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.

Such then as Daniel Dove was in the twenty-sixth year of his age we are now to consider him, settled at Doncaster, and with his way of life chosen, for better for worse, in all respects; except, as my female readers will remember, that he was neither married, nor engaged, nor likely to be so.

One of the things for which he used to thank God was that the world had not been all before him where to chuse, either as to calling or place, but that both had been well chosen for him. To chuse upon such just motives as can leave no rational cause for after repentance requires riper judgement than ought to be expected at the age when the choice is to be made; it is best for us therefore at a time of life when though perhaps we might chuse well, it is impossible that we could chuse wisely, to acquiesce in the determination of others, who have knowledge and experience to direct them. Far happier are they who always know what they are to do, than they who have to determine what they will do.

Bisogna far quel che si deve fare,
E non gia tutto quello che si vuole. 1

Thus he was accustomed to think upon this subject.

1 PANANTI.

But was he well placed at Doncaster?

It matters not where those men are placed, who, as South says, “have souls so dull and stupid as to serve for little else but to keep their bodies from putrefaction.” Ordinary people whether their lot be cast in town or country, in the metropolis or in a village, will go on in the ordinary way, conforming their habits to those of the place. It matters nothing more to those who live less in the little world about them, than in a world of their own, with the whole powers of the head and of the heart too (if they have one) intently fixed upon some favourite pursuit:—if they have a heart I say, for it sometimes happens that where there is an excellent head, the heart is nothing more than a piece of hard flesh. In this respect, the highest and the meanest intellects are, in a certain sense, alike self-sufficient; that is they are so far independent of adventitious aid, that they derive little advantage from society and suffer nothing from the want of it. But there are others for whose mental improvement, or at least mental enjoyment, collision and sympathy and external excitement seem almost indispensable. Just as large towns are the only places in which first-rate workmen in any handycraft business can find employment, so men of letters and of science generally appear to think that no where but in a metropolis can they find the opportunities which they desire of improvement or of display. These persons are wise in their generation, but they are not children of light.

Among such persons it may perhaps be thought that our friend should be classed; and it cannot be doubted that in a more conspicuous field of action, he might have distinguished himself, and obtained a splendid fortune. But for distinction he never entertained the slightest desire, and with the goods of fortune which had fallen to his share he was perfectly contented. But was he favourably situated for his intellectual advancement?—which if such an enquiry had come before him concerning any other person, is what he would have considered to be the question-issimus. I answer without the slightest hesitation, that he was.

In London he might have mounted a Physician's wig, have ridden in his carriage, have attained the honours of the College, and added F. R. S. to his professional initials. He might, if Fortune opening her eyes had chosen to favour desert, have become Sir Daniel Dove, Bart. Physician to his Majesty. But he would then have been a very different person from the Dr. Dove of Doncaster, whose memory will be transmitted to posterity in these volumes, and he would have been much less worthy of being remembered. The course of such a life would have left him no leisure for himself; and metropolitan society in rubbing off the singularities of his character, would just in the same degree have taken from its strength.

It is a pretty general opinion that no society can be so bad as that of a small country town; and certain it is that such towns offer little or no choice. You must take what they have and make the best of it. But there are not many persons to whom circumstances allow much latitude of choice any where except in those public places, as they are called, where the idle and the dissipated, like birds of a feather, flock together. In any settled place of residence men are circumscribed by station and opportunities, and just as much in the capital, as in a provincial town. No one will be disposed to regret this, if he observes where men have most power of chusing their society, how little benefit is derived from it, or in other words with how little wisdom it is used.

After all, the common varieties of human character will be found distributed in much the same proportion everywhere, and in most places there will be a sprinkling of the uncommon ones. Everywhere you may find the selfish and the sensual, the carking and the careful, the cunning and the credulous, the worldling and the reckless. But kind hearts are also every where to be found, right intentions, sober minds, and private virtues,—for the sake of which let us hope that God may continue to spare this hitherto highly-favoured nation, notwithstanding the fearful amount of our public and manifold offences.

The society then of Doncaster, in the middle of the last century, was like that of any other country town which was neither the seat of manufactures, nor of a Bishop's see; in either of which more information of a peculiar kind would have been found,—more active minds, or more cultivated ones. There was enough of those eccentricities for which the English above all other people are remarkable, those aberrations of intellect which just fail to constitute legal insanity, and which, according to their degree, excite amusement, or compassion. Nor was the town without its full share of talents; these there was little to foster and encourage, but happily there was nothing to pervert and stimulate them to a premature and mischievous activity.

In one respect it more resembled an episcopal than a trading city. The four kings and their respective suits of red and black were not upon more frequent service in the precincts of a cathedral, than in the good town of Doncaster. A stranger who had been invited to spend the evening with a family there, to which he had been introduced, was asked by the master of the house to take a card as a matter of course; upon his replying that he did not play at cards, the company looked at him with astonishment, and his host exclaimed—“What, Sir! not play at cards? the Lord help you!”

I will not say the Lord helped Daniel Dove, because there would be an air of irreverence in the expression, the case being one in which he, or any one, might help himself. He knew enough of all the games which were then in vogue to have played at them, if he had so thought good; and he would have been as willing, sometimes, in certain moods of mind, to have taken his seat at a card-table, in houses where card-playing did not form part of the regular business of life, as to have listened to a tune on the old-fashioned spinnet, or the then new-fashioned harpsichord. But that which as an occasional pastime he might have thought harmless and even wholesome, seemed to him something worse than folly when it was made a kill-time,—the serious occupation for which people were brought together,—the only one at which some of them ever appeared to give themselves the trouble of thinking. And seeing its effects upon the temper, and how nearly this habit was connected with a spirit of gambling, he thought that cards had not without reason been called the Devil's Books.

I shall not therefore introduce the reader to a Doncaster card-party, by way of shewing him the society of the place. The Mrs. Shuffles, Mrs. Cuts and Miss Dealems, the Mr. Tittles and Mrs. Tattles, the Humdrums and the Prateapaces, the Fribbles and the Feebles, the Perts and the Prims, the Littlewits and the Longtongues, the Heavyheads and the Broadbelows, are to be found everywhere.

“It is quite right,” says one of the Guessers at Truth, “that there should be a heavy duty on cards: not only on moral grounds; not only because they act on a social party like a torpedo, silencing the merry voice and numbing the play of the features; not only to still the hunger of the public purse, which reversing the qualities of Fortunatus's, is always empty, however much you may put into it; but also because every pack of cards is a malicious libel on courts, and on the world, seeing that the trumpery with number one at the head, is the best part of them; and that it gives kings and queens no other companions than knaves.”