGICAL STORY MORALIZED.

Il faut mettre les fables en presse pour en tirer quelque suc de verité.

GARASSE.

CHAPTER LXVIII.

ECCENTRIC PERSONS, WHY APPARENTLY MORE COMMON IN ENGLAND THAN IN OTHER COUNTRIES. HARRY BINGLEY.

Blest are thoseWhose blood and judgement are so well commingled,That they are not a pipe for Fortune's fingerTo sound what stop she please.HAMLET.

CHAPTER LXIX.

A MUSICAL RECLUSE AND HIS SISTER.

Some proverb maker, I forget who, says, “God hath given to some men wisdom and understanding, and to others the art of playing on the fiddle.”

Professor PARK'SDogmas of the Constitution.

CHAPTER LXX.

SHEWING THAT ANY HONEST OCCUPATION IS BETTER THAN NONE, BUT THAT OCCUPATIONS WHICH ARE DEEMED HONOURABLE ARE NOT ALWAYS HONEST.

J'ai peine à concevoir pourquoi le plûpart des hommes ont une si forte envie d'être heureux, et une si grande incapacité pour le devenir.

VOYAGES DEMILORDCETON.

CHAPTER LXXI.

TRANSITION IN OUR NARRATIVE PREPARATORY TO A CHANGE IN THE DOCTOR'S LIFE. A SAD STORY SUPPRESSED. THE AUTHOR PROTESTS AGAINST PLAYING WITH THE FEELINGS OF HIS READERS. ALL ARE NOT MERRY THAT SEEM MIRTHFUL. THE SCAFFOLD A STAGE. DON RODRIGO CALDERON. THISTLEWOOD. THE WORLD A MASQUERADE, BUT THE DOCTOR ALWAYS IN HIS OWN CHARACTER.

This breaks no rule of order.If order were infringed then should I fleeFrom my chief purpose, and my mark should miss.Order is Nature's beauty, and the wayTo Order is by rules that Art hath found.GWILLIM.

CHAPTER LXXII.

IN WHICH THE FOURTH OF THE QUESTIONS PROPOSED IN CHAPTER II. P. I. IS BEGUN TO BE ANSWERED; SOME OBSERVATIONS UPON ANCESTRY ARE INTRODUCED, AND THE READER IS INFORMED WHY THE AUTHOR DOES NOT WEAR A CAP AND BELLS.

Boast not the titles of your ancestors,Brave youths! they're their possessions, none of yours.When your own virtues equall'd have their names,'Twill be but fair to lean upon their fames,For they are strong supporters; but till thenThe greatest are but growing gentlemen.BENJONSON.

CHAPTER LXXIII.

RASH MARRIAGES. AN EARLY WIDOWHOOD. AFFLICTION RENDERED A BLESSING TO THE SUFFERER; AND TWO ORPHANS LEFT, THOUGH NOT DESTITUTE, YET FRIENDLESS.

Love built a stately house; where Fortune came,And spinning fancies, she was heard to sayThat her fine cobwebs did support the frame;Whereas they were supported by the same.But Wisdom quickly swept them all away.HERBERT.

CHAPTER LXXIV.

A LADY DESCRIBED WHOSE SINGLE LIFE WAS NO BLESSEDNESS EITHER TO HERSELF OR OTHERS. A VERACIOUS EPITAPH AND AN APPROPRIATE MONUMENT.

Beauty! my Lord,—'tis the worst part of woman!A weak poor thing, assaulted every hourBy creeping minutes of defacing time;A superficies which each breath of careBlasts off; and every humorous stream of griefWhich flows from forth these fountains of our eyes,Washeth away, as rain doth winter's snow.GOFF.

CHAPTER LXXV.

A SCENE WHICH WILL PUT SOME OF THOSE READERS WHO HAVE BEEN MOST IMPATIENT WITH THE AUTHOR, IN THE BEST HUMOUR WITH HIM.

There is no argument of more antiquity and elegancy than is the matter of Love; for it seems to be as old as the world, and to bear date from the first time that man and woman was: therefore in this, as in the finest metal, the freshest wits have in all ages shewn their best workmanship.

ROBERTWILMOT.

CHAPTER LXXVI.

A STORY CONCERNING CUPID WHICH NOT ONE READER IN TEN THOUSAND HAS EVER HEARD BEFORE; A DEFENCE OF LOVE WHICH WILL BE VERY SATISFACTORY TO THE LADIES.

They do lie,Lie grossly who say Love is blind,—by himAnd Heaven they lie! he has a sight can pierceThro' ivory, as clear as it were horn,And reach his object.BEAUMONTand FLETCHER.

CHAPTER LXXVII.

MORE CONCERNING LOVE AND THE DREAM OF LIFE.

Happy the bonds that hold ye;Sure they be sweeter far than liberty.There is no blessedness but in such bondage;Happy that happy chain; such links are heavenly.BEAUMONTand FLETCHER.

DONCASTRIANA. THE RIVER DON.

Rivers from bubbling springsHave rise at first; and great from abject things.MIDDLETON.

How would it have astonished Peter Hopkins if some one gifted with the faculty of second sight had foretold to him that, at the sale of Pews in a new Church at Doncaster, eighteen of those Pews should produce upwards of sixteen hundred pounds, and that one of them should be bought at the price of £138,—a sum for which in his days lands enough might have been purchased to have qualified three men as Yorkshire Freeholders! How would it have surprized him to have been told that Doncaster races would become the greatest meeting in the North of England; that Princes would attend them, and more money would annually be won and lost there than might in old times have sufficed for a King's ransom! But the Doncaster of George the fourth's reign is not more like the Doncaster of George the second's, than George the fourth himself, in manners, habit, character and person is like his royal Great Grandfather;—not more like than to the Doncaster of the United States, if such a place there be there; or to the Doncaster that may be in New South Wales, Van Diemen's or Swan-river-land. It was a place of considerable importance when young Daniel first became an inhabitant of it; but it was very far from having attained all the advantages arising from its well-endowed corporation, its race-ground, and its position on the great north road.

It is beyond a doubt that Doncaster may be identified with the Danum of Antoninus and the Notitia, the Caer Daun of Nennius, and the Dona-cester of the Saxons: whether it were the Campo-Donum of Bede,—a royal residence of the Northumbrian Kings, where Paulinus the Romish Apostle of Northumbria built a Church, which with the town itself was burnt by the Welsh King Cadwallon, and his Saxon Ally the Pagan Penda, after a battle in which Edwin fell,—is not so certain; antiquaries differ upon this point, but they who maintain the affirmative appear to have the strongest case. In the charter granted to it by Richard Cœur de Lion the town is called Danecastre.

The name indicates that it was a Roman Station on the river Dan, Don or Dun, “so called,” says Camden, “because 'tis carried in a low deep channel, for that is the signification of the British word Dan.” I thank Dr. Prichard for telling me what it was not possible for Camden to know,—that Don in the language of the Ossetes, a Caucassian tribe, means water; and that in a country so remote as New Guinea, Dan has the same meaning. Our Doctor loved the river for its name's sake; and the better because the river Dove falls into it. Don however, though not without some sacrifice of feeling, he was content to call it, in conformity to the established usage. A more satisfactory reason to him would have been that of preserving the identity of name with the Don of Aberdeenshire and of the Cossacks, and the relationship in etymology with the Donau, but that the original pronunciation which was, as he deemed, perverted in that latter name was found in Danube; and that by calling his own river Don it ceased to be homonymous with that Dan which adds its waters, and its name to the Jor.

But the Yorkshire Don might be liked also for its own sake. Hear how its course is described in old prose and older verse! “The River Don or Dun,” says Dodsworth in his Yorkshire collections, “riseth in the upper part of Pennystone parish near Lady's Cross (which may be called our Appennines, because the rain water that falleth sheddeth from sea to sea;) cometh to Birchworth, so to Pennystone, thence to Boleterstone by Medop, leaveth Wharncliffe Chase (stored with roebucks, which are decayed since the great frost) on the north (belonging to Sir Francis Wortley, where he hath great iron works. The said Wharncliffe affordeth two hundred dozen of coal for ever to his said works. In this Chase he had red and fallow deer and roes) and leaveth Bethuns, a Chase and Tower of the Earl of Salop, on the south side. By Wortley to Waddsley, where in times past Everingham of Stainber had a park, now disparked. Thence to Sheffield, and washeth the castle wall; keepeth its course to Attercliffe, where is an iron forge of the Earl of Salop; from thence to Winkebank, Kymberworth and Eccles, where it entertaineth the Rother; cometh presently to Rotherham, thence to Aldwark Hall, the Fitzwilliams' ancient possession; then to Thriberg Park, the seat of Reresbyes Knights; then to Mexborough, where hath been a Castle; then to Conisborough Park and Castle of the Earls of Warrens, where there is a place called Horsas Tomb. From thence to Sprotebrough, the ancient seat of the famous family of Fitzwilliam who have flourished since the conquest. Thence by Newton to Donecastre, Wheatley and Kirk Sandal to Barnby-Dunn; by Bramwith and Stainforth to Fishlake; thence to Turnbrig, a port town serving indifferently for all the west parts, where he pays his tribute to the Ayre.”

Hear Michael Drayton next, who being as determined a personificator as Darwin himself, makes “the wide West Riding” thus address her favorite River Don;

Thou first of all my floods, whose banks do bound my southAnd offerest up thy stream to mighty Humber's mouth;Of yew and climbing elm that crown'd with many a spray,From thy clear fountain first thro' many a mead dost play,Till Rother, whence the name of Rotherham first begun,At that her christened town doth lose her in my Don;Which proud of her recourse, towards Doncaster doth drive,Her great and chiefest town, the name that doth deriveFrom Don's near bordering banks; when holding on her race,She, dancing in and out, indenteth Hatfield Chase,Whose bravery hourly adds new honors to her bank:When Sherwood sends her in slow Iddle that, made rankWith her profuse excess, she largely it bestowsOn Marshland, whose swoln womb with such abundance flows,As that her battening breast her fatlings sooner feeds,And with more lavish waste than oft the grazier needs;Whose soil, as some reports, that be her borderers, note,With water under earth undoubtedly doth float,For when the waters rise, it risen doth remainHigh, while the floods are high, and when they fall again,It falleth: but at last when as my lively DonAlong by Marshland side her lusty course hath run,The little wandering Trent, won by the loud reportOf the magnific state and height of Humber's court,Draws on to meet with Don, at her approach to Aire.

Seldon's rich commentary does not extend to that part of the Polyolbion in which these lines occur, but a comment upon the supposed rising and falling of the Marshland with the waters, is supplied by Camden. “The Don,” he says after it has passed Hatfield Chase “divides itself, one stream running towards the river Idel which comes out of Nottinghamshire, the other towards the river Aire; in both which they continue till they meet again, and fall into the Æstuary of Humber. Within the island, or that piece of ground encompassed by the branches of these two rivers are Dikemarsh, and Marshland, fenny tracts, or rather river-islands, about fifteen miles round, which produce a very green rank grass, and are as it were set round with little villages. Some of the inhabitants imagine the whole island floats upon the water; and that sometimes when the waters are encreased 'tis raised higher; just like what Pomponius Mela tells us of the Isle of Autrum in Gaul.” Upon this passage Bishop Gibson remarks, “as to what our author observes of the ground being heaved up, Dr. Johnston affirms he has spoke with several old men who told him, that the turf-moor between Thorne and Gowle was so much higher before the draining, especially in winter time, than it is now, that before they could see little of the church steeple, whereas now they can see the church-yard wall.”

The poet might linger willingly with Ebenezer Elliott amid

——rock, vale and wood,—Haunts of his early days, and still loved well,—And where the sun, o'er purple moorlands wide,Gilds Wharncliffe's oaks, while Don is dark below;And where the black bird sings on Rother's side,And where Time spares the age of Conisbro';

but we must proceed with good matter of fact prose.

The river has been made navigable to Tinsley, within three miles of Sheffield, and by this means Sheffield, Rotherham and Doncaster carry on a constant intercourse with Hull. A cut was made for draining that part of Hatfield Chase called the Levels, by an adventurous Hollander, Cornelius Vermuyden by name, in the beginning of Charles the first's reign. Some two hundred families of French and Walloon refugees were induced to colonize there at that time. They were forcibly interrupted in their peaceful and useful undertaking by the ignorant people of the country, who were instigated and even led on by certain of the neighbouring gentry, as ignorant as themselves; but the Government was then strong enough to protect them; they brought about twenty-four thousand acres into cultivation, and many of their descendants are still settled upon the ground which was thus reclaimed. Into this new cut, which is at this day called the Dutch river, the Don was turned, its former course having been through Eastoft; but the navigation which has since proved so beneficial to the country, and toward which this was the first great measure, produced at first a plentiful crop of lawsuits, and one of the many pamphlets which this litigation called forth, bears as an alias in its title, “the Devil upon Don.”

Many vestiges of former cultivation were discovered when this cut was made,—such (according to Gibson's information) as gates, ladders, hammers and shoes. The land was observed in some places to lie in ridges and furrows, as if it had been ploughed; and oaks and fir trees were frequently dug up, some of which were found lying along, with their roots still fastened; others as if cut, or burnt, and severed from the ground. Roots were long to be seen in the great cut, some very large and standing upright, others with an inclination toward the east.

About the year 1665 the body of a man was found in a turf pit, some four yards deep, lying with his head toward the north. The hair and nails were not decayed, and the skin was like tanned leather; but it had lain so long there that the bones had become spongy.

MORAL INTEREST OF TOPOGRAPHICAL WORKS. LOCAL ATTACHMENT.

Let none our Author rudely blameWho from the story has thus long digrest;But for his righteous pains may his fair fameFor ever travel, whilst his ashes rest.SIRWILLILAMDAVENANT.

Reader, if thou carest little or nothing for the Yorkshire river Don and for the town of Doncaster, and for the circumstances connected with it, I am sorry for thee. My venerable friend the Doctor was of a different disposition. He was one who loved, like Southey

———uncontrolled, as in a dreamTo muse upon the course of human things;Exploring sometimes the remotest springs,Far as tradition lends one guiding gleam;Or following upon Thought's audacious wingsInto Futurity the endless stream.

He could not only find

———tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,Sermons in stones, and good in every thing,—1

but endeavoured to find all he could in them, and for that reason delighted to enquire into the history of places and of things, and to understand their past as well as their present state. The revolutions of a mansion house within his circuit were as interesting to him as those of the Mogul Empire; and he had as much satisfaction in being acquainted with the windings of a brook from its springs to the place where it fell into the Don, as he could have felt in knowing that the Sources of the Nile had been explored, or the course and termination of the Niger.

1SHAKESPEAR.

Hear, Reader, what a journalist says upon rivers in the newest and most approved style of critical and periodical eloquence! He says, and he regarded himself no doubt with no small complacency while so saying,

“An acquaintance with” Rivers “well deserves to be erected into a distinct science. We hailPotamologywith a cordial greeting, and welcome it to our studies, parlours, schools, reading-rooms, lecture-rooms, mechanics' institutes and universities. There is no end to the interest which Rivers excite. They may be considered physically, geographically, historically, politically, commercially, mathematically, poetically, pictorially, morally, and even religiously—In the world's anatomy they are its veins, as the primitive mountains, those mighty structures of granite, are its bones; they minister to the fertility of the earth, the purity of the air, and the health of mankind. They mark out nature's kingdoms and provinces, and are the physical dividers and subdividers of continents. They welcome the bold discoverer into the heart of the country, to whose coast the sea has borne his adventurous bark. The richest freights have floated on their bosoms, and the bloodiest battles have been fought upon their banks. They move the wheels of cotton mills by their mechanical power, and madden the souls of poets and painters by their picturesque splendor. They make scenery and are scenery, and land yields no landscape without water. They are the best vehicle for the transit of the goods of the merchant, and for the illustration of the maxims of the moralist. The figure is so familiar, that we scarcely detect a metaphor when the stream of life and the course of time flow on into the ocean of Eternity.”

Hear, hear, oh hear!

Udite—Fiumi correnti, e rive,—E voi—fontane vive!2

Yet the person who wrote this was neither deficient in feeling, nor in power; it is the epidemic vice prevailing in an age of journals that has infected him. They who frame their stylead captandumfall into this vein, and as immediate effect is their object they are wise in their generation. The public to which they address themselves are attracted by it, as flies swarm about treacle.

2GIUSTO DE'CONTE.

We are advanced from the Age of Reason to the Age of Intellect, and this is the current eloquence of that age!—let us get into an atmosphere of common sense.

Topographical pursuits, my Doctor used to say, tend to preserve and promote the civilization of which they are a consequence and a proof. They have always prospered in prosperous countries, and flourished most in flourishing times when there have been persons enough of opulence to encourage such studies, and of leisure to engage in them. Italy and the Low Countries therefore took the lead in this branch of literature; the Spaniards and Portugueze cultivated it in their better days; and beginning among ourselves with Henry 8th, it has been continued with encreasing zeal down to the present time.

Whatever strengthens our local attachments is favorable both to individual and national character. Our home,—our birth place,—our native land,—think for a while what the virtues are which arise out of the feelings connected with these words; and if thou hast any intellectual eyes thou wilt then perceive the connection between topography and patriotism.

Shew me a man who cares no more for one place than another, and I will shew you in that same person one who loves nothing but himself. Beware of those who are homeless by choice! You have no hold on a human being whose affections are without a tap-root. The laws recognize this truth in the privileges which they confer upon freeholders; and public opinion acknowledges it also, in the confidence which it reposes upon those who have what is called a stake in the country. Vagabond and rogue are convertible terms; and with how much propriety any one may understand who knows what are the habits of the wandering classes, such as gypsies, tinkers and potters.

The feeling of local attachment was possessed by Daniel Dove in the highest degree. Spurzheim and the crazyologists would have found out a bump on his head for its local habitation;—letting that quackery pass, it is enough for me to know that he derived this feeling from his birth as a mountaineer, and that he had also a right to it by inheritance, as one whose ancestors had from time immemorial dwelt upon the same estate. Smile not contemptuously at that word, ye, whose domains extend over more square miles than there were square roods upon his patrimony! To have held that little patrimony unimpaired, as well as unenlarged, through so many generations implies more contentment, more happiness, and a more uniform course of steadiness and good conduct, than could be found in the proudest of your genealogies!

The most sacred spot upon earth to him was his father's hearth-stead. Rhine, Rhone, Danube, Thames or Tyber, the mighty Ganges or the mightier Maranon, even Jordan itself, affected his imagination less than the Greta, or Wease as he was wont to call it, of his native fields; whose sounds in his boyhood were the first which he heard at morning and the last at night, and during so many peaceful and happy years made as it were an accompaniment to his solitary musings, as he walked between his father's house and his schoolmaster's, to and fro.

Next to that wild river Wease whose visible course was as delightful to the eye and ear, as its subterranean one was to the imagination, he loved the Don. He was not one of those refined persons who like to lessen their admiration of one object by comparing it with another. It entered as little into his mind to depreciate the Don because it was not a mountain stream, as it did into Corporal Trim's or Uncle Toby's to think the worse of Bohemia because it has no sea coast. What if it had no falls, no rapids or resting-places, no basins whose pellucid water might tempt Diana and the Oreades to bathe in it; instead of these the Don had beauties of its own, and utilities which give to such beauties when combined with them an additional charm. There was not a more pleasing object in the landscape to his eyes than the broad sail of a barge slowly moving between the trees, and bearing into the interior of England the produce of the Baltic, and of the East and West.

The place in the world which he loved best was Ingleton, because in that little peaceful village, as in his childhood it was, he had once known every body and every body had known him; and all his recollections of it were pleasurable, till time cast over them a softening but a pensive hue. But next to Ingleton he loved Doncaster.

And wherefore did he thus like Doncaster? For a better reason than the epigrammatist could give for not liking Dr. Fell, though perhaps many persons have no better than that epigrammatist had in this case, for most of their likings and dislikings. He liked it because he must have been a very unreasonable man if he had not been thankful that his lot had fallen there—because he was useful and respected there, contented, prosperous, happy; finally because it is a very likeable place, being one of the most comfortable towns in England: for it is clean, spacious, in a salubrious situation, well-built, well-governed, has no manufactures, few poor, a greater proportion of inhabitants who are not engaged in any trade or calling, than perhaps any other town in the kingdom, and moreover it sends no members to parliament.

THE AUTHOR QUESTIONS THE PROPRIETY OF PERSONIFYING CIRCUMSTANCE, DENIES THE UNITY AND INDIVISIBILITY OF THE PUBLIC, AND MAY EVEN BE SUSPECTED OF DOUBTING ITS OMNISCIENCE AND ITS INFALLIBILITY.

Ha forseTesta la plebe, ove si chiuda in veceDi senno, altro che nebbia? o forma voceChi sta più saggia, che un bebu d'armento?CHIABRERA.

“What a kind of Being is circumstance!” says Horace Walpole in his atrocious tragedy of the Mysterious Mother.—A very odd kind of Being indeed. In the course of my reading I remember but three Beings equally remarkable,—as personified in prose and verse. Social-Tie was one; Catastrophe another; and Inoculation, heavenly Maid! the third.

But of all ideal Beings the most extraordinary is that which we call the Public. The Public and Transubstantiation I hold to be the two greatest mysteries in, or out of nature. And there are certain points of resemblance between them.—For as the Priest creates the one mystery, so the author, or other appellant to the said Public, creates the other, and both bow down in worship, real or simulated, before the Idol of their own creation. And as every fragment of the wafer break it into as many as you may, contains in itself the whole entire mystery of Transubstantiation, just in the same manner every fractional part of the Public assumes to itself the powers, privileges and prerogatives of the whole, as virtually, potentially and indefeasably its own. Nay, every individual who deems himself a constituent member of the said Public arrogates them also, and when he professes to be actingpro bono publico, the words mean with him all the good he can possibly get for himself.

The old and famous illustration of Hermes may be in part applied to the Public; it is a circle of which the centre is every where: in part I say, for its circumference is defined. It is bounded by language, and has many intercircles. It is indeed a confused multiplicity of circles intersecting each other, perpetually in motion and in change. Every man is the centre of some circle, and yet involved in others; he who is not sometimes made giddy by their movements, has a strong head; and he who is not sometimes thrown off his balance by them, stands well upon his legs.

Again, the Public is like a nest of patent coffins packed for exportation, one within another. There are Publics of all sizes, from thegenus generalissimum, the great general universal Public, whom London is not large enough to hold, to thespecies specialissima, the little Thinking Public, which may find room in a nutshell.

There is the Fashionable Public, and the Religious Public, and the Play-going Public, and the Sporting Public, and the Commercial Public, and the Literary Public, and the Reading Public, and Heaven knows how many Publics more. They call themselves Worlds sometimes,—as if a certain number of worldlings made a World!

He who pays his homage to any or all of these Publics, is a Publican and a Sinner.

“Nunquam valui populo placere; nam quæ ego scio non probat populus; quæ probat populas, ego nescio.”1

“Bene et ille, quisquis fuit, (ambigitur enim de auctore,) cum quæreretur ab illo, quo tanta diligentia artis spectaret ad paucissimos perventuræ? Satis sunt, inquit, mihi pauci; satis est unus; satis est nullus.”2

1SENECA, 2, 79.

2IB,ib.17.

DONCASTRIANA. POTTERIC CARR. SOMETHING CONCERNING THE MEANS OF EMPLOYING THE POOR, AND BETTERING THEIR CONDITION.

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