THE DOCTOR,

&c.

CHAPTER XXXIII. P. I.

DONCASTRIANA. THE RIVER DON.

Rivers from bubbling springs

Have rise at first; and great from abject things.

MIDDLETON.

How would it have astonished Peter Hopkins if some one gifted with the faculty of second sight had foretold to him that, at the sale of Pews in a new Church at Doncaster, eighteen of those Pews should produce upwards of sixteen hundred pounds, and that one of them should be bought at the price of £138,-a sum for which in his days lands enough might have been purchased to

have qualified three men as Yorkshire Freeholders! How would it have surprized him to have been told that Doncaster races would become the greatest meeting in the North of England; that Princes would attend them, and more money would annually be won and lost there than might in old times have sufficed for a King's ransom! But the Doncaster of George the fourth's reign is not more like the Doncaster of George the second's, than George the fourth himself, in manners, habit, character and person is like his royal Great Grandfather;—not more like than to the Doncaster of the United States, if ' such a place there be there; or to the Doncaster that may be in New South Wales, Van Diemen's or Swan-river-land. It was a place of considerable importance when young Daniel first became an inhabitant of it; but it was very far from having attained all the advantages arising from its well-endowed corporation, its race-ground, and its position on the great north road.

It is beyond a doubt that Doncaster may be identified with the Danum of Antoninus and the Notitia, the Caer Daun of Nennius, and the

BY HAYDAY.

Dona-cester of the Saxons: whether it were the Campo-Donum of Bede,-a royal residence of the Northumbrian Kings, where Paulinus the Romish Apostle of Northumbria built a Church, which with the town itself was burnt by the Welsh King Cadwallon, and his Saxon Ally the Pagan Penda, after a battle in which Edwin fell,—is not so certain; antiquaries differ upon this point, but they who maintain the affirmative appear to have the strongest case. In the charter granted to it by Richard Cœur de Lion the town is called Danecastre.

The name indicates that it was a Roman Station on the river Dan, Don or Dun, "so called," says Camden, "because 'tis carried in a low deep channel, for that is the signification of the British word Dan." I thank Dr. Prichard for telling me what it was not possible for Camden to know,– that Don in the language of the Ossetes, a Caucassian tribe, means water; and that in a country so remote as New Guinea, Dan has the same meaning. Our Doctor loved the river for its name's sake; and the better because the river Dove falls into it. Don however, though not

without some sacrifice of feeling, he was content to call it, in conformity to the established usage. A more satisfactory reason to him would have been that of preserving the identity of name with the Don of Aberdeenshire and of the Cossacks, and the relationship in etymology with the Donau, but that the original pronunciation which was, as he deemed, perverted in that latter name was found in Danube; and that by calling his own river Don it ceased to be homonymous with that Dan which adds its waters, and its name to the Jor.

But the Yorkshire Don might be liked also for its own sake. Hear how its course is described in old prose and older verse!" The River Don or Dun," says Dodsworth in his Yorkshire collections, "riseth in the upper part of Pennystone parish near Lady's Cross (which may be called our Appennines, because the rain water that falleth sheddeth from sea to sea ;) cometh to Birchworth, so to Pennystone, thence to Boleterstone by Medop, leaveth Wharncliffe Chase (stored with roebucks, which are decayed since the great frost) on the north (belonging to Sir

Francis Wortley, where he hath great iron works. The said Wharncliffe affordeth two hundred dozen of coal for ever to his said works. In this Chase he had red and fallow deer and roes) and leaveth Bethuns, a Chase and Tower of the Earl of Salop, on the south side. By Wortley to Waddsley, where in times past Everingham of Stainber had a park, now disparked. Thence to Sheffield, and washeth the castle wall; keepeth its course to Attercliffe, where is an iron forge of the Earl of Salop; from thence to Winkebank, Kymberworth and Eccles, where it entertaineth the Rother; cometh presently to Rotherham, thence to Aldwark Hall, the Fitzwilliams' ancient possession; then to Thriberg Park, the seat of Reresbyes Knights; then to Mexborough, where hath been a Castle; then to Conisborough Park and Castle of the Earls of Warrens, where there is a place called Horsas Tomb. From thence to Sprotebrough, the ancient seat of the famous family of Fitzwilliam who have flourished since the conquest. Thence by Newton to Donecastre, Wheatley and Kirk Sandal to Barnby-Dunn; by Bramwith and Stainforth to Fishlake; thence