His experiment had been, not with a view to life, but _ease_. ‘I am at present,’ he says, ‘in the case of a man that was almost in harbour, and then blown back to sea; who has a reasonable hope of going to a good place, and an absolute certainty of leaving a very bad one;’ and then he corrects himself, having experienced many comforts in this world in the affections of his family and the kindness of friends, and gives a touching peep at his domestic relations in three or four lines: ‘My family give you their love and service. The great loss I sustained in one of them gave me my first shock, and the trouble I have with the rest to bring them to a good temper to bear the loss of a father who loves them, and whom they love, is really a most sensible affliction to me.’[251] Shortly after the date of this letter, Pope, writing to one of the Miss Blounts, tells her that he had seen Dr. Arbuthnot, who was very cheerful: ‘I spent a whole day with him at Hampstead. He was in the Long Room half the morning, and has parties at cards every night. Mrs. Lepell and Mrs. Saggione and her sons and two daughters are all with him.’ In the March following Dr. Arbuthnot died, as he believed he should on his return to London. ‘Poor Arbuthnot, who grieved to see the wickedness of mankind, and was particularly esteemed by his own countrymen,[252] is dead, to the great regret of everyone who had the pleasure of knowing him intimately.’ Of him Swift wrote to Pope, referring to his humanity and benevolence, ‘Oh that the world had but a dozen Arbuthnots in it! I would burn my travels’ (‘Gulliver’); and when a lady asked the satirical Dean for the Doctor’s character, he summed it up in a sentence, ‘He has more wit than we all have, and his humanity is equal to his wit.’ The presence of such an invalid at the Wells is a proof that faith in the potency of the regimen observed there, and in the health-giving air of the Heath, was by no means withdrawn from them. Indeed, we read that at this date and during the previous season, more company had been seen in the walks than had visited the village for years—a fact not lost upon Dr. Soames, the friend of, and possibly the successor to, Dr. Gibbons, whose treatise afforded him the literary material and groundwork for his pamphlet on the ‘Hampstead Mineral Wells, with Directions how to Drink the Waters’—an essay calculated to impress his patients, and even the general public, with the sanitary combinations of the rural resort. It was published in 1734, and is not without interest. He repeats the description of the older writer and physician, that Hampstead ‘is situated somewhat romantic, but every way pleasant, on several little hills, on high ground of different soils.’