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THE DOCTOR.                 123
due time the one whom he should like best.
Of course such proper securities as could
alone justify the managers of the charity in
consenting to so uncommon a transaction,
were required and given. The experiment
succeeded in every thing -except its specific
object; for he found at last that love was
not a thing thus to be bespoken on either
side; and his Lucretia and Sabrina, as he
named them, grew up to be good wives for
other men. I do not know whether the life
of Thomas Day has yet found its appropriate
place in the Wonderful Magazine, or in the
collection entitled Eccentric Biography,
but the Reader may find it livelily related in
Miss Seward's Life of Darwin.
The experiment of breeding a wife is not
likely to be repeated. None but a most
determined theorist would attempt it; and
to carry it into effect would require con-
siderable means of fortune, not to mention a
more than ordinary share of patience: after
which there must needs be a greater dis-
parity of years than can be approved in
theory upon any due consideration of human
nature, and any reasonable estimate of the
chances of human life.
CHAPTER LV. P. I.
THE AUTHOR'S LAST VISIT TO DONCASTER.
Fueoe quondam hivc sedfioere;
Nunc ubi sint, rogitas? Id annos
Scire hos oportet scilicet. 0 bonir
Miousce, 0 Lep6res- 0 Ca}arites merar!
0 gan~dia offuscata nullis
Litibus ! 0 sine ntbe soles!
JANUS DOUZA.
I HAVE more to say, dear Ladies, upon that
which to you is, and ought to be, the most
interesting of all worldly subjects, matri-
mony, and the various ways by which it is
brought about; but this is not the place for
saying it. The Doctor is not at this time
thinking of a wife: his heart can no more
be taken so long as it retains the lively
image of the Burgemeester's Daughter, than
Troy-town while the Palladium was safe.
Imagine him, therefore, in the year of our
Lr  1 1, *an u1 in   e -sI   yar or A   ra  r
Lord  1/4 , and in The twentIY-sixtu year 01
his age, returned to Doncaster, with the
Burgemeester's Daughter, seated like the
Lady in the Lobster, in his inmost breast;
with physic in his head and at his fingers'
ends; and with an appetite for knowledge
which had long been feeding voraciously,
digesting well, and increasing in its growth
by what it fed on. Imagine him returned
to Doncaster, and welcomed once more as a
son by the worthy old Peter Hopkins and
his good wife, in that comfortable habitation
which I have heretofore described, and of
which (as was at the same time stated) you
may see a faithful representation in Miller's
History of that good town; a faithful repre-
sentation, I say, of what it was in 1804; the
drawing was by Frederic Nash; and Edward
Shirt made a shift to engrave it; the house
had then undergone some alterations since
the days when I frequented it; and now!-
Of all things in this our mortal pilgrimage
one of the most joyful is the returning home
after an absence which has been long enough
to mnalke the heart yearn with hope, and not
sicken with it, and then to find when you
arrive there that all is well. But the most
purely painful of all painful things is to visit
after a long, long interval of time the place
which was once our home; -the most purely
painful, because it is unmixed with fear,
anxiety, disappointment, or any other emo-
tion but what belongs to the sense of time
and change, then pressing upon us with its
whole unalleviated weight.
It was my fortune to leave Doncaster
early in life, and, having passed per varios
casus, and through as large a proportion of
good and evil in my humble sphere, as the
pious LEneas, though not exactly per tot dis-
crimina rerum, not to see it again till after
an absence of more than forty years, when
my way happened to lie through that town.
I should never have had heart purposely to
visit it, for that would have been seeking
sorrow; but to have made a circuit for the
sake of avoiding the place would have been
an act of weakness; and no man who has a
proper degree of self-respect will do any
thing of which he might justly feel ashamed.
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THE DOCTROR.
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