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 every thing,—[1] but endeavoured to find all he could in them, and for that reason delighted to enquire into the history of places and of things, and to understand their past as well as their present state. The revolutions of a mansion house 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. [Footnote 1: SHAKESPEAR.] 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, reading-rooms, lecture-rooms, 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 splendor. 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