(1) Muller's "Elements of Physiology," vol. ii. p. 134. Translated by
Dr. Baley.

(2) Cowley, who wrote so elaborate a series of amatory poems, is said
"never to have been in love but once, and then he never had resolution
to tell his passion."--Johnson's "Lives of the Poets:" COWLEY.

CHAPTER XXI.

The next day, the last of the visiting patients to whom my forenoons
were devoted had just quitted me, when I was summoned in haste to attend
the steward of a Sir Philip Derval not residing at his family seat,
which was about five miles from L----. It was rarely indeed that persons
so far from the town, when of no higher rank than this applicant, asked
my services.

But it was my principle to go wherever I was summoned; my profession
was not gain, it was healing, to which gain was the incident, not
the essential. This case the messenger reported as urgent. I went on
horseback, and rode fast; but swiftly as I cantered through the village
that skirted the approach to Sir Philip Derval's park, the evident care
bestowed on the accommodation of the cottagers forcibly struck me. I
felt that I was on the lands of a rich, intelligent, and beneficent
proprietor. Entering the park, and passing before the manor-house, the
contrast between the neglect and the decay of the absentee's stately
Hall and the smiling homes of his villagers was disconsolately mournful.

An imposing pile, built apparently by Vanbrugh, with decorated
pilasters, pompous portico, and grand perron (or double flight of stairs
to the entrance), enriched with urns and statues, but discoloured,
mildewed, chipped, half-hidden with unpruned creepers and ivy. Most of
the windows were closed with shutters, decaying for want of paint; in
some of the casements the panes were broken; the peacock perched on the
shattered balustrade, that fenced a garden overgrown with weeds. The
sun glared hotly on the place, and made its ruinous condition still more
painfully apparent. I was glad when a winding in the park-road shut
the house from my sight. Suddenly I emerged through a copse of ancient
yew-trees, and before me there gleamed, in abrupt whiteness, a building
evidently designed for the family mausoleum, classical in its outline,
with the blind iron door niched into stone walls of massive thickness,
and surrounded by a funereal garden of roses and evergreens, fenced with
an iron rail, party-gilt.

The suddenness with which this House of the Dead came upon me heighte