Daniel Dove brings Deborah home. Daniel Dove brings Deborah home. [Illustration] But whither am I hurrying? It was not till the year 1761 that that happy union was effected; and the fourteen years whose course of events I have reluctantly, yet of necessity, pretermitted, bring us only to 1748 in which year the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle was made. Peter Hopkins and Mrs. Hopkins were then both living, and Daniel had not attained to the honors of his diploma. Before we come to the day on which the bells rung that joyful peal, I must enter into some details for the purpose of shewing how he became qualified for his degree, and how he was enabled to take it; and it will be necessary therefore to say something of the opportunities of instruction which he enjoyed under Hopkins, and of the state of society in Doncaster at that time. And preliminary to, as preparatory for all this, some account is to be given of Doncaster itself. Reader, you may skip this preliminary account if you please, but it will be to your loss if you do! You perhaps may be one of those persons who can travel from Dan to Beersheba, and neither make enquiry concerning, nor take notice of, any thing on the way; but, thank Heaven, I cannot pass through Doncaster in any such mood of mind. If however thou belongest to a better class, then may I promise that in what is here to follow, thou wilt find something to recompense thee for the little time thou wilt employ in reading it, were that time more than it will be, or more valuable than it is. For I shall assuredly either tell thee of something which thou didst not know before; (and let me observe by the bye that I never obtained any information of any kind, which did not on some occasion or other prove available;)—or I shall waken up to pleasurable consciousness thy napping knowledge. Snuff the candles therefore, if it be candle-light, and they require it; (I hope, for thine eyes' sake, thou art not reading by a lamp!)—stir the fire, if it be winter, and it be prudent to refresh it with the poker; and then comfortably begin a new chapter: _Faciam ut hujus loci semper memineris._[1] [Footnote 1: TERENCE.] END OF VOL. I. W. Nicol, Cleveland-row, St. James's.