CHAPTER XXXVIII.
THE READER IS LED TO INFER THAT A TRAVELLER WHO STOPS UPON THE WAY TO SKETCH, BOTANIZE, ENTOMOLOGIZE OR MINERALOGIZE, TRAVELS WITH MORE PLEASURE AND PROFIT TO HIMSELF THAN IF HE WERE IN THE MAIL COACH.
Non servio materiæ sed indulgeo; quæ quo ducit sequendum est, non quo invitat.
SENECA.
Fear not, my patient reader, that I should lose myself and bewilder you, either in the Holy land, or Whichwood forest, or in the wide fields of the Poly-olbion, or in Potteric Carr, or in any part of the country about Doncaster, most fortunate of English towns for circumstances which I have already stated, and henceforth to be the most illustrious, as having been the place where my never-to-be-forgotten Philosopher and friend, passed the greater part of his innocent and useful and happy life. Good patient reader, you may confide in me as in one who always knows his whereabout, and whom the Goddess Upibilia will keep in the right way.
In treating of that flourishing and every way fortunate town, I have not gone back to visionary times, like the author who wrote a description and drew a map of Anglesea, as it was before the flood. Nor have I touched upon the ages when hyenas prowled over what is now Doncaster race-ground, and great lizards, huge as crocodiles, but with long necks and short tails, took their pleasure in Potteric Carr. I have not called upon thee, gentle and obsequious reader, to accompany me into a Præadamite world, nor even into the antediluvian one. We began with the earliest mention of Doncaster—no earlier; and shall carry our summary notices of its history to the Doctor's time,—no later. And if sometimes the facts on which I may touch should call forth thoughts, and those thoughts remind me of other facts, anecdotes leading to reflection, and reflection producing more anecdotes, thy pleasure will be consulted in all this, my good and patient reader, and thy profit also as much as mine; nay, more in truth, for I might think upon all these things in silence, and spare myself the trouble of relating them.
O Reader, had you in your mind
Such stores as silent thought can bring,
O gentle Reader, you would find
A Tale in every thing!1
1 WORDSWORTH.
I might muse upon these things and let the hours pass by unheeded as the waters of a river in their endless course. And thus I might live in other years,—with those who are departed, in a world of my own, by force of recollection;—or by virtue of sure hope in that world which is theirs now, and to which I shall ere long be promoted.
For thy pleasure, Reader, and for thy improvement, I take upon myself the pains of thus materializing my spiritual stores. Alas! their earthly uses would perish with me unless they were thus embodied!
“The age of a cultivated mind,” says an eloquent and wise and thoughtful author, “is often more complacent, and even more luxurious, than the youth. It is the reward of the due use of the endowments bestowed by nature: while they who in youth have made no provision for age, are left like an unsheltered tree, stripped of its leaves and its branches, shaking and withering before the cold blasts of winter.
“In truth nothing is so happy to itself and so attractive to others, as a genuine and ripened imagination, that knows its own powers, and throws forth its treasures with frankness and fearlessness. The more it produces, the more capable it becomes of production; the creative faculty grows by indulgence; and the more it combines, the more means and varieties of combinations it discovers.
“When Death comes to destroy that mysterious and magical union of capacities and acquirements which has brought a noble genius to this point of power, how frightful and lamentable is the effect of the stroke that stops the current which was wont to put this mighty formation into activity! Perhaps the incomprehensible Spirit may have acted in conjunction with its corporeal adherents to the last. Then in one moment, what darkness and destruction follows a single gasp of breath!”2
2 SIR EGERTON BRYDGES.
This fine passage is as consolatory in its former part, as it is gloomy at the conclusion; and it is gloomy there, because the view which is there taken is imperfect. Our thoughts, our reminiscences, our intellectual acquirements, die with us to this world,—but to this world only. If they are what they ought to be, they are treasures which we lay up for Heaven. That which is of the earth, earthly, perishes with wealth, rank, honours, authority, and other earthly and perishable things. But nothing that is worth retaining can be lost. When Ovid says in Ben Jonson's play
We pour out our affections with our blood,
And with our blood's affections fade our loves,
the dramatist makes the Roman Poet speak like a sensualist, as he was, and the philosophy is as false as it is foul. Affections well placed and dutifully cherished; friendships happily formed and faithfully maintained; knowledge acquired with worthy intent, and intellectual powers that have been diligently improved as the talents which our Lord and Master has committed to our keeping; these will accompany us into another state of existence, as surely as the soul in that state retains its identity and its consciousness.
