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 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 estab lished 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 Ďan 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 Apennines, 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 to Turnbrig, a port town serving indifferently for all the west parts, where he pays his tribute to the Ayre."

Hear Michael Drayton next, who being as determined a personificator as Darwin himself, makes "the wide West Riding" thus address her favourite River Don :

"Thou first of all my floods, whose banks do bound my south,
And offerest up thy stream to mighty Humber's mouth;
Of yew and climbing elm that crown'd with many a spray,
From thy clear fountain first through many a mead dost play,
Till Rother, whence the name of Rotherham first begun,
At that her christened town doth lose her in my Don;
Which proud of her recourse, towards Doncaster doth drive,
Her great and chiefest town, the name that doth derive,
From Don's near bordering banks; when holding on her race,
She, dancing in and out, indenteth Hatfield Chase,
Whose bravery hourly adds new honours to her bank:
When Sherwood sends her in slow Iddle that, made rank
With her profuse excess, she largely it bestows

On Marshland, whose swoln womb with such abundance flows,

As that her battening breast her fatlings sooner feeds,

And with more lavish waste than oft the grazier needs;
Whose soil, as some reports, that be her borderers, note,
With water under earth undoubtedly doth float,
For when the waters rise, it risen doth remain
High, while the floods are high, and when they fall again,
It falleth but at last when as my lively Don
Along by Marshland side her lusty course hath run,
The little wandering Trent, won by the loud report
Of the magnific state and height of Humber's court,
Draws on to meet with Don, at her approach to Aire."

Seldon's rich commentary does not extend to that part of

the Polyolbion in which these lines occur, but a comment upon the supposed rising and falling of the Marshland with the waters, is supplied by Camden. "The Don," he says, after it has passed Hatfield Chase, "divides itself, one stream running towards the river Idel which comes out of Nottinghamshire; the other towards the river Aire; in both which they continue till they meet again, and fall into the estuary of Humber. Within the island, or that piece of ground encompassed by the branches of these two rivers, are Dikemarsh and Marshland, fenny tracts, or rather river islands, about fifteen miles round, which produce a very green rank grass, and are as it were set round with little villages. Some of the inhabitants, imagine the whole island floats upon the water; and that sometimes when the waters are increased 'tis raised higher; just like what Pomponius Mela tells us of the Isle of Autrum in Gaul." Upon this passage Bishop Gibson remarks, "As to what our author observes of the ground being heaped up, Dr. Johnston affirms he has spoke with several old men who told him, that the turf moor between Thorne and Gowle was so much higher before the draining, especially in winter time, than it is now, that before they could see little of the church steeple, whereas now they can see the churchyard wall."

The poet might linger willingly with Ebenezer Elliott amid

"rock, vale, and wood

Haunts of his early days, and still loved well-
And where the sun, o'er purple moorlands wide,
Gilds Wharncliffe's oaks, while Don is dark below;
And where the blackbird sings on Rother's side,
And where time spares the age of Conisbro';"

but we must proceed with good matter of fact prose.

The river has been made navigable to Tinsley, within three miles of Sheffield, and by this means Sheffield, Rotherham, and Doncaster carry on a constant intercourse with Hull. A cut was made for draining that part of Hatfield Chase called the Levels, by an adventurous Hollander, Cornelius Vermuyden by name, in the beginning of Charles the First's reign. Some two hundred families of French and Walloon refugees were induced to colonize there at that time. They were forcibly interrupted in their peaceful and useful undertaking by the ignorant people of the country, who were instigated and even led on by certain of the neighbouring gentry, as ignorant as themselves; but the government was then strong enough to protect them; they brought about twenty-four thousand acres into cultivation, and many of their descendants are still settled upon the ground which was thus reclaimed. Into this new cut, which is at this day called the Dutch river, the Don was turned, its former course having been through Eastoft; but the navigation which has since

proved so beneficial to the country, and towards which this was the first great measure, produced at first a plentiful crop of lawsuits, and one of the many pamphlets which this litigation called forth, bears as an alias in its title, "The Devil upon Don."

Many vestiges of former cultivation were discovered when this cut was made-such (according to Gibson's information) as gates, ladders, hammers, and shoes. The land was observed in some places to lie in ridges and furrows, as if it had been ploughed; and oaks and fir trees were frequently dug up, some of which were found lying along, with their roots still fastened; others as if cut, or burnt, and severed from the ground. Roots were long to be seen in the great cut, some very large and standing upright, others with an inclination towards the east.

About the year 1665, the body of a man was found in a turf pit, some four yards deep, lying with his head towards the north. The hair and nails were not decayed, and the skin was like tanned leather; but it had lain so long there that the bones had become spongy.

CHAPTER XXXIV. P. I.

MORAL INTEREST OF TOPOGRAPHICAL

MENT.

WORKS-LOCAL ATTACH

Let none our author rudely blame

Who from the story has thus long digress'd;
But for his righteous pains may his fair fame
For ever travel, while his ashes rest.

Sir WILLIAM DAVENANT.

READER, if thou carest little or nothing for the Yorkshire river Don, and for the town of Doncaster, and for the circumstances connected with it, I am sorry for thee. My venerable friend the doctor was of a different disposition. He was one who loved, like Southey—

"uncontrolled, as in a dream
To muse upon the course of human things;
Exploring sometimes the remotest springs,
Far as tradition lends one guiding gleam;
Or following upon thought's audacious wings
Into futurity the endless stream."

He could not only find

tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything,*

but endeavoured to find all he could in them, and for that reason delighted to inquire into the history of places and of things, and to understand their past as well as their present state. The revolutions of a mansionhouse within his circuit were as interesting to him as those of the Mogul empire; and he had as much satisfaction in being acquainted with the windings of a brook from its springs to the place where it fell into the Don, as he could have felt in knowing that the sources of the Nile had been explored, or the course and termination of the Niger.

Hear, reader, what a journalist says upon rivers, in the newest and most approved style of critical and periodical eloquence! He says, and he regarded himself no doubt with no small complacency while so saying

"An acquaintance with" rivers "well deserves to be erected into a distinct science. We hail potamology with a cordial greeting, and welcome it to our studies, parlours, schools, readingrooms, lecturerooms, mechanics' institutes, and universities. There is no end to the interest which rivers excite. They may be considered physically, geographically, historically, politically, commercially, mathematically, poetically, pictorially, morally, and even religiously. In the world's anatomy they are its veins, as the primitive mountains, those mighty structures of granite, are its bones; they minister to the fertility of the earth, the purity of the air, and the health of mankind. They mark out nature's kingdoms and provinces, and are the physical dividers and subdividers of continents. They welcome the bold discoverer into the heart of the country, to whose coast the sea has borne his adventurous bark. The richest freights have floated on their bosoms, and the bloodiest battles have been fought upon their banks. They move the wheels of cotton mills by their mechanical power, and madden the souls of poets and painters by their picturesque splendour. They make scenery and are scenery, and land yields no landscape without water. They are the best vehicle for the transit of the goods of the merchant, and for the illustration of the maxims of the moralist. The figure is so familiar, that we scarcely detect a metaphor when the stream of life and the course of time flow on into the ocean of eternity." Hear, hear, oh hear!