he finds that he is glad to know, and what omissions he most laments.

One argument, to prove that the common relations of ghosts and spectres are generally false, may be drawn from the opinion held that spirits are never seen by s more than one person at a time; that is to say, it seldom happens to above one person in a company to be possessed with any high degree of spleen or melancholy.

It is grown a word of course for writers to say, "This 10 critical age," as divines say, "This sinful age."

It is pleasant to observe how free the present age is in laying taxes on the next: "Future ages shall talk of this; this shall be famous to all posterity;" whereas their time and thoughts will be taken up about present 15 things, as ours are now.

I have known some men possessed of good qualities which were very serviceable to others but useless to themselves, like a sun-dial on the front of a house, to inform the neighbors and passengers but not the owner20 within.

If a man would register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion, learning, etc., beginning from his youth, and so go on to old age, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would appear at last!

The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.

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The reason why so few marriages are happy is because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not 30 in making cages.

The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.

Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same posture with creeping.

Although men are accused for not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps as few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of.

An idle reason lessens the weight of the good ones you gave before.

Arbitrary power is the natural object of temptation 10 to a prince-as wine to a young fellow, or a bribe to a judge, or avarice to old age, or vanity to a woman.

The humor of exploding many things under the name of trifles, fopperies, and only imaginary goods, is a very false proof either of wisdom or magnanimity, and as great check to virtuous actions. For instance, with regard to fame, there is in most people a reluctance and unwillingness to be forgotten. We observe even among the vulgar how fond they are to have an inscription over their grave. It requires but little philosophy to discover and observe that there is no intrinsic value in all this; however, if it be founded in our nature, as an incitement to virtue, it ought not to be ridiculed.

Complaint is the largest tribute heaven receives, and the sincerest part of our devotion.

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The common fluency of speech in many men, and most women, is owing to a scarcity of matter and a scarcity of words; for whoever is a master of language, and hath a mind full of ideas, will be apt in speaking to hesitate upon the choice of both; whereas common 30 speakers have only one set of ideas, and one set of words to clothe them in, and these are always ready at the mouth; so people come faster out of church when it is almost empty than when a crowd is at the door.

XX.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

BY THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.'

OLIVER GOLDSMITH was one of the most pleasing English writers of the eighteenth century. He was of a Protestant and Saxon family which had been long settled in Ireland, and which had, like most other Protestant and Saxon families, been in troubled times harassed and put in fear by the native population. His father, Charles Goldsmith, studied in the reign of Queen Anne at the diocesan school of Elphin, became attached to the daughter of the school-master, married her, took orders, and settled at a place called Pallas in the county 10 of Longford. There he with difficulty supported his wife and children on what he could earn, partly as a curate and partly as a farmer.

At Pallas Oliver Goldsmith was born in November, 1728. That spot was then, for all practical purposes, 15 almost as remote from the busy and splendid capital in which his later years were passed as any clearing in Upper Canada or any sheep-walk in Australasia now is. Even at this day those enthusiasts who venture to make a pilgrimage to the birthplace of the poet are forced to 20 perform the latter part of their journey on foot. The hamlet lies far from any high-road, on a dreary plain, which in wet weather is often a lake. The lanes would break any jaunting-car to pieces; and there are ruts and sloughs through which the most strongly built wheels 25 cannot be dragged.

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When Oliver was still a child his father was presented to a living worth about £200 a year, in the county of Westmeath. The family accordingly quitted their cottage in the wilderness for a spacious house on a frequented road, near the village of Lissoy. Here the boys was taught his letters by a maid-servant, and was sent, in his seventh year, to a village school kept by an old quartermaster on half-pay, who professed to teach nothing but reading, writing, and arithmetic, but who had an inexhaustible fund of stories about ghosts, banshees, and fairies, about the great Rapparee chiefs, Baldearg O'Donnell and Galloping Hogan, and about the exploits of Peterborough and Stanhope, the surprise of Monjuich, and the glorious disaster of Brihuega. This man must have been of the Protestant religion; but he was of the 15 aboriginal race, and not only spoke the Irish language, but could pour forth unpremeditated Irish verses. Oliver early became, and through life continued to be, a passionate admirer of the Irish music, and especially of the compositions of Carolan, some of the last notes of whose 20 harp he heard. It ought to be added that Oliver, though by birth one of the Englishry, and though connected by numerous ties with the Established Church, never showed the least sign of that contemptuous antipathy with which in his days the ruling minority in Ireland 25 too generally regarded the subject majority. So far, indeed, was he from sharing in the opinions and feelings of the caste to which he belonged that he conceived an aversion to the Glorious and Immortal Memory, and, even when George the Third was on the throne, main-20 tained that nothing but the restoration of the banished dynasty' could save the country.

From the humble academy kept by the old soldier Goldsmith was removed in his ninth year. He went to

several grammar-schools, and acquired some knowledge of the ancient languages. His life at this time seems to have been far from happy. He had, as appears from the admirable portrait of him at Knowle, features harsh even to ugliness. The small-pox had set its mark upon 5 him with more than usual severity. His stature was small, and his limbs ill put together. Among boys little tenderness is shown to personal defects; and the ridicule excited by poor Oliver's appearance was heightened by a peculiar simplicity and a disposition to blunder 10 which he retained to the last. He became the common butt of boys and masters, was pointed at as a fright in the play-ground, and flogged as a dunce in the schoolroom. When he had risen to eminence, those who once derided him ransacked their memory for the events of 15 his early years, and recited repartees and couplets which had dropped from him, and which, though little noticed at the time, were supposed, a quarter of a century later, to indicate the powers which produced "The Vicar of Wakefield" and "The Deserted Village."

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In his seventeenth year Oliver went up to Trinity College, Dublin, as a sizar.3 The sizars paid nothing-for food and tuition, and very little for lodging; but they had to perform some menial services, from which they have long been relieved. They swept the court; they 25 carried up the dinner to the fellows' table, and changed the plates and poured out the ale of the rulers of the society. Goldsmith was quartered, not alone, in a garret, on the window of which his name, scrawled by himself, is still read with interest. From such garrets many 20 men of less parts than his have made their way to the wool-sack' or to the episcopal bench. But Goldsmith, while he suffered all the humiliations, threw away all the advantages of his situation. He neglected the studies