BY

HEBERDEN MILFORD.

“Maids as well as youths have perished,
From fruitless love too fondly cherished.”

Coleridge's “Sibylline Leaves."
“We wither from our youth, we gasp away-

Sick--sick; unfound the boon-unslaked the thirst,
Though to the last, in verge of our decay,
Some phantom lures, such as we sought at first-
But all too late,—so we are doubly curst.
Love, fame, ambition, avarice—'tis the same-
Each idle—and all ill—and none the worst-

For all are meteors with a different name,
And Death the sable smoke, where vanishes the flame."

“Childe Harold,” Canto iv., Stan, cxxiv.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

LONDON:
HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS,
SUCCESSORS TO HENRY COLBURN,
13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.

1854.

240, W. 283.

M. S. MYERS, PRINTER, 22, TAVISTOCK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.

no

SAMUEL EDWARDS, Esq., M.D.,

These Volumes are Dedicated,

AS THE TRIFLING MEMORIAL

OF A

MUTUAL AND LONG FORMED FRIENDSHIP.

London,
· August, 1854

A PHYSICIAN'S TALE.

S

C

CHAPTER I.

• It was a vast and venerable pile,

So old it seemed only not to fall,
Yet strength was pillar'd in each massy aisle.”

BYRON. “Oh! ill-judging sire of an innocent son."

WORDSWORTH,

In one of the southern counties, in a remote and unfrequented district, is the pretty little village of Elleringay. Situated on a gentle acclivity, and commanding an ex, tensive prospect over a broad expanse of country, screened in on the north and east by dark woods of sturdy oak, towering elms, and spreading beech, with a crystal stream

VOL. I.