rapid wing,
Jove's silver guards, and Saturn's dusky ring;
Leave the fair beams, which issuing from afar
Play with new lustres round the Georgian star;
Shun with strong oars the sun's attractive throne,
The burning Zodiac, and the milky Zone:
Where headlong comets with increasing force
Through other systems bend their burning course!
For thee Cassiope her chair withdraws,
For thee the Bear retracts his shaggy paws;
High o'er the north thy golden orb shall roll,
And blaze eternal round the wondering pole.[92]

Miss Seward, after stating that professional generosity distinguished
Dr. Darwin's medical practice at Lichfield, farther says, that
"diligently also did he attend to the health of the poor in that city,
and afterwards at Derby, and supplied their necessities by food, and all
sorts of charitable assistance. In each of those towns, _his_ was the
cheerful board of almost open-housed hospitality, without extravagance
or pride; deeming ever the first unjust, the latter unmanly. Generosity,
wit and science, were his household gods."[93] She again states that
when he removed from Lichfield to Derby, "his renown, as a physician,
still increased as time rolled on, and his mortal life declined from its
noon. Patients resorted to him more and more, from every part of the
kingdom, and often from the continent. All ranks, all orders of society,
all religions, leaned upon his power to ameliorate disease, and to
prolong existence. The rigid and sternly pious, who had attempted to
renounce his aid, from a superstition that no blessing would attend the
prescriptions of a sceptic, sacrificed, after a time, their
superstitious scruples to their involuntary consciousness of his mighty
skill." Mr. Mathias, though he severely criticizes some of Dr. Darwin's
works, yet he justly calls him "this very ingenious man, and most
excellent physician, for such he undoubtedly was."

[Illustration]

From scattered passages in Miss Seward's Life of him, one can easily
trace the delight he took (notwithstanding his immense professional
engagements,) in the scenery of nature and gardens;--witness his
frequent admiration of the tangled glen and luxuriant landscape at
_Belmont_, its sombre and pathless woods, impressing us with a sense of
solemn seclusion, like the solitudes of _Tinian_, or _Juan Fernandes_,
with its "silent and unsullied stream," which the admirable lines he
addresses to the youthful owner of t