of God and man tell us there can be no virtue-and consequently no happiness? Has it attempted to abate your admiration and reverence for what is great and good, and to diminish in you the love of your country and your fellowcreatures? Has it addressed itself to your pride, your vanity, your selfishness, or any other of your evil propensities! Has it defiled the imagination with what is loathsome, and shocked the heart with what is monstrous? Has it disturbed the sense of right and wrong which the Creator has implanted in the human soul? If so if you are conscious of all or any of these effects or if having escaped from all, you have felt that such were the effects it was intended to produce, throw the book in the fire, whatever name it may bear in the title page! Throw it in the fire, young man, though it should have been the gift of a friend!-young lady, away with the whole set, though it should be the prominent furniture of a rosewood bookcase!

CHAPTER XLII. P. I.

DONCASTER CHURCH-THE RECTORIAL TITHES SECURED BY ARCHBISHOP SHARP FOR HIS OWN FAMILY.

Say, ancient edifice, thyself with years
Grown gray, how long upon the hill has stood
Thy weather-braving tower, and silent mark'd
The human leaf in constant bud and fall?
The generations of deciduous man

How often hast thou seen them pass away!

HURDIS.

THE ecclesiastical history of Doncaster is not so much to the credit of all whom it concerns as the municipal. Nigel Fossard in the year 1100, granted the advowson of its church to St. Mary's Abbey, York; and it was for rather more than two hundred years a rectory of two medieties, served by two resident rectors whom the abbey appointed. In 1303, Archbishop Corbridge appropriated it to the abbey, and ordained it a perpetual vicarage. Fifty marks a year out of the profits of the rectory were then allowed for the vicar's support, and he held the house and garden also which had formerly appertained to one of the rectors. When upon the dissolution of the monasteries it fell to the crown, Henry VIII. gave it with other monastic impropriations to Archbishop Holgate, as some compensation for the valuable manors which he made the see of York alienate to himself. The church of Doncaster gained nothing by this transfer. The rectory

was secured by Archbishop Sharp for his own family. At the beginning of the present century it was worth from 1000l. to 1200l. a year, while the vicar had only an annual income of 801. charged upon that rectory, and 207. charged upon a certain estate. He had no tithes, no Easter offerings, and no other glebe than the churchyard, and an orchard attached to the vicarage. And he had to pay a curate to do the duty at Loversall church.

There is one remarkable epitaph in this church upon a monument of the altar form, placed just behind the reading desk:

"How, how, who is here?

I Robin of Doncaster, and Margaret my fere.

That I spent, that I had ;
That I gave, that I have;
That I left, that I lost.

A. D. 1579.

Quoth Robertus Byrkes, who in this world did reign
Threescore years and seven, and yet lived not one."

Robin of Doncaster, as he is now familiarly called by persons connected, or acquainted with the church, is remembered only by this record which he has left of himself: perhaps the tomb was spared from the singularity of the epitaph, when prouder monuments in the same church were despoiled. He seems to have been one who thinking little of anything beyond the affairs of this world till the last year of his pilgrimage, lived during that year a new life. It may also be inferred that his property was inherited by persons to whom he was bound by no other ties than those of cold affinity; for if he had felt any concern for their welfare, he would not have considered those possessions as lost which were left to them.

Perhaps a further inference may be fairly drawn, that though the deceased had stood in this uncomfortable relation to his heirs at law, he was too just a man to set aside the course of succession which the law appointed. They who think that in the testamentary disposal of their property they have a right to do whatever it is legally in their power to do, may find themselves wofully mistaken when they come to render their account. Nothing but the weightiest moral considerations can justify any one in depriving another of that which the law of the land would otherwise in its due course have assigned him. But rights of descent cease to be held sacred in public opinion in proportion as men consider themselves exempt from all duty to their forefathers; and that is in proportion as principles become sophisticated, and society more and more corrupt.

St. George's is the only church in Doncaster, a town which in the year 1800 contained 1246 houses, 5697 souls: twenty years afterward the houses had increased to 1729, and the inhabitants to 8544. The state having made no other pro

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vision for the religious instruction of the townspeople than one church, one vicar, and one curate-if the vicar from other revenues than those of his vicarage can afford to keep one—the far greater part of the inhabitants are left to be absenters by necessity, or dissenters by choice. It was the boast of the corporation in an address to Charles II., that they had not one factious seditious person" in their town, being all true sons of the Church of England and loyal subjects" and that "in the height of all the late troubles and confusion (that is, during the civil wars and the commonwealth-which might more truly have been called the common-wo) they never had any conventicle among them, the nurseries and seed plots of sedition and rebellion." There are conventicles there now of every denomination. And this has been occasioned by the great sin of omission in the government, and the great sin of commission in that prelate who appropriated the property of the church to his own family. Hollis Pigot was vicar when Daniel Dove began to reside in Doncaster; and Mr. Fawkes was his curate.

CHAPTER XLIII. P. I.

ANTIQUITIES OF DONCASTER-THE DEE MATRES-SAXON FONTTHE CASTLE-THE HALL CROSS.

Vieux monuments

Las, peu à peu cendre vous devenez,

Fable du peuple et publiques rapines!

Et bien qu'au Temps pour un temps facent guerre
Les bastimens, si est ce que le Temps
Oeuvres et noms finablement atterre,

JOACHIM DU BELLAY.

THE oldest monument in Doncaster is a Roman altar, which was discovered in the year 1781, in digging a cellar six feet deep, in St. Sepulchre's gate. An antiquary of Ferrybridge congratulated the corporation " on the great honour resulting therefrom."

Was it a great honour to Doncaster-meaning by Doncaster its mayor, its aldermen, its capital burgesses, and its whole people was it, I say, an honour, a great honour to it, and these, and each and all of these, that this altar should have been discovered? Did the corporation consider it to be so? Ought it to be so considered? Did they feel that pleasurable though feverish excitement at the discovery which is felt by the fortunate man at the moment when his deserts have obtained their honourable meed? Richard

Staveley was mayor that year. Was it an honour to him and his mayoralty as it was to King Ferdinand of Spain that when he was king, Christopher Columbus discovered the New World-or to Queen Elizabeth, that Shakspeare flourished under her reign? Was he famous for it, as old Mr. Bramton Gurdon of Assington in Suffolk was famous, about the year 1627, for having three sons parliament men? If he was thus famous, did he "blush to find it fame," or smile that it should be accounted so? What is fame? what is honour?

But I say no more. "He that hath knowledge spareth his words; and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding."

It is a votive altar, dedicated to the Dea Matres, with this inscription :

MATRIBUS
M. NAN-

TONIUS.

ORBIOTAL.

VOTUM. SOLVIT. LUBENS. MERITO.

and it is curious because it is only the third altar dedicated to those goddesses which has yet been found the other two were also found in the north of England, one at Binchester, near Durham, and the other at Ribchester in Lancashire.

Next in antiquity to this Roman altar, is a Saxon font in the church; its date, which is now obliterated, is said to have been A. D. 1061.

Not a wreck remains of anything that existed in Doncaster between the time when Orbiotal erected his altar to the local goddesses, and when the baptismal font was made: nor the name of a single individual; nor memorial, nor tradition of a single event.

There was a castle there, the dikes of which might partly be seen in Leland's time, and the foundation of part of the walls-nothing more, so long even then had it been demolished. In the area where it stood the church was built, and Leland thought that great part of the ruins of one building were used for the foundations of the other, and for filling up its walls. It is not known at what time the church was founded. There was formerly a stone built into its east end, with the date A. D. 1071; but this may more probably have been originally placed in the castle than the church. Different parts of the building are of different ages, and the beautiful tower is supposed to be of Henry the Third's age. The Hall Cross, as it is now called, bore this inscription :

ICEST EST: LACRUICE: OTE: D: TILLI: A: KI: ALME: DEU : EN FACE MERCI AM:

There can be little doubt that this Otto de Tilli is the same

person whose name appears as a witness to several grants about the middle of the twelfth century, and who was seneschal to the Earl of Conisborough. It stood uninjured till the Great Rebellion, when the Earl of Manchester's army, on their way from the South to the siege of York in the year 1644, chose to do the Lord service by defacing it. And the said Earl of Manchester's men, endeavouring to pull the whole shank down, got a smith's forge hammer and broke off the four corner crosses; and then fastened ropes to the middle cross, which was stronger and higher, thinking by that to pull the whole shank down. But a stone breaking off, and falling upon one of the men's legs, which was nearest it, and breaking his leg, they troubled themselves no more about it." This account, with a drawing of the cross in its former state, was in Fairfax's collection of antiquities, and came afterward into Thoresby's possession. The Antiquarian Society published an engraving of it by that excellent and upright artist Vertue, of whom it is recorded that he never would engrave a fictitious portrait. The pillar was composed of five columns, a large one in the middle, and four smaller ones around it, answering pretty nearly to the cardinal points: each column was surmounted by a cross, that in the middle being the highest and proportionally large. There were numeral figures on the south face, near the top, which seem to have been intended for a dial; the circumference of the pillar was eleven feet seven, the height eighteen feet.

William Paterson, in the year of his mayoralty, 1678,、 "beautified it with four dials, ball, and fane;" in 1792, when Henry Heaton was mayor, it was taken down, because of its decayed state, and a new one of the same form was erected by the roadside, a furlong to the south of its former site, on Hop-cross hill. This was better than destroying the cross; and as either renovation or demolition had become necessary, the corporation are to be commended for what they did. But it is no longer the same cross, nor on the same site which had once been consecrated, and where many a passing prayer had been breathed in simplicity and sincerity of heart.

What signifies the change? Both place and monument had long been desecrated. As little religious feeling was excited by it as would have been by the altar to the Dea Matres, if it had stood there. And of the hundreds of travellers who daily pass it, in or outside of stage coaches, in their own carriages, on horseback, or on foot; and of the thousands who flock thither during the races; and of the inhabitants of Doncaster itself, not a single soul cares whether it be the original cross or not, or where it was originally erected, or when, or wherefore, or by whom !

"I wish I did not!" said Dr. Dove, when some one ad