Coaching days were doomed at Doncaster in 1859, when the Midland Railway was opened and diverted the traffic; and nine years later, when the Great Northern Railway came, the last coach was withdrawn. Few think of Doncaster as a centre of spiritual activity. Racing seems to comprehend everything, and to make it, like a famous winner of the St. Leger a case of “Eclipse first; the rest nowhere!” Even Doncaster butterscotch is more familiar than Doncaster piety, but the Church is particularly active here, nevertheless. That activity only dates from the appointment of Dr. Vaughan as vicar, in 1859. Before his time religion was very dead, so that, when the great parish church of St. George was burnt down in 1853, the then vicar, Dr. Sharpe, on seeing the flames burst out, could at first only think of his false teeth, which he had left in the building, and exclaimed in horror-stricken tones, “Good gracious! and I have left my set of teeth in the vestry.” The church was rebuilt by Sir Gilbert Scott. It is a magnificent building, but too palpably Scott, and the details of the carving painfully mechanical. Also, the stone was so badly selected that the crockets and enrichments were long ago found to be decaying, and “restoration” of a building not then fifty years old was found necessary. Dr. Vaughan was a bitter opponent of horse-racing, and so was not popular with the sporting element; and as Doncaster is, above everything, given over to sport, this meant that his nine years’ vicariate was a sojourn in a hostile camp. His predecessors had been more complaisant. Always within living memory the church bells had been rung on the St. Leger day, and generally at the moment the winning horse had passed the post. Dr. Vaughan put an end to this and quietly inaugurated a new era, not by raising a dispute, but by obtaining the keys of the belfry on the first St. Leger day of his incumbency, and, locking the door, going for a walk which kept him out of the town until the evening! XXXV