CHAPTER XLVII. DONCASTRIANA. GUY'S DEATH. HIS TOMBSTONE IN INGLETON Go to the dull church-yard, and see CHURCH TIXALL POETRY. there is one there can hardly, I think, be doubted; for if he left no relations who SEARCH FOR regarded him, nor perhaps effects enough of his own to defray this last posthumous and not necessary expense; and if Thomas Gent of York, who published the old poem of Flodden Field from his transcript, after his death, thought he required no other monument; Daniel was not likely to omit this last tribute of respect and affection to his friend. But the church-yard, which, when his mortal remains were deposited there, accorded well with its romantic site, on a little eminence above the roaring torrent, and with the then retired character of the village, and with the solemn use to which it was consecrated, is now a thickly-peopled burial-ground. Since their time, manufactures have been established in Ingleton, and though eventually they proved unsuccessful, and were consequently abandoned, yet they continued long enough in work largely to increase the population of the church-yard. Amid so many tombs the stone which marked poor Guy's resting-place might escape even a more diligent search than mine. Nearly a century has elapsed since it was set up in the course of that time its inscription not having been re-touched, must have become illegible to all but an antiquary's poring and practised eyes; and perhaps to them also unless aided by his tracing tact, and by the conjectural supply of connecting words, syllables, or letters; indeed, the stone itself has probably become half interred, as the earth around it has been disturbed and raised. Time corrodes our epitaphs, and buries our very tombstones. THE first years of Daniel's abode in Doncaster were distinguished by many events of local memorability. The old Friar's bridge was taken down, and a new one with one large arch built in its stead. Turnpikes were erected on the roads to Saltsbrook and to Tadcaster; and in 1742 Lord Semple's regiment of Highlanders marched through the town, being the first soldiers without breeches who had ever been seen there since breeches were in use. In 1746 the Mansion House was begun, next door to Peter Hopkins's, and by no means to his comfort while the work was going on, nor indeed after it was completed,. its effect upon his chimneys having heretofore been noticed. The building was interrupted by the rebellion. An army of six thousand English and Hessians was then encamped upon Wheatley Hills; and a Hessian general dying there, was buried in St. George's Church; from whence his leaden coffin was stolen by the gravedigger. Daniel had then completed his twentysecond year. Every summer he paid a month's visit to his parents; and those were happy days, not the less so to all parties because his second home had become almost as dear to him as his first. Guy did not live to see the progress of his pupil; he died a few months after the lad had been placed at Doncaster, and the delight of Daniel's first return was overclouded by this loss. It was a severe one to the elder Daniel, who lost in the Schoolmaster his only intellectual companion. I have sought in vain for Richard Guy's tombstone in Ingleton church-yard.* That "Grave-stones tell truth scarce forty years." Returning pensively from my unsuccessful search in the church-yard, to the little inn at Ingleton, I found there, upon a sampler, worked in 1824 by Elizabeth Brown, aged 9, and framed as an ornament for the room which I occupied, some lines in as moral a strain of verse as any which I had that day perused among the tombs. And I transcribed them for preservation, thinking it not improbable that they had been originally composed by Richard Guy, for the use of his female scholars, and handed down for a like purpose, from one generation to an- * Jesus permit thy gracious name to stand CHAPTER XLVIII. A FATHER'S MISGIVINGS CONCERNING HIS GENEROSITY. DANIEL IS SENT ABROAD Heaven is the magaziñe wherein He puts QUARLES. bears a sufficiently ugly likeness of its father. But Family Feeling is a very different thing, and may exist as strongly in humble as in high life. Naboth was as much attached to the vineyard, the inheritance of his fathers, as Ahab could be to the throne which had been the prize, and the reward, or punishment, of his father Omri's ambition. This feeling sometimes induced a doubt in Daniel whether affection for his son had not made him overlook his duty to his forefathers; whether the fixtures of the land are not happier, and less in the way of evil, than the moveables: - whether he had done right in removing the lad from that station of life in which he was born, in which it had pleased God to place him; divorcing him, as it were, from his paternal soil, and cutting off the entail of that sure independence, that safe contentment, which his ancestors had obtained and preserved for him, and transmitted to his care to be in like manner by him preserved and handed down. The latent poetry which there was in the old man's heart made him sometimes feel as if the fields and the brook, and the hearth and the graves, reproached him for having done this! But then he took shelter in the reflection that he had consulted the boy's true welfare, by giving him opportunities of stor THE elder Daniel saw in the marked improvement of his son at every yearly visiting and enlarging his mind; that he had more and more cause to be satisfied with himself for having given him such a destination, and to thank Providence that the youth was placed with a master whose kindness and religious care of him might truly be called fatherly. There was but one consideration which sometimes interfered with that satisfaction, and brought with it a sense of uneasiness. The Doves, from time immemorial, had belonged to the soil as fixedly as the soil had belonged to them. Generation after generation they had moved in the same contracted sphere, their wants and wishes being circumscribed alike within their own few hereditary acres. Pride, under what ever form it may show itself, is of the Devil; and though Family Pride may not be its most odious manifestation, even that child placed him in the way of intellectual advancement, where he might improve the talents which were committed to his charge, both for his own benefit and for that of his fellow-creatures. Certain he was that whether he had acted wisely or not, he had meant well. He was conscious that his determination had not been made without much and anxious deliberation, nor without much and earnest prayer; hitherto, he saw, that the blessing which he prayed for had followed it, and he endeavoured to make his heart rest in thankful and pious hope that that blessing would be continued. "Wouldst thou know," says Quarles, "the lawfulness of the action which thou desirest to undertake, let thy devotion recommend it to divine blessing. If it be lawful thou shalt perceive thy heart encouraged by thy prayer; if unlawful, thou shalt find thy prayer discouraged by thy heart. That action is not warrantable which either blushes to beg a blessing, or, having succeeded, dares not present a thanksgiving.” Daniel might safely put his conduct to this test; and to this test, in fact, his own healthy and uncorrupted sense of religion led him, though probably he had never read these golden words of Quarles the Emblemist. It was, therefore, with no ordinary delight that our good Daniel received a letter from his son, asking permission to go to Leyden, in conformity with his Master's wishes, and there prosecute his studies long enough to graduate as a Doctor in medicine. Mr. Hopkins, he said, would generously take upon himself the whole expense, having adopted him as his successor, and almost as a son; for as such he was treated in all respects, both by him and by his mistress, who was one of the best of women. And, indeed, it appeared that Mr. Hopkins had long entertained this intention, by the care which he had taken to make him keep | up and improve the knowledge of Latin which he had acquired under Mr. Guy. The father's consent, as might be supposed, was thankfully given; and accordingly Daniel Dove, in the twenty-third year of his age, embarked from Kingstonupon-Hull for Rotterdam, well provided by the care and kindness of his benevolent master with letters of introduction and of credit; and still better provided with those religious principles which, though they cannot ensure prosperity in this world, ensure to us things of infinitely greater moment,good conduct, peace of mind, and the everlasting reward of the righteous. CHAPTER XLIX. CONCERNING THE INTEREST WHICH DANIEL THE ELDER TOOK IN THE DUTCH WAR, AND MORE ESPECIALLY IN THE SIEGE AND PROVIDENTIAL DELIVERY OF LEYDEN. Glory to Thee in thine omnipotence, O Lord who art our shield and our defence, As seemeth best to thine unerring will, The lot of Victory still; Edging sometimes with might the sword unjust; The rightful cause, that so such seeming ill Making the wicked feel thy present power; Almighty God, by whom our strength was given ! SOUTHEY. THERE were two portions of history with which the elder Daniel was better acquainted than most men,-that of Edward the Third's reign, and that of the Wars in the Netherlands down to the year 1608. Upon both subjects he was homo unius libri; such a man is proverbially formidable at his own weapon; and the book with which Johnson immortalised Osborne the bookseller, by knocking him down with it, was not a more formidable folio than either of those from which Daniel derived this knowledge. Now of all the events in the wars of the Low Countries, there was none which had so strongly affected his imagination as the siege of Leyden. The patient fortitude of the besieged, and their deliverance, less by the exertions of man, (though no human exertions were omitted,) than by the special mercy of Him whom the elements obey, and in whom they had put their trust, were in the strong and pious mind of Daniel, things of more touching interest than the tragedy of Haarlem, or the wonders of military science and of courage displayed at the siege of Antwerp. Who indeed could forget the fierce answer of the Leydeners when they were, for the last time, summoned to surrender, that the men of Leyden would never surrender while they had one arm left to eat, and another to fight with! And the not less terrible reply of the Burgemeester Pieter Adriaanzoon Vander Werf, to some of the townsmen when they represented to him the extremity of famine to which they were reduced; "I have sworn to defend this city," he made answer, "and by God's help I mean to keep that oath! but if my death can help ye men, here is my body! cut it in pieces, and share it among ye as far as it will go." And who without partaking in the hopes and fears of the contest, almost as if it were still at issue, can peruse the details of that amphibious battle (if such an expression may be allowed) upon the inundated country, when, in the extremity of their distress, and at a time when the Spaniards said that it was as impossible for the Hollanders to save Leyden from their power, as it was for them to pluck the stars from heaven, "a great south wind, which they might truly say came from the grace of God," set in with such a spring tide, that in the course of eight-and-forty hours, the inundation rose half a foot, thus rendering the fields just passable for the flat-bottomed boats which had been provided for that service! A naval battle, among the trees; where the besieged, though it was fought within two miles of their walls, could see nothing because of the foliage; and amid such a labyrinth of dykes, ditches, rivers and fortifications, that when the besiegers retired from their palisades and sconces, the conquerors were not aware of their own success, nor the besieged of their deliverance! "In this delivery," says the historian, "and in every particular of the enterprise, doubtless all must be attributed to the mere providence of God, neither can man challenge any glory therein; for without a miracle all the endeavours of the Protestants had been as wind. But God who is always good, would not give way to the cruelties wherewith the Spaniards threatened this town, with all the insolencies whereof they make profession in the taking of towns (although they be by composition) without any respect of humanity or honesty. And there is not any man but will confess with me, if he be not some atheist, or epicure, (who maintain that all things come by chance,) that this delivery is a work which belongs only unto God. For if the Spaniards had battered the town but with four cannons only, they had carried it, the people being so weakened with famine, as they could not endure any longer besides a part of them were ill affected, and very many of their best men were dead of the plague. And for another testimony that it was God only who wrought, the town was no sooner delivered, but the wind which was south-west, and had driven the water out of the sea into the country, turned to northeast, and did drive it back again into the sea, as if the south-west wind had blown those three days only to that effect; wherefore they might well say that both the winds and the sea had fought for the town of Leyden. And as for the resolution of the States of Holland to drown the country, and to do that which they and their Prince, together with all the commanders, captains and soldiers of the army shewed in this seacourse, together with the constancy and resolution of the besieged to defend themselves, notwithstanding so many miseries which they suffered, and so many promises and threats which were made unto them, all in like sort proceeded from a divine instinct." In the spirit of thoughtful feeling that this passage breathes, was the whole history of that tremendous struggle perused by the elder Daniel; and Daniel the son was so deeply imbued with the same feeling, that if he had lived till the time of the Peninsular War, he would have looked upon the condition to which Spain was reduced, as a consequence of its former tyranny, and as an awful proof how surely, soon or late, the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children. Oh that all history were regarded in this spirit! "Even such as are in faith most strong, of zeal most ardent, should not," says one of the best and wisest of Theologians, "much mispend their time in com paring the degenerate fictions, or historical relations of times ancient or modern, with the everlasting truth. For though this method could not add much increase either to their faith or zeal, yet would it doubtless much avail for working placid and mild affections. The very penmen of Sacred Writ themselves were taught patience, and instructed in the ways of God's providence, by their experience of such events as the course of time is never barren of; not always related by canonical authors, nor immediately testified by the Spirit; but ofttimes believed upon a moral certainty, or such a resolution of circumstances concurrent into the first cause or disposer of all affairs as we might make of modern accidents, were we otherwise partakers of the Spirit, or would we mind heavenly matters as much as earthly." CHAPTER L. P. I. VOYAGE TO ROTTERDAM AND LEYDEN. THE AUTHOR CANNOT TARRY ΤΟ 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? | when all the discomforts and positive sufferings of the voyage were at an end; and when the ship,— had Quitting her fairly of the injurious sea †, entered the smooth waters of that stately river, and was gliding Into the bosom of her quiet quay +; 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. 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 highturnpike 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 indis For peregrination charms our senses with such unspeak-pensable condition of happiness, the other a able 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 ores do keep, B. JONSON: Neptune's Triumph. source of pleasure as long as it lasts; and where there is a quick eye and an inquiring 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 + QUARLES. |