CHAPTER XXXII. P. I.

AN INTRODUCTION TO CERTAIN PRELIMINARIES ESSENTIAL TO THE PROGRESS OF THIS WORK.

The subject of these memoirs heard the bells of St. George's ring for the battles of Dettingen and Culloden; for Commodore Anson's return and Admiral Hawke's victory; for the conquest of Quebec; for other victories, important in their day, though in the retrospect they may seem to have produced little effect; and for more than one Peace; for the going out of the Old Style, and for the coming in of the New; for the accession, marriage and coronation of George the 3d; for the birth of George the 4th; and that of all his royal brethren and sisters;—and what was to him a subject of nearer and dearer interest than any of these events,—for his own wedding.

What said those bells to him that happy day? for that bells can convey articulate sounds to those who have the gift of interpreting their language, Whittington Lord Mayor of London Town knew by fortunate experience.

So did a certain Father Confessor in the Netherlands whom a buxom widow consulted upon the perilous question whether she should marry a second husband, or continue in widowed blessedness. The prudent Priest deemed it too delicate a point for him to decide; so he directed her to attend to the bells of her church when next they chimed—(they were but three in number)—and bring him word what she thought they said; and he exhorted her to pray in the mean time earnestly for grace to understand them rightly, and in the sense that might be most for her welfare here and hereafter, as he on his part would pray for her.—She listened with mouth and ears, the first time that the bells struck up; and the more she listened, the more plainly they said “Nempt een man, Nempt een man!—Take a Spouse, Take a Spouse!” “Aye Daughter!” said the Confessor, when she returned to him with her report, “If the bells have said so, so say I; and not I alone, but the Apostle also, and the Spirit who through that Apostle hath told us when it is best for us to marry!” Reader thou mayest thank the Leonine poet Gummarus Van Craen for this good story.

What said the Bells of Doncaster to our dear Doctor on that happy morning which made him a whole man by uniting to him the rib that he till then had wanted? They said to him as distinctly as they spoke to Whittington, and to the Flemish Widow,

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But whither am I hurrying? It was not till the year 1761 that that happy union was effected; and the fourteen years whose course of events I have reluctantly, yet of necessity, pretermitted, bring us only to 1748 in which year the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle was made. Peter Hopkins and Mrs. Hopkins were then both living, and Daniel had not attained to the honors of his diploma. Before we come to the day on which the bells rung that joyful peal, I must enter into some details for the purpose of shewing how he became qualified for his degree, and how he was enabled to take it; and it will be necessary therefore to say something of the opportunities of instruction which he enjoyed under Hopkins, and of the state of society in Doncaster at that time. And preliminary to, as preparatory for all this, some account is to be given of Doncaster itself.

Reader, you may skip this preliminary account if you please, but it will be to your loss if you do! You perhaps may be one of those persons who can travel from Dan to Beersheba, and neither make enquiry concerning, nor take notice of, any thing on the way; but, thank Heaven, I cannot pass through Doncaster in any such mood of mind. If however thou belongest to a better class, then may I promise that in what is here to follow, thou wilt find something to recompense thee for the little time thou wilt employ in reading it, were that time more than it will be, or more valuable than it is. For I shall assuredly either tell thee of something which thou didst not know before; (and let me observe by the bye that I never obtained any information of any kind, which did not on some occasion or other prove available;)—or I shall waken up to pleasurable consciousness thy napping knowledge. Snuff the candles therefore, if it be candle-light, and they require it; (I hope, for thine eyes' sake, thou art not reading by a lamp!)—stir the fire, if it be winter, and it be prudent to refresh it with the poker; and then comfortably begin a new chapter:

Faciam ut hujus loci semper memineris. 1

1 TERENCE.

END OF VOL. I.

W. Nicol, Cleveland-row, St. James's.