THE EXETER ROAD 



141 



hound ; for a page further on he speaks of the dissipations 

 of pleasant, hospitable Blandford, in a strain of deeply 

 philosophical regret. 



There is not much to be said for any place between 

 here and Dorchester, which is sixteen miles down the 

 Exeter Road. At Winterborne, Whitchurch, however, 

 there is a church with a curious font in it, of which the 

 grandfather of John Wesley, founder of Methodism, 

 was vicar ; but he does not seem to have had a very 

 pleasant time of it. For either by reason of having 

 married the niece of Thomas Fuller, author of the 

 WortJiies, or because he had not been properly ordained, 

 he was much hunted up and down like " a partridge in 

 the mountains," when the king enjoyed his own again. 

 Four miles beyond Whitchurch, at Dewlish, there was 

 a turnpike gate, I notice, but there does not seem to 

 have been much else there of any interest, and so on to 

 Dorchester (inns, the Antelope and the King's Arms), 

 which was a posting-town of great importance, and is 

 119 miles 6 furlongs from Hyde Park Corner. 



Dorchester has been remarkable for all time for its 

 extreme healthiness, and was remarkable during the 

 great Civil Wars for its antipathy to the king : two ex- 

 tremes in the way of qualities which may cause 

 wonder, but which are well vouched for nevertheless. 

 For on the first peculiarity the celebrated Dr. Arbuthnot 

 — Arbuthnot the learned, the fascinating, the friend of 

 Pope, Gay, and Swift — who was here in his young days, 

 remarks, " that a physician could neither live nor die at 

 Dorchester," commenting on his own experience ; and 

 on the second peculiarity, lack of loyalty, no less 

 weighty an authority than Clarendon reports, that when 

 the great Rebellion broke out, no place was more 

 entirely disaffected. 



Fess pleasant celebrities however than the brilliant 

 author of the Art of Sinking in Poetry^ Laiv is a 

 Bottomless Pit, and the Effects of A ir on Hninan Bodies, 

 haunt the streets of this almost aggressively healthy 



