tries to soothe her indignation by a narration of his adventures so whimsical and so humurous, that Washington Irving thinks it was touched up a little with the fanciful pen of the future essayist it opens thus early his "happy knack of extracting sweets from that worldly experience which to others yields nothing but bitterness." What next was to be done with the wayward youth? He was advised to become, according to his own expression, "a counsellor." Accordingly the good uncle supplies Oliver with fifty-pounds-and sends him to Dublin on his way to London, there to study the law. Unhappy Oliver-why were you seduced into a gaming house; why did you in a single evening lose your money, why were you once more thrown upon your friends, wearied by your follies and extravagance? In justice to his memory I must quote the words of Prior on this sad circumstance. "The shame and mortification occasioned by this imprudence were very sincere, for however prone to fall into error, few felt more acutely or lamented more strongly when too late, its usual results. He continued some time in Dublin without having courage to communicate his loss." The good uncle, indefatigable in his affectionate zeal for his unfortunate nephew, again appears, and after consultation with his family and friends, it was resolved that Divinity and Law having failed, nothing remained but to try Physic. Accordingly the means are supplied, and we now find Oliver in Edinburgh, commencing the study of physic. We have arrived at the autumn of 1752. Edinburgh he spent two winters, making some useful acquaintances among the medical students, but I suspect not gaining much professional knowledge. He appears to have disliked Scotland and the Scotch, even the scenery was repulsive to him, and Macaulay in his History of England, fails not to quote Goldsmith's description of the dismal landscape; but no country in the world has improved so rapidly

In

as Scotland since the time of Goldsmith; the rough and. barren Highlands then abhorred by the traveller, are now visited annually by thousands, who are ravished with delight. The medical schools are however no longer so attractive to the youth of the empire as they once were. Oliver got no degree in medicine at Edinburgh, but proposed to prosecute his studies in Paris and finish at Leyden. His good uncle again supplied him with the means, and the grateful nephew thus describes his feelings and position in a parting letter to his generous benefactor-" as I shall not have another opportunity of receiving money from your bounty till my return to Ireland- —so I have drawn for the last sum which I hope I shall ever trouble you for-it is twenty pounds-and now, dear sir, let me here acknowledge the humility of the station in which you found me, let me tell you that I was despised by men and hateful to myself. Poverty, hopeless poverty, was my lot, and melancholy was beginning to make me her own-when you— but I stop to enquire how your health goes on. This is the language of a grateful, sensitive heart. We must now take his own strange narrative of the accidents, lucky and unlucky, which prevented him reaching Paris and deposited him in Leyden. From a letter dated Leyden, April, 1754, to his good uncle, we take the amusing account. "You may see by the top of the letter that I am at Leyden; but of my journey hither you must be informed. Sometime after the receipt of your last, I embarked for Bordeaux, on board a Scotch ship called the St. Andrew's. The ship made a tolerable appearance; and as another inducement, I was let to know that six agreeable passengers were to be my company. Well, we were but two days at sea, when a storm drove us into a city of England, called Newcastle-on-Tyne. We all went on shore to refresh us after the fatigues of our voyage. Seven men and I were one day on shore; and on the following day as we were all very

merry, the room door bursts open, enters a sergeant and twelve grenadiers, with their bayonets screwed; and put us all under the king's arrest. It seems my company were Scotchmen in the French service, and had been in Scotland to enlist soldiers for the French army. I endeavoured all I could to prove my innocence; however I remained in prison with the rest a fortnight, and with difficulty got off even then. Dear sir, keep all this a secret, or at least say it was for debt, for if it were once known at the University, I should hardly get a degree. But hear how Providence interfered in my favour: the ship was gone on to Bordeaux before I got from prison, and was wrecked at the mouth of the Garonne, and all the crew were drowned. It happened the last great storm. There was a ship at that time ready for Holland; I embarked, and in nine days, thank my God, I arrived safe at Rotterdam; whence I travelled by land to Leyden, whence I now write."

His graphic description of a Dutchman and Dutchwoman in the same letter cannot be omitted. "The modern Dutchman is quite a different creature from him of former times; he in everything imitates a Frenchman, but in his easy, disengaged air, which is the result of keeping polite company. The Dutchman is vastly ceremonious, and is perhaps what Frenchmen might have been in the reign of Louis XIV.-such are the better bred. But the downright Hollander is one of the oddest figures in nature; upon a head of lank hair, he wears a half cocked narrow hat, laced with black ribband; no coat, but seven waiscoats and nine pair of breeches, so that his hips reach almost to his arm-pits. This well-clothed vegetable is now fit to see company, or to make love. But what a pleasing creature is the object of his appetite! Why, she wears a large fur cap, with a deal of Flanders lace; and for every pair of breeches he carries, she puts on two petticoats." Oliver enchanted with the face of the country, moralizes

"No misery is to be seen here-every one is usefully employed."

The career of our inconstant countryman was pretty much the same at Leyden as it had been elsewhere: he studied men and letters more than physic, and contrived to live by teaching English, by occasionally borrowing money, or by other expedients. His biographer quotes with just satisfaction the testimony in Goldsmith's favour of Dr. Ellis, an Irish gentleman then studying at Leyden and who occasionally accommodated his distressed friend with pecuniary assistance. "In all his peculiarities it was remarked there was about him an elevation of mind, a philosophic tone and manner, which, added to the language and information of a scholar, made him an object of interest to such as could estimate his character. I am constrained to add, that poor Goldsmith was seduced occasionally to the gaming table, and suffered the usual consequences-loss of money and remorse."

I believe the evidence of Dr. Ellis states the whole truth. At the end of a year he quitted Leyden to walk over Europe, with a little money in his pocket and an extra shirt; but his legs were stout, and his courage high. There is no truthful narrative of his adventures during this extraordinary enterprise. What is written about his travels is either conjecture, or derived from his Essays, or from the adventures of "The Philosophic Vagabond" in the Vicar of Wakefield-assumed to be descriptive of himself and of his journeys. He found the German phlegmatic, the Swiss coarse, the Italian ignorant, the French polite, and the peasant musical. The rich turned a deaf ear to his strains; the poor were pleased by the melody of his flute, and in return for his music divided with him their humble fare.

In Louvain or in Padua it is said he obtained a degree in medicine. He visited the principal cities in the north of

Italy-pushed his way to Paris-picked up a rich, miserly pupil, with whom he returned to Geneva and quarrelled, then fought his way towards England, walking from city to city, examining mankind as he said himself, "seeing both sides of the picture;" a philosophic vagabond, pursuing novelty and living contentedly. Few writers of fiction have been able to imagine a character resembling Oliver Goldsmith; but while we censure his folly in attempting such an enterprise, we must accord him praise for having resolutely executed his purpose. Few travellers have seen human nature and human life as he did; and fewer still have turned a varied experience to better account. On the 1st February, 1756, our adventurous traveller landed at Dover. He found greater difficulties in forcing his way to London. than he had met with in any other part of Europe,—the music of his flute was of no avail with the phlegmatic Saxon, he tried to join strolling players in a barn; offered his. services to a village apothecary, and finally he was wandering without friend or acquaintance, without, as Mr. Forster graphically expresses it, "the knowledge or comfort of even one kind face, in the lonely, terrible streets of London."