he was probably speaking of his wife, for Donne was happy in his marriage, as he deserved to be. There is a beauty which, as the Duchess of Newcastle said of her mother's, is “beyond the reach of time;” that beauty depends upon the mind, upon the temper,—Young Ladies, upon yourselves! George Wither wrote under the best of his portraits, What I WAS, is passed by; What I AM, away doth fly; What I SHALL BE, none do see; Yet in THAT my beauties be. He commenced also a Meditation upon that portrait in these impressive lines; When I behold my Picture and perceive How vain it is our Portraitures to leave In lines and shadows (which make shews to-day Of that which will to-morrow fade away) And think what mean resemblances at best Are by mechanic instruments exprest, I thought it better much to leave behind me, Some draught, in which my living friends might find me, The same I am, in that which will remain Till all is ruined and repaired again. In the same poem he says, A Picture, though with most exactness made, Is nothing but the shadow of a shade. For even our living bodies (though they seem To others more, or more in our esteem) Are but the shadow of that Real Being, Which doth extend beyond the fleshly seeing, And cannot be discerned, until we rise Immortal objects for immortal eyes. Like most men, George Wither, as he grew more selfish, was tolerably successful in deceiving himself as to his own motives and state of mind. If ever there was an honest enthusiast, he had been one; afterwards he feathered his nest with the spoils of the Loyalists and of the Bishops; and during this prosperous part of his turbulent life there must have been times when the remembrance of his former self brought with it more melancholy and more awful thoughts than the sight of his own youthful portrait, in its fantastic garb, or of that more sober resemblance upon which his meditation was composed. Such a portraiture of the inner or real being as Wither in his better mind wished to leave in his works, for those who knew and loved him, such a portraiture am I endeavouring to compose of Dr. Dove, wherein the world may see what he was, and so become acquainted with his intellectual lineaments, and with those peculiarities, which forming as it were the idiosyncrasy of his moral constitution, contributed in no small degree to those ever-varying lights and shades of character, and feeling in his living countenance which, I believe, would have baffled the best painter's art. _Poi voi sapete quanto egli è dabbene, Com' ha giudizio, ingegno, e discrezione, Come conosce il vero, il bello, e 'l bene._[2] [Footnote 2: BERNI.] CHAPTER LXV. SOCIETY OF A COUNTRY TOWN. SUCH A TOWN A MORE FAVOURABLE HABITAT FOR SUCH A PERSON AS DR. DOVE THAN LONDON WOULD HAVE BEEN.