66 harmless. They are not harmless if they are felt to be tedi. ous. They are not harmless if they torpify the understanding: a chill that begins there may extend to the vital regions. Bishop Taylor (the great Jeremy) says of devotional books that "they are in a large degree the occasion of so great indevotion as prevails among the generality of nominal Christians, being," he says, represented naked in the conclusions of spiritual life, without or art or learning; and made apt for persons who can do nothing but believe and love, not for them that can consider and love." This applies more forcibly to bad sermons than to commonplace books of devotion; the book may be laid aside if it offend the reader's judgment, but the sermon is a positive infliction upon the helpless hearer. 66 The same bishop-and his name ought to carry with it authority among the wise and the good-has delivered an opinion upon this subject, in his admirable apology for authorized and set forms of liturgy. Indeed," he says, "if I may freely declare my opinion, I think it were not amiss, if the liberty of making sermons were something more restrained than it is; and that such persons only were intrusted with the liberty, for whom the church herself may be safely responsive-that is, men learned and pious; and that the other part, the vulgus cleri, should instruct the people out of the fountains of the church and the public stock, till, by so long exercise and discipline in the schools of the prophets, they may also be instructed to minister of their own unto the people. This I am sure was the practice of the primitive church." 66 "I am convinced,” said Dr. Johnson, “ that I ought to be at divine service more frequently than I am; but the provocations given by ignorant and affected preachers too often disturb the mental calm which otherwise would succeed to prayer. I am apt to whisper to myself on such occasions, 'How can this illiterate fellow dream of fixing attention after we have been listening to the sublimest truths, conveyed in the most chaste and exalted language, throughout a liturgy which must be regarded as the genuine offspring of piety impregnated by wisdom!" " "Take notice, however," he adds, "though I make this confession respecting myself, I do not mean to recommend the fastidiousness that sometimes leads me to exchange congregational for solitary worship." The saintly Herbert says "Judge not the preacher, for he is thy judge; The worst speak something good. If all want sense, He that gets patience, and the blessing which Preachers conclude with, hath not lost his pains." This sort of patience was all that Daniel could have derived from the discourses of the poor curate; and it was a lesson of which his meek and benign temper stood in no need. Nature had endowed him with this virtue, and this Sunday discipline exercised without strengthening it. While he was, in the phrase of the religious public, sitting under the preacher, he obeyed to a certain extent George Herbert's preceptthat is, he obeyed it as he did other laws with the existence of which he was unacquainted "Let vain or busy thoughts have there no part; Pleasure made no part of his speculations at any time. Plots he had none. For the plough, it was what he never followed in fancy, patiently as he plodded after the furrow in his own vocation. And then for worldly thoughts they were not likely in that place to enter a mind, which never at any time entertained them. But to that sort of thought (if thought it may be called) which cometh as it listeth, and which, when the mind is at ease and the body in health, is the forerunner and usher of sleep, he certainly gave way. The curate's voice passed over his ear like the sound of the brook with which it blended, and it conveyed to him as little meaning and less feeling. During the sermon, therefore, he retired into himself, with as much or as little edification as a Quaker finds at a silent meeting. It happened, also, that of the few clergy within the very narrow circle in which Daniel moved, some were in no good repute for their conduct, and none displayed either that zeal in the discharge of their pastoral functions, or that earnestness and ability in performing the service of the church, which are necessary for commanding the respect and securing the affections of the parishioners. The clerical profession had never presented itself to him in its best, which is really its true light; and for that cause he would never have thought of it for the boy, even if the means of putting him forward in this path had been easier and more obvious than they were. And for the dissenting ministry, Daniel liked not the name of a nonconformist. The Puritans had left behind them an ill savour in his part of the country, as they had done everywhere else; and the extravagances of the primitive Quakers, which during his childhood were fresh in remembrance, had not yet been forgotten. It was well remembered in those parts that the Vicar of Kirkby Lonsdale, through the malignity of some of his Puritanical parishioners, had been taken out of his bed-from his wife, who was then big with child, and hurried away to Lancaster jail, where he was imprisoned three years for no other offence than that of fidelity to his church and his king. And VOL. 1.-12 . errand, for which, the historian of that noble family adds, "the lady shall after give him a new suit of clothes." In those days, and long after, they who required remedies were likely to fare ill, under their own treatment, or that of their neighbours; and worse under the travelling quack, who was always an ignorant and impudent impostor, but found that human sufferings and human credulity afforded him a never-failing harvest. Dr. Green knew this: he did not say with the Romish priest, populus vult decipi, et decipietur! for he had no intention of deceiving them; but he saw that many were to be won by buffoonery, more by what is called palaver, and almost all by pretensions. Condescending, therefore, to the common arts of quackery, he employed his man Kemp to tickle the multitude with coarse wit; but he stored himself with the best drugs that were to be procured, distributed as general remedies such only as could hardly be misapplied and must generally prove serviceable; and brought to particular cases the sound knowledge which he had acquired in the school of Boerhaave, and the skill which he had derived from experience aided by natural sagacity. When it became convenient for him to have a home, he established himself at Penrith, in the county of Cumberland, having married a lady of that place; but he long continued his favourite course of life, and accumulated in it a large fortune. He gained it by one maggot, and reduced it by many; nevertheless there remained a handsome inheritance for his children. His son proved as maggoty as the father, ran through a good fortune, and when confined in the King's Bench prison for debt, wrote a book upon the art of cheap living in London! The father's local fame, though it has not reached to the third and fourth generation, survived him far into the second; and for many years after his retirement from practice, and even after his death, every travelling mountebank in the northern counties adopted the name of Dr. Green. At the time to which this chapter refers, Dr. Green was in his meridian career, and enjoyed the highest reputation throughout the sphere of his itinerancy. Ingleton lay in his rounds, and whenever he came there he used to send for the schoolmaster to pass the evening with him. He was always glad if he could find an opportunity also of conversing with the elder Daniel, as the flossofer of those parts. William Dove could have communicated to him more curious things relating to his own art; but William kept out of the presence of strangers, and had happily no ailments to make him seek the doctor's advice; his occasional indispositions were but slight, and he treated them in his own way. That way was sometimes merely superstitious, sometimes it was whimsical, and sometimes rough. If his charms failed en he tried them upon himself, it was not for want of faith. When at any time it happened that one of his eyes was bloodshot, he went forthwith in search of some urchin whose mother, either from laziness or in the belief that it was wholesome to have it in that state, allowed his ragged head to serve as a free warren for certain "small deer." One of these hexapeds William secured, and “ using him as if he loved him," put it into his eye; when, according to William's account, the insect fed upon what it found, cleared the eye, and disappearing he knew not where nor how, never was seen more. 66 His remedy for the colic was a pebble posset; white pebbles were preferred, and of these what was deemed a reasonable quantity was taken in some sort of milk porridge. Upon the same theory he sometimes swallowed a pebble large enough, as he said, to clear all before it; and for that purpose they have been administered of larger calibre than any bolus that ever came from the hands of the most merciless apothecary, as large, indeed, sometimes, as a common sized walnut. Does the reader hesitate at believing this of an ignorant man, living in a remote part of the country? Well might William Dove be excused, for, a generation later than his, John Wesley in his primitive physic prescribed quicksilver, to be taken ounce by ounce, to the amount of one, two, or three pounds, till the desired effect was produced. And a generation earlier, Richard Baxter, of happy memory and unhappy digestion, having read in Dr. Gerhard "the admirable effects of the swallowing of a gold bullet upon his father," in a case which Baxter supposed to be like his own, got a gold bullet of between twenty and thirty shillings weight, and swallowed it. "Having taken it," says he, "I knew not how to be delivered of it again. I took clysters and purges for about three weeks, but nothing stirred it; and a gentleman having done the like, the bullet never came from him till he died, and it was cut out. But at last my neighbours set a day apart to fast and pray for me, and I was freed from my danger in the beginning of that day." I MUST pass over fourteen years, for were I to pursue the history of our young Daniel's boyhood and adolescence into all the ramifications which a faithful biography requires, fourteen volumes would not contain it. They would be worth reading, for that costs little; they would be worth writing, though that costs much. They would deserve the best embellishments that the pencil and the graver could produce. The most poetical of artists would be worthily employed in designing the sentimental and melancholy scenes; Cruikshank for the grotesque; Wilkie and Richter for the comic and serio-comic; Turner for the actual scenery; Bewick for the head and tail pieces. They ought to be written; they ought to be read. They should be written, and then they would be read. But time is wanting: "Eheu! fugaces posthume, posthume, and time is a commodity of which the value rises as long as we live. We must be contented with doing, not what we wish, but what we can-our possible, as the French call it. One of our poets (which is it?) speaks of an everlasting now. If such a condition of existence were offered to us in this world, and it were put to the vote whether we should accept the offer, and fix all things immutably as they are, who are they whose voices would be given in the affirmative? Not those who are in pursuit of fortune, or of fame, or of knowledge, or of enjoyment, or of happiness; though with regard to all of these, as far as any of them are attainable, there is more pleasure in the pursuit than in the attainment. Not those who are at sea, or travelling in a stage coach. Not the man who is shaving himself. Not those who have the toothache, or who are having a tooth drawn. The fashionable beauty might, and the fashionable singer, |