hat spot so purely and temperately
allude to:--

O, friend to peace and virtue, ever flows
For thee my silent and unsullied stream,
Pure and untainted as thy blameless life!
Let no gay converse lead thy steps astray,
To mix my chaste wave with immodest wine,
Nor with the poisonous cup, which Chemia's hand
Deals (fell enchantress!) to the sons of folly!
So shall young Health thy daily walks attend,
Weave for thy hoary brow the vernal flower
Of cheerfulness, and with his nervous arm
Arrest th' inexorable scythe of Time.

So early, and indeed throughout his whole life, did Dr. Darwin enforce
the happy consequences of temperance and sobriety; from his conviction
of the pernicious effects of all kinds of intemperance on the youthful
constitution. He had an absolute horror of spirits of all sorts, however
diluted. Pure water was, throughout the greater part of his temperate
life, his favourite beverage. He has been severely censured (no doubt
very justly so), for some of his religious prejudices. Old Walter Mapes,
the jovial canon of Salisbury, precentor of Lincoln, and arch-deacon of
Oxford, in the eleventh century, considered _water_ as fit only for
_heretics_.

One may again trace his fondness for the rich scenery of nature, when he
in 1777 purchased a wild umbrageous valley near Lichfield, with its
mossy fountain of the purest water. This spot he fondly cultivated. The
botanic skill displayed by him on this spot, did not escape the
searching eye of Mr. Loudon, for in p. 807 of his Encyclop. of
Gardening, he pays a deserved compliment to him.[94] Miss Seward wrote
some lines on this favoured valley, and these are part of them:

O! may no ruder step these bowers profane,
No midnight wassailers deface the plain;
And when the tempests of the wintry day
Blow golden autumn's varied leaves away,
Winds of the north, restrain your icy gales,
Nor chill the bosom of these hallow'd vales.

His attachment to gardens, induced him to honour the memory of Mr.
Mason, by lines once intended for his monument; and he was suggesting
improvements at the priory at Derby (and which he had just described the
last morning of his life in a sprightly letter to a friend), when the
fatal signal was given, and a few hours after, on the 18th of April,
1802, and in his sixty-ninth year, he sunk into his chair and expired.
"Thus in one hour (says his affectionate biographer) was extinguished
th