แ -- Jeremy) says of devotional books, that "they are in a large degree the occasion of so great indevotion as prevails among the generality of nominal Christians, being," he says, "represented naked in the conclusions of spiritual life, without or art or learning; and made apt for persons who can do nothing but believe and love, not for them that can consider and love." This applies more forcibly to bad sermons than to common-place books of devotion; the book may be laid aside if it offend the reader's judgment, but the sermon is a positive infliction upon the helpless hearer. The same Bishop,-and his name ought to carry with it authority among the wise and the good, has delivered an opinion upon this subject, in his admirable Apology for Authorized and Set Forms of Liturgy. "Indeed," he says, "if I may freely declare my opinion, I think it were not amiss, if the liberty of making sermons were something more restrained than it is; and that such persons only were entrusted with the liberty, for whom the church herself may safely be responsive, that is, men learned and pious; and that the other part, the vulgus cleri, should instruct the people out of the fountains of the church and the public stock, till by so long exercise and discipline in the schools of the Prophets they may also be intrusted to minister of their own unto the people. This I am sure was the practice of the Primitive Church." "I am convinced," said Dr. Johnson, "that I ought to be at Divine Service more frequently than I am; but the provocations given by ignorant and affected preachers too often disturb the mental calm which other wise would succeed to prayer. I am apt to whisper to myself on such occasions, How can this illiterate fellow dream of fixing attention, after we have been listening to the sublimest truths, conveyed in the most chaste and exalted language, throughout a liturgy which must be regarded as the genuine offspring of piety impregnated by wisdom!"" "Take notice, however," he adds, "though I make this confession respecting myself, I do not mean to recommend the fastidious ness that sometimes leads me to exchange "Judge not the Preacher, for he is thy Judge; He that gets patience and the blessing which This sort of patience was all that Daniel could have derived from the discourses of the poor curate; and it was a lesson of which his meek and benign temper stood in no need. Nature had endowed him with this virtue, and this Sunday's discipline exercised without strengthening it. While he was, in the phrase of the Religious Public, sitting under the preacher, he obeyed to a certain extent George Herbert's precept, — that is, he obeyed it as he did other laws with the existence of which he was unacquainted,— Let vain or busy thoughts have there no part: Bring not thy plough, thy plots, thy pleasure thither. Pleasure made no part of his speculations at any time. Plots he had none. For the Plough,- it was what he never followed in fancy, patiently as he plodded after the furrow in his own vocation. And then for worldly thoughts they were not likely in that place to enter a mind which never at any time entertained them. But to that sort of thought (if thought it may be called) which cometh as it listeth, and which when the mind is at ease and the body in health, is the forerunner and usher of sleep, he certainly gave way. The curate's voice passed over his ear like the sound of the brook with which it blended, and it conveyed to him as little meaning and less feeling. During the sermon, therefore, he retired into himself, with as much or as little edification as a Quaker finds at a silent meeting. It happened also that of the few clergy within the very narrow circle in which Daniel moved, some were in no good repute for their conduct, and none displayed either that zeal in the discharge of their pastoral functions, or that earnestness and ability in performing the service of the Church, which are necessary for commanding the respect and securing the affections of the parishioners. The clerical profession had never presented itself to him in its best, which is really its true light; and for that cause he would never have thought of it for the boy, even if the means of putting him forward in this path had been easier and more obvious than they were. And for the dissenting ministry, Daniel liked not the name of a Nonconformist. The Puritans had left behind them an ill savour in his part of the country, as they had done every where else; and the extravagances of the primitive Quakers, which during his childhood were fresh in remembrance, had not yet been forgotten. It was well remembered in those parts that the Vicar of Kirkby Lonsdale, through the malignity of some of his puritanical parishioners, had been taken out of his bed | -from his wife who was then big with child—and hurried away to Lancaster jail, where he was imprisoned three years for no other offence than that of fidelity to his Church and his King. And that the man who was a chief instigator of this persecution, and had enriched himself by the spoil of his neighbour's goods, though he flourished for awhile, bought a field and built a fine house, came to poverty at last, and died in prison, having for some time received his daily food there from the table of one of this very Vicar's sons. It was well remembered also that, in a parish of the adjoining countypalatine, the puritanical party had set fire in the night to the Rector's barns, stable, and parsonage; and that he and his wife and children had only as it were by miracle escaped from the flames. William Dove had also among his traditional stores some stories of a stranger kind concerning the Quakers, these parts of the North having been a great scene of their vagaries in their early days. He used to relate how one of them went into the church at Brough, during the reign of the Puritans, with a white sheet about his body, and a rope about his neck, to prophesy before the people and their Whig Priest (as he called him) that the surplice which was then prohibited should again come into use, and that the Gallows should have its due! And how when their ringleader, George Fox, was put in prison at Carlisle, the wife of Justice Benson would eat no meat unless she partook it with him at the bars of his dungeon, declaring she was moved to do this; wherefore it was supposed he had bewitched her. And not without reason; for when this old George went, as he often did, into the Church to disturb the people, and they thrust him out, and fell upon him and beat him, sparing neither sticks nor stones if they came to hand, he was presently, for all that they had done to him, as sound and as fresh as if nothing had touched him; and when they tried to kill him, they could not take away his life! And how this old George rode a great black horse, upon which he was seen in the course of the same hour at two places, threescore miles distant from each other! And how some of the women who followed this old George used to strip off all their clothes, and in that plight go into the church at service time on the Sunday, to bear testimony against the pomps and vanities of the world; "and to be sure," said William, they must have been witched, or they never would have done this." "Lord deliver us!" said Dinah, "to be sure they must!"—"To be sure they must, Lord bless us all!" said Haggy. 66 were two tribes or nations called the Lazi and the Zani. Methinks it had been better if they had been left unconverted; for they have multiplied prodigiously among us, so that between the Lazy Christians and the Zany ones, Christianity has grievously suffered. It was one of the Zany tribe whom Guy once heard explaining to his congregation what was meant by Urim and Thummim, and in technical phrase improving the text. Urim and Thummim, he said, were two precious stones, or rather stones above all price, the Hebrew names of which have been interpreted to signify Light and Perfection, or Doctrine and Judgment, (which Luther prefers in his Bible, and in which some of the northern versions have followed him,) or the Shining and the Perfect, or Manifestation and Truth, the words in the original being capable of any or all of these significations. They were set in the High Priest's breast-plate of judgment; and when he consulted them upon any special occasion to discover the will of God, they displayed an extraordinary brilliancy if the matter which was referred to this trial were pleasing to the Lord Jehovah, but they gave no lustre if it were disapproved. "My Brethren," said the Preacher, "this is what learned Expositors, Jewish and Christian, tell me concerning these two precious stones. The stones themselves are lost. But, my Christian Brethren, we need them not, for we have a surer means of consulting and discovering the will of God; and still it is by Urim and Thummim, if we alter only a single letter in one of those mysterious words. Take your Bible, my brethren; use him and thumb him-use him and thumb him well,and you will discover the will of God as surely as ever the High Priest did by the stones in his breast-plate!" What Daniel saw of the Lazi, and what he heard of the Zani, prevented him from ever forming a wish to educate his son for a North country cure, which would have been all the preferment that lay within his view. And yet, if any person to whose judgment he deferred, had reminded him that Bishop Latimer had risen from as humble an origin, it might have awakened in him a feeling of ambition for the boy, not inconsistent with his own philosophy. But no suggestions could ever have induced Daniel to choose for him the profession of the Law. The very name of Lawyer was to him a word of evil acceptation. Montaigne has a pleasant story of a little boy who when his mother had lost a lawsuit, which he had always heard her speak of as a perpetual cause of trouble, ran up to her in great glee to tell her of the loss as a matter for congratulation and joy; the poor child thought it was like losing a cough, or any other bodily ailment. Daniel entertained the same sort of opinion concerning all legal proceedings. He knew that laws were necessary evils; but he thought they were much greater evils than there was any necessity that they should be; and believing this to be occasioned by those who were engaged in the trade of administering them, he looked upon lawyers as the greatest pests in the country— Because, their end being merely avarice, Winds up their wits to such a nimble strain As helps to blind the Judge, not give him eyes.* He had once been in the Courts at Lancaster, having been called upon as witness in a civil suit, and the manner in which he was cross-examined there by one of those "young spruce Lawyers," whom Donne has so happily characterised as being "all impudence and tongue" had confirmed him in this prejudice. What he saw of the proceedings that day induced him to agree with Beaumont and Fletcher, Combien de changemens depuis que suis au monde, Qui n'est qu'un point du tems! PASQUIER. PETER HOPKINS was a person who might have suffered death by the laws of Solon, if that code had been established in this country; for though he lived in the reigns of George L. and George II., he was neither Whig nor Tory, Hanoverian nor Jacobite. When he drank the King's health with any of his neighbours, he never troubled himself with considering which King was intended, nor to which side of the water their good wishes were directed. Under George or Charles he would have been the same quiet subject, never busying himself with a thought about political matters, and having no other wish concerning them than that they might remain as they were,-so far he BEN JONSON. was a Hanoverian, and no farther. There was something of the same temper in his religion; he was a sincere Christian, and had he been born to attendance at the Mass or the Meeting House would have been equally sincere in his attachment to either of those extremes: for his whole mind was in his profession. He was learned in its history; fond of its theories; and skilful in its practice, in which he trusted little to theory and much to experience. Both he and his wife were at this time well stricken in years; they had no children, and no near kindred on either side; and being both kind-hearted people, the liking which they soon entertained toward Daniel for his docility, his simplicity of heart, his obliging temper, his original cast of mind, and his never-failing good-humour, ripened into a settled affection. Hopkins lived next door to the Mansion House, which edifice was begun a few years after Daniel went to live with him. There is a view of the Mansion House in Dr. Miller's History of Doncaster, and in that print the dwelling in question is included. It had undergone no other alteration at the time this view was taken than that of having had its casements replaced by sash windows, an improvement which had been made by our Doctor, when the frame-work of the casements had become incapable of repair. The gilt pestle and mortar also had been removed from its place above the door. Internally the change had been greater; for the same business not being continued there after the Doctor's decease, the shop had been converted into a sitting room, and the very odour of medicine had passed away. But I will not allow myself to dwell upon this melancholy subject. The world is full of mutations; and there is hardly any that does not bring with it some regret at the time, and alas, more in the retrospect! I have lived to see the American Colonies separated from Great Britain, the Kingdom of Poland extinguished, the Republic of Venice destroyed, its territory seized by one Usurper, delivered over in exchange to another, and the transfer sanctioned and con firmed by all the Powers of Europe in Congress assembled! I have seen Heaven knows how many little Principalities and States, proud of their independence, and happy in the privileges connected with it, swallowed up by the Austrian or the Prussian Eagle, or thrown to the Belgic Lion, as his share in the division of the spoils. I have seen constitutions spring up like mushrooms and kicked down as easily. I have seen the rise and fall of Napoleon. I have seen Cedars fall And in their room a mushroom grow; wherefore then should I lament over what middle of the house, served for four apartments; the Doctor's study and his bedchamber on the upper floor, the kitchen and the best parlour on the lower,― that parlour, yes, Reader, that very parlour wherein, as thou canst not have forgotten, Mrs. Dove was making tea for the Doctor on that ever memorable afternoon with which our history begins. CHAPTER XXIX. P. I. A HINT OF REMINISCENCE TO THE READER. There is a ripe season for every thing, and if you slip that or anticipate it, you dim the grace of the matter be it never so good. As we say by way of Proverb that an tumbled out before the time is ripe for it, is ungrateful to the hearer. BISHOP HACKETT. THE judicious reader will now have perceived that in the progress of this narrative, - which may be truly said to -bear A music in the ordered history It was an old house, which when it was built had been one of the best in Doncaster; hasty birth brings forth blind whelps, so a good tale and even after the great improvements which have changed the appearance of the town, had an air of antiquated respectability about it. Had it been near the church it would have been taken for the Vicarage; standing where it did, its physiognomy was such that you might have guessed it was the Doctor's house, even if the pestle and mortar had not been there as his insignia. There were eight windows and two doors in front. It we have arrived at that point which deconsisted of two stories, and was oddly built, termines the scene and acquaints him with the middle part having, something in the the local habitation of the Doctor. He will Scotch manner, the form of a gable end perceive also that in our method of narratowards the street. Behind this was a single tion, nothing has been inartificially anticichimney, tall, and shaped like a pillar. In pated; that, there have been no premature windy nights the Doctor was so often con- disclosures, no precipitation, no hurry, or sulted by Mrs. Dove concerning the stability impatience on my part; and that, on the of that chimney, that he accounted it the other hand, there has been no unnecessary plague of his life. But it was one of those delay, but that we have regularly and evils which could not be removed without naturally come to this development. The bringing on a worse, the alternative being author who undertakes a task like mine, whether there should be a tall chimney, or a smoky house. And after the mansion house was erected, there was one wind which, in spite of the chimney's elevation, drove the smoke down,so inconvenient is it sometimes to be fixed near a great neighbour. This unfortunate chimney, being in the HABINGTON. -must nombre al the hole cyrcumstaunce as an old Poet* says of the professors of the HAWE'S "Pastime of Pleasure." |