errand, for which, the historian of that noble family adds, "the lady shall after give him a new suit of clothes."

99

In those days, and long after, they who required remedies were likely to fare ill, under their own treatment, or that of their neighbours; and worse under the travelling quack, who was always an ignorant and impudent impostor, but found that human sufferings and human credulity afforded him a never-failing harvest. Dr. Green knew this: he did not say with the Romish priest, populus vult decipi, et decipietur! for he had no intention of deceiving them ; but he saw that many were to be won by buffoonery, more by what is called palaver, and almost all by pretensions. Condescending, therefore, to the common arts of quackery, he employed his man Kemp to tickle the multitude with coarse wit; but he stored himself with the best drugs that were to be procured, distributed as general remedies such only as could hardly be misapplied and must generally prove serviceable; and brought to particular cases the sound knowledge which he had acquired in the school of Boerhaave, and the skill which he had derived from experience aided by natural sagacity. When it became convenient for him to have a home, he established himself at Penrith, in the county of Cumberland, having married a lady of that place; but he long continued his favourite course of life, and accumulated in it a large fortune. He gained it by one maggot, and reduced it by many; nevertheless there remained a handsome inheritance for his children. His son proved as maggoty as the father, ran through a good fortune, and when confined in the King's Bench prison for debt, wrote a book upon the art of cheap living in London!

The father's local fame, though it has not reached to the third and fourth generation, survived him far into the second; and for many years after his retirement from practice, and even after his death, every travelling mountebank in the northern counties adopted the name of Dr. Green.

At the time to which this chapter refers, Dr. Green was in his meridian career, and enjoyed the highest reputation throughout the sphere of his itinerancy. Ingleton lay in his rounds, and whenever he came there he used to send for the schoolmaster to pass the evening with him. He was always glad if he could find an opportunity also of conversing with the elder Daniel, as the flossofer of those parts. William Dove could have communicated to him more curious things relating to his own art; but William kept out of the presence of strangers, and had happily no ailments to make him seek the doctor's advice; his occasional indispositions were but slight, and he treated them in his own way. That way was sometimes merely superstitious, sometimes it was whimsical, and sometimes rough. If his charms failed when he tried them upon himself, it was not for want of

faith. When at any time it happened that one of his eyes was bloodshot, he went forthwith in search of some urchin whose mother, either from laziness or in the belief that it was wholesome to have it in that state, allowed his ragged head to serve as a free warren for certain "small deer." -One of these hexapeds William secured, and " using him as if he loved him," put it into his eye; when, according to William's account, the insect fed upon what it found, cleared the eye, and disappearing he knew not where nor how, never

His remedy for the colic was a pebble posset; white pebbles were preferred, and of these what was deemed a reasonable quantity was taken in some sort of milk porridge. Upon the same theory he sometimes swallowed a pebble large enough, as he said, to clear all before it; and for that purpose they have been administered of larger calibre than any bolus that ever came from the hands of the most merciless apothecary, as large, indeed, sometimes, as a common sized walnut. Does the reader hesitate at believing this of an ignorant man, living in a remote part of the country? Well might William Dove be excused, for, a generation later than his, John Wesley in his primitive physic prescribed quicksilver, to be taken ounce by ounce, to the amount of one, two, or three pounds, till the desired effect was produced. And a generation earlier, Richard Baxter, of happy memory and unhappy digestion, having read in Dr. Gerhard "the admirable effects of the swallowing of a gold bullet upon his father," in a case which Baxter supposed to be like his own, got a gold bullet of between twenty and thirty shillings weight, and swallowed it. 66 Having taken it," says he, "I knew not how to be delivered of it again. I took clysters and purges for about three weeks, but nothing stirred it; and a gentleman having done the like, the bullet never came from him till he died, Iand it was cut out. But at last my neighbours set a day apart to fast and pray for me, and I was freed from my danger in the beginning of that day."

I MUST pass over fourteen years, for were I to pursue the history of our young Daniel's boyhood and adolescence into all the ramifications which a faithful biography requires, fourteen volumes would not contain it. They would be worth reading, for that costs little; they would be worth writing, though that costs much. They would deserve the best embellishments that the pencil and the graver could produce. The most poetical of artists would be worthily employed in designing the sentimental and melancholy scenes; Cruikshank for the grotesque; Wilkie and Richter for the comic and serio-comic; Turner for the actual scenery; Bewick for the head and tail pieces. They ought to be written; they ought to be read. They should be written, and then they would be read. But time is wanting:

"Eheu! fugaces posthume, posthume,
Labuntur anni!"

and time is a commodity of which the value rises as long as we live. We must be contented with doing, not what we wish, but what we can-our possible, as the French call it.

One of our poets (which is it?) speaks of an everlasting now. If such a condition of existence were offered to us in this world, and it were put to the vote whether we should accept the offer, and fix all things immutably as they are, who are they whose voices would be given in the affirmative?

Not those who are in pursuit of fortune, or of fame, or of knowledge, or of enjoyment, or of happiness; though with regard to all of these, as far as any of them are attainable, there is more pleasure in the pursuit than in the attainment. Not those who are at sea, or travelling in a stage coach. Not the man who is shaving himself.

Not those who have the toothache, or who are having a tooth drawn.

The fashionable beauty might, and the fashionable singer,

and the fashionable opera dancer, and the actor who is in the height of his power and reputation. So might the alderman at a city feast. So would the heir who is squandering a large fortune faster than it was accumulated for him. And the thief who is not taken, and the convict who is not hanged, and the scoffer at religion whose heart belies his tongue. Not the wise and the good.

Not those who are in sickness or in sorrow.

Not I.

But were I endowed with the power of suspending the effect of time upon the things around me, methinks there are some of my flowers which should neither fall nor fade: decidedly my kitten should never attain to cathood; and I am afraid my little boy would continue to "misspeak halfuttered words;" and never, while I live, outgrow that epicene dress of French gray, half European, half Asiatic in its fashion.

CHAPTER XXVI. P. I.

DANIEL AT DONCASTER; THE REASON WHY HE WAS DESTINED
FOR THE MEDICAL PROFESSION RATHER THAN HOLY ORDERS;
AND SOME REMARKS UPON SERMONS.

Je ne veux dissimuler, amy lecteur, que je n'aye bien préveu, et me tiens pour deüement adverty, que ne puis eviter la reprehension d'aucuns, et les calomnies de plusieurs-ausquels c'est éscrit désplaira du tout.-CHRISTOFLE DE HERICOURT.

FOURTEEN years have elapsed since the scene took place which is related in the twenty-second chapter: and Daniel the younger, at the time to which this present chapter refers, was residing at Doncaster with Peter Hopkins, who practised the medical art in all its branches. He had lived with him eight years, first as a pupil, latterly in the capacity of an assistant, and afterward as an adopted successor.

How this connection between Daniel and Peter Hopkins was brought about, and the circumstances which prepared the way for it, would have appeared in some of the non-existent fourteen volumes, if it had pleased fate that they should have been written.

Some of my readers, and especially those who pride themselves upon their knowledge of the world, or their success in it, will think it strange, perhaps, that the elder Daniel, when he resolved to make a scholar of his son, did not determine upon breeding him either to the church or the law, in either of which professions the way was easier and more inviting.

F3

1r was a fine saying of Lord W. Russell, who was beheaded in the reign of Charles II, when on the scaffold, he delivered his watch to Dr. Gilbert Burnet, afterwards Bishop of Salisbury:-" Here, sir," he said, "take this-it shows time. I am going into eternity, and shall no longer have any need of it."

Now though this will not appear strange to those other readers who have perceived that the father had no knowledge of the world, and could have none, it is nevertheless proper to enter into some explanation upon that point.

If George Herbert's Temple, or his Remains, or his life by old Izaak Walton, had all or any of them happened to be among those few but precious books which Daniel prized so highly and so well, it is likely that the wish of his heart would have been to train up his son for a priest to the temple. But so it was, that none of his reading was of a kind to give his thoughts that direction; and he had not conceived any exalted opinion of the clergy from the specimens which had fallen in his way. A contempt which was but too general had been brought upon the order by the ignorance or the poverty of a great number of its members. The person who served the humble church which Daniel dutifully attended was almost as poor as a capuchin, and quite as ignorant. This poor man had obtained in evil hour from some easy or careless bishop a license to preach. It was reprehensible enough to have ordained one who was destitute of every qualification that the office requires; the fault was still greater in promoting him from the desk to the pulpit.

"A very great scholar," is quoted by Dr. Eachard, as saying," that such preaching as is usual is a hinderance of salvation rather than the means to it." This was said when the fashion of conceited preaching which is satirised in Frey Gerundio had extended to England, and though that fashion has so long been obsolete that many persons will be surprised to hear it had ever existed among us, it may still reasonably be questioned whether sermons such as they commonly are, do not quench more devotion than they kindle.

My lord! put not the book aside in displeasure! (I address myself to whatever bishop may be reading it.) Unbiased I will not call myself, for I am a true and orthodox churchman, and have the interests of the church zealously at heart, because I believe and know them to be essentially and inseparably connected with those of the commonwealth. But I have been an attentive observer, and as such, request a hearing. Receive my remarks as coming from one whose principles are in entire accord with your lordship's, whose wishes have the same scope and purport, and who, while he offers his honest opinion, submits it with proper humility to your judgment.

The founder of the English church did not intend that the sermon should invariably form a part of the Sunday services. It became so in condescension to the Puritans, of whom it has long been the fashion to speak with respect, instead of holding them up to the contempt, and infamy, and abhorrence which they have so richly merited. They have been extolled by their descendants and successors as models of