taste of the author. The unpretending vein of row, felt precisely in proportion to the susceptienthusiasm which runs through it, is only equalled bility of the individual, and expressed according as by the force and simplicity of the style. The ra- he is ingenuous and frank. In the case of Goldpid sketches of the several countries it presents, smith, his long and solitary struggle with povertyare vigorous and pleasing; and the reflections in- his years of obscure toil-his ill-success in every terspersed, abound with that truly humane spirit, scheme for support, coupled as they were with an and that deep sympathy with the good, the beau-intuitive and deep consciousness of mental power tiful, and the true, which distinguishes the poet. and poetic gifts, were calculated to render him This production may be regarded as the author's painfully alive to the superior consideration befirst deliberate attempt in the career of genius. It stowed upon less deserving but more presumptuous went through nine editions during his life, and its men, and the unmerited and unjust disregard to his success contributed, in a great measure, to encou-own claims. Weak it undoubtedly was, for him to rage and sustain him in future and less genial efforts. give vent so childishly to such feelings, but this sprung from the spontaneous honesty of his nature. He felt as thousands have felt under similar circumstances, but, unlike the mass of men, "he knew not the art of concealment." Indeed, this freespoken and candid disposition was inimical to his success in more than one respect. He was ever a careless talker, unable to play the great man, and instinctively preferring the spontaneous to the formal, and " thinking aloud" to studied and circumspect speech. The "exquisite sensibility to contempt," too, which he confesses belonged to him, frequently induced an appearance of conceit, when no undue share existed. The truth is, the legitimate pride of talent, for want of free and natural scope, often exhibited itself in Goldsmith greatly to his disadvantage. The fault was rather in his destiny than himself. He ran away from college with the design of embarking for America, because he was reproved by an unfeeling tutor before a convivial party of his friends; and descended to a personal rencontre with a printer, who impudently delivered Dodsley's refusal that he should undertake an improved edition of Pope. He concealed his name when necessity obliged him to apply for the office of usher; and received visits and The faults which are said to have deformed the character of Goldsmith, belong essentially to the class of foibles rather than absolute and positive errors. Recent biographers agree in the opinion, that his alleged devotion to play has either been grossly exaggerated, or was but a temporary mania; and we should infer from his own allusions to the subject, that the had, with the flexibility of disposition that belonged to him, yielded only so far to its seductions as to learn from experience the supreme folly of the practice. It is at all events certain, that his means were too restricted, and his time, while in London, too much occupied, to allow of his enacting the part of a regular and professed gamester; and, during the latter and most busy years of his life, we have the testimony of the members of the celebrated club to which he was attached, to the temperance and industry of his habits. Another, and in the eyes of the world, perhaps, greater weakness recorded of him, was a mawkish vanity, sometimes accompanied by jealousy of more successful competitors for the honors of literature. Some anecdotes, illustrative of this unamiable trait, are preserved, which would amuse as, were they associated with less noble endow-letters at a fashionable coffee-house, rather than ments or a more uninteresting character. As it is, however, not a few of them challenge credulity, from their utter want of harmony with certain dispositions which he is universally allowed to have possessed. But it is one of the greatest and most common errors in judging of character, to take an isolated and partial, instead of a broad and comprehensive view of the various qualities which go to form the man, and the peculiar circumstances that have influenced their development. Upon a candid retrospect of Goldsmith's life, it appears to us that It is not easy to say, whether the improvidence the displays of vanity, which in the view of many of our poet arose more from that recklessness of are so demeaning, may be easily and satisfactorily the future, characteristic of the Irish temperament, explained. Few men possess talent of any kind or the singular confidence in destiny which is so unconsciously. It seem designed by the Creator, common a trait in men of ideal tendencies. It that the very sense of capacity should urge genius would naturally be supposed, that the stern lesson to fulfil its mission, and support its early and lonely of severe experience would have eventually corefforts by the earnest conviction of ultimate suc-rected this want of foresight. It was but the cess. To beings thus endowed, the neglect and thoughtlessness of youth which lured him to forget contumely of the world-the want of sympathy-amid the convivialities of a party, the vessel on the feeling of misappreciation, is often a keen sor- 'board which he had taken passage and embarked expose the poorness of his lodgings. He joined the crowd to hear his own ballads sung when a student; and openly expressed his wonder at the stupidity of people, in preferring the tricks of a mountebank to the society of a man like himself. While we smile at, we cannot wholly deride such foibles, and are constrained to say of Goldsmith as he said of the Village Pastor "And e'en his failings leaned to virtue's side." his effects, on his first experiment in travelling; upon a festive song, and at another deep in combut later in life, we find him wandering out on the posing the words for an Oratorio. It is curious, with first evening of his arrival in Edinburgh, without the intense sentiment and finished pictures of fashnoting the street or number of his lodgings; inviting ionable life with which the fictions of our day a party of strangers in a public garden, to take tea abound, fresh in the memory, to open the Vicar of with him, without a sixpence in his pocket, and ob- Wakefield. We seem to be reading the memoirs stinately persisting, during his last illness, in taking of an earlier era, instead of a different sphere of a favorite medicine, notwithstanding it aggravated life. There are no wild and improbable incidents, his disease. A life of greater vicissitude it would no startling views, and with the exception of Burchbe difficult to find in the annals of literature. But-ell's incognito, no attempt to excite interest through ler and Otway were, indeed, victims of indigence, the attraction of mystery. And yet, few novels have and often, perhaps, found themselves, like our bard, enjoyed such extensive and permanent favor. It is "in a garret writing for bread, and expecting every yet the standard work for introducing students on moment to be dunned for a milk-score," but the bi- the continent to a knowledge of our language, and ography of Goldsmith displays a greater variety of although popular taste at present demands quite a shifts resorted to for subsistence. He was succes- different style of entertainment, yet Goldsmith's sively an itinerant musician, a half-starved usher, novel is often reverted to with delight, from the via chemist's apprentice, private tutor, law-student, vid contrast it presents to the reigning school; practising physician, eager disputant, hack-writer, while the attractive picture it affords of rural life and even, for a week or two, one of a company of and humble virtue, will ever render it intrinsically strolling players. In the history of George Prim- dear and valuable. rose, he is supposed to have described much of his But the "Deserted Village" is, of all Goldsmith's personal experience prior to the period when he be- productions, unquestionably the favorite. It earcame a professed litterateur. We cannot but ad-ries back the mind to the early season of life, and mire the independent spirit he maintained through re-asserts the power of unsophisticated tastes. all these struggles with adverse fortune. Notwith- Hence, while other poems grow stale, this preserves standing his poverty, the attempt to chain his talents its charm. Dear to the heart and sacred to the to the service of a political faction by mercenary imagination, are those sweet delineations of unpermotives was indignantly spurned, and when his verted existence. There is true pathos in that tengood genius proved triumphant, he preferred to in-der lament over the superseded sports and ruined scribe its first acknowledged offspring to his brother, than, according to the servile habits of the day, dedicate it to any aristocratic patron, "that thrift might follow fawning." With all his incapacity for assuming dignity, Goldsmith never seems to have forgotten the self-respect becoming one of nature's nobility. haunts of rustic enjoyment, which never fails to find a response in every feeling breast. It is an elaborate and touching epitaph, written in the cemetry of the world over what is dear to all humanity. There is a truth in the eloquent defence of agricul tural pursuits and natural pastimes, that steals like a well-remembered strain over the heart immersed in the toil and crowds of cities. There is an unworn beauty in the similes of the bird and her "unfledged offspring," the hare that "pants to the place from whence at first he flew," and the “tall cliff that lifts its awful form," which, despite their The high degree of excellence attained by Goldsmith in such various and distinct species of literary effort, is worthy of remark. As an essayist, he has contributed some of the most pure and graceful specimens of English prose discoverable in the whole range of literature. His best comedy familiarity, retain their power to delight. And no continues to maintain much of its original popu- clear and susceptible mind can ever lose its intelarity, notwithstanding the revolutions which pub- rest in the unforced, unexaggerated and heart-stirlic taste has undergone since it was first produced; ring numbers, which animate with pleasure the and "The Hermit" is still an acknowledged model in pulses of youth, gratify the mature taste of manballad-writing. If from his more finished works, hood and fall with a soothing sweetness upon the we turn to those which were thrown off under the ear of age. We are not surprised at the exclamapressing exigences of his life, it is astonishing tion of a young lady who had been accustomed to what a contrast of subjects employed his pen. Du- say, that our poet was the homeliest of men, after ring his college days, he was constantly writing reading the "Deserted Village"-"I shall never ballads on popular events, which he disposed of at more think Dr. Goldsmith ugly!" This poem passfive shillings each, and subsequently, after his lite-ed through five editions in as many months, and rary career had fairly commenced, we find him from its domestic character became immediately sedulously occupied in preparing prefaces, histori-popular throughout England. Its melodious vercal compilations, translations, and reviews for the sification is doubtless, in a measure, to be ascribed booksellers; one day throwing off a pamphlet on the to its author's musical taste, and the fascinating ease Cock-Lane ghost, and the next inditing Biographi- of its flow is the result of long study and careful cal Sketches of Beau Nash; at one moment, busy revision. Nothing is more deceitful than the ap parent facility observable in poetry. No poet reserved scholar or abstracted dreamer. Pride of than the highest triumphs of mind. And it is these An hour's importance to the poor man's heart." There is more true benevolence in the feeling which prompted such a thought, than in all the cold and calculating philosophy with which so maIt is not, indeed, by an analysis, however critical, ny expect to elevate the lower classes in these of the intellectual distinctions of any author, that days of ultra-reform. When shall we learn that we we can arrive at a complete view of his genius. It must sympathize with those we would improve? is to the feelings that we must look for that ear-At college, we are told, one bitter night Goldsmith nestness which gives vigor to mental efforts, and encountered a poor woman and her infants shiverimparts to them their peculiar tone and coloring. ing at the gate, and having no money to give them, And it will generally be found that what is really bringing out all his bed clothes to keep himself and permanently attractive in the works of genius, from freezing, cut open his bed and slept within it. independent of mere diction, is to be traced rather When hard at work earning a scanty pittance in to the heart than the head. We may admire the his garret, he spent every spare penny in cakes for original conception, the lofty imagery or winning the children of his poorer neighbors, and when he style of a popular author, but what touches us most could do nothing else, taught them dancing, by way deeply is the sentiment of which these are the ve-of cheering their poverty. Notwithstanding his hicles. The fertile invention of Petrarch, in dis- avowed antipathy to Baretti, he visited and relieved playing under such a variety of disguises the same him in prison, and when returning home with the favorite subject, is not so moving as the unalterable £100 received from his book-seller for the "Dedevotion which inspires his fancy and quickens his serted Village," upon being told by an acquaintance muse. The popularity of Mrs. Hemans is more he fell in with, that it was a great price for so little owing to the delicate and deep enthusiasm than to a thing, replied, "perhaps it is more than he can the elegance of her poetry, and Charles Lamb is afford," and returning, offered to refund a part. To not less attractive for his kindly affections than for his poor countrymen he was a constant benefactor, his quaint humor. Not a little of the peculiar and while he had a shilling was ready to share it eharm of Goldsmith, is attributable to the excel-with them, so that they familiarly styled him "our lence of his heart. Mere talent would scarcely doctor." In Leyden, when on the point of comhave sufficed to interpret and display so enchant-mencing his tour, he stripped himself of all his ingly the humble characters and scenes to which funds to send a collection of flower-roots to an unhis most brilliant efforts were devoted. It was cle who was devoted to botany, and on the first his sincere and ready sympathy with man, his sen- occasion that patronage was offered him, declined sibility to suffering in every form, his strong social aid for himself, to bespeak a vacant living for his sentiment and his amiable interest in all around, brother. In truth, his life abounds in anecdotes of which brightened to his mind's eye, what to the a like nature. We read one day of his pawning less susceptible is unheeded and obscure. Natu- his watch for Pilkington, another of his bringing rally endowed with free and keen sensibilities, his home a poor foreigner from Tempe gardens to be own experience of privation prevented them from his amanuensis, and again of his leaving the card indurating through age or prosperity. He cher-table to relieve a poor woman, whose tones as she ished throughout his life an earnest faith in the bet-chanted some ditty in passing, came to him above ter feelings of our nature. He realized the uni- the hum of gaiety and indicated to his ear distress. versal beauty and power of Love; and neither the Though the frequent and undeserved subject of litesolitary pursuits of literature, the elation of suc-rary abuse, he was never known to write severely eess, nor the blandishments of pleasure or society, against any one. His talents were sacredly devoever banished from his bosom the generous and ted to the cause of virtue and humanity. No makindly sentiments which adorned his character. lignant satire ever came from his pen. He loved He was not the mere creature of attainment, the 'to dwell upon the beautiful vindications in nature VOL. VI.-35 of the paternity of God, and expatiate upon the noblest and most universal attributes of man. "If II. The wild beasts to their caverns fly, The night-birds flee from heaven; By streaming fires are riven. I were to love you by rule," he writes to his brother, III. The storms no more the skies invest, The winds are heard no more; From whence they rose, they've sunk to rest- The clouds that were so wildly driven Comes in her mild and sober guise, Her perfumed air and trembling skies, nor mix in the crowded thoroughfare and gay saloon, in vain. Travel liberalized his views and demolished the barriers of local prejudice. He looked around upon his kind with the charitable judgment and intelligent interest born of an observing mind and a kindly heart-" with an infinite love, an infinite pity." He delighted in the delineation of humble life, because he knew it to be the most unperverted. Simple pleasures warmed his fancy because he had learned their preeminent truth. Childhood with its innocent playfulness, intellectual character with its tutored wisdom, and the uncultivated but "bold peasantry," interested him alike. He could enjoy an hour's friendly chat with his fellow-lodger-the watchmaker in Green-Arbor MY UNCLE'S UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS. court-not less than a literary discussion with Dr. Johnson. "I must own," he writes, "I should prefer the title of the ancient philosopher, viz: a Citizen My Dear Nephew:-Manuscript No. 3, which I send you of the World-to that of an Englishman, a French-with this letter, is a tale which I wrote about ten years The original of Helen man, an European, or that of any appellation what- since, and is founded on fact. ever." And this title he has nobly earned, by the lived at what was called the "White Cottage," about half Tourney was poor Mrs. B., who, when you were a child, wide scope of his sympathies and the beautiful pic-a mile from your father's. Her death occurred during my tures of life and nature universally recognized and universally loved, which have spread his name over the world. Pilgrims to the supposed scene of the Deserted Village have long since carried away every vestige of the haw-thorn at Lissoy, but the laurels of Goldsmith will never be garnered by the hand of time, or blighted by the frost of neglect, as long as there are minds to appreciate, or hearts to reverence the household lore of English literature. A SUNSET-STORM IN SUMMER. BY RUFUS W. GRISWOLD. I. The summer sun has sunk to rest Below the green-clad hills, It is the voice of the Storm-King, Leading his bannered hosts across the darkened sky, NO. III. absence on a trip to the south-west. When on my return I heard the circumstances of it, and recalled to mind her appearance in her better days, the contrast between the commencement and the termination of her brief career made an impression upon my mind which can never be effaced. This tale was written shortly after her death, but not published at the time, lest it might wound the feelings of her brother who was then in this country. Since his return to England, I have several times been on the point of sending it to the press, but somehow or another, I never have been able fully to gain my consent to publish to the world the private sorrows and sufferings of one I esteemed so highly. The only liberty I have taken with her story, has been to lay the scene in a different part of the country from that in which it really occurred, and to add one or two unimportant particulars. MANUSCRIPT III. THE INTEMPERATE. It was during the autumn of 1824, that after an absence of twelve years, I re-visited my native place. Whilst I had been far away, an entire change had been wrought in its character. I left it a quiet country village. I found it a busy manufacturing town. Soon after my departure, a company of manufacturers from the neighboring city of New York, had discovered the "great water privileges" afforded by a branch of the Passaic, which wound along through the narrow valley in which the village was situated, and had eagerly availed themselves of the advantages which it of fered. The once quiet banks of this stream, where I had spent many of the happy hours of my childhood, in gathering the wild-flowers which grew in luxuriant beauty among the long grass, or in angling for the trout which sported in its chrystal waters, were now covered with manufactories. Its waters which had once been suffered to wend their way undisturbed, save by the rocky barriers which the hand of nature had here and there thrown across their channel, and o'er which they dashed in mimic cataracts, were now pent in on every hand and collected into a number of great stagnant ponds connected with those manufactories. It seemed as if nature herself had been forced to put off her holyday dress, and put on one which would better accord with the general appearance of this "working-day world of ours." place very much changed since you left it; but few of its old inhabitants are now remaining-some our Heavenly Father has removed to another world; others are scattered hither and thither throughout the land. Mrs. B., I remarked, is, I see, no longer among the living. What was the cause of her death? Her's is a mournful story, was his reply; but if you will return with me to the parsonage, I will tell you all I can respecting her. This offer I gladly accepted. I found that on leaving this country, Mr. B. had left all his papers in the hands of the venerable pastor of our village; and that among these were many which throw light upon the early history of Mrs. B. From these, and from what I learned in the course of that evening's conversation, combined with my own recollections of Mrs. B., I have gathered the materials of the following tale. The quiet beauty of the place was entirely destroyed; and most of its old inhabitants, too, I found on inquiry, had departed-some to a better, brighter world; others had gone Helen Tourney spent the early part of her life in Worto seek their fortunes in the "far-west." A feeling of lone-cestershire-one of the western shires of England. At the liness came over me as I wandered unnoticed and un- distance of a few miles from the town of Worcester, on the known along the busy streets. I felt myself a stranger in road to Stratford-on-Avon, the traveller crosses a neat stone my own native place, "within sight of the very cot where I bridge thrown over a small stream, which rises among the was born." I turned my steps toward the old grave-yard. Welch hills, and empties its waters into the river Severn. Here, thought I, I shall find at least some remembrances of On the slope of a hill, which appears a little up the stream, the past. When I entered the gate which opened to this there still stands one of those old family mansions which "city of the dead," the first object that caught my eye are so common in some parts of England. This house, towas a neat marble slab, with the name of Helen B. in-gether with the adjoining fields, has been in the possession scribed upon it. And is she dead!—the light-hearted—the of the Tourney family for many generations. Here it was lovely Mrs. B. Surely death might have spared her to the that Helen spent the first fourteen years of her life. As world; but thus it is, "the fairest flowers fade the soonest.' she early manifested the possession of a mind of no ordiAs I stood at her grave, the recollections of the past nary character, her fond parents determined that no expense crowded thick upon me. Mrs. B. was one whom I had al- should be spared, which might be necessary, to give her the ways looked upon as a bright exemplar of all that was advantages of a finished education. In order that she might lovely in female character. Whilst residing in the village, be placed under the tuition of better instructors than could I had been in the habit of spending many of my evenings at be obtained at a retired country seat, at the age of fourteen her house. There was an intelligence and a cheerful good she was sent to reside with an aunt of her's in the neighborhumor about her which made her the delight of our little ing town of Worcester. village circle. Well do I recollect her appearance the last It was here that she first met with Eugene B., her future evening I ever spent at her house. When I spoke of leav-husband; and it was during her stay with her aunt that he ing the village to mingle with the world, and the changes won her affections, and gained her consent to become his which would in all probability occur before my eyes should bride. That she should have become attached to Eugene again be blessed with a sight of the blue hills which girt it B., no one acquainted with him in his better days will be round, she seemed to enter into my feelings; and, with all surprised at. There was something so manly in his appeara sister's tenderness, strove to dispel the sadness which ance-something so gentle and yet so determined in his was gathering over my spirit. Early in life I had been left disposition; his mind was of so high an order, and so richly an orphan, and, being naturally of a retiring disposition, had stored with the learning of both ancient and modern days; seldom spoken with freedom of my feelings to others; his conversation was so sprightly, and at the same time so consequently, had seldom shared their sympathy. If ever I sensible; his manners were so easy, so frank, so polishedwas melancholy, (and who, in my situation, would not be that it was impossible for one of Helen's temperament to so occasionally?) I was either laughed at or pitied-both know him intimately, and not to love him "with the whole equally grating to my proud spirit-and this may be one heart's devotion." reason why the sympathy which Mrs. B. manifested in my│• situation, made the deeper impression upon me. Little did either of us think, that on my return, the only memorial which I should find of her, would be the marble slab which marked the place where her ashes had been laid. Here does she sleep the "sleep of death.” "The storm that wrecks the winter sky Whilst I stood at her grave, lost in the recollections of the past, I was aroused from my reverie by the weight of a hand laid upon my shoulder. On turning around, I at once recognized the old pastor of the village church; his body now stooping under the weight of threescore years and ten. After a cordial recognition of me, and a few inquiries respecting my fortunes in the world, remarking the tear which had started unbidden into my eye, he said-You find our When, on her final return from school, their engagement became known to Helen's parents, they opposed the match: not that they had any thing to object to in the character of Eugene B.; for that, as they themselves confessed, was all they could desire in a son-in-law and the husband of their darling child; but simply on account of a determination which he had formed, and which he was unwilling to give up, of leaving his native land, and seeking to better his fortunes in the new world. Such was the situation of things when a letter, which I found among the papers put into my hands, and from which the following extract is taken, appears to have been written: "Did I know of any honorable way in which my fortunes might be mended in this country, I should never think of leaving it. That attachment to our father-land, with the want of which your parents reproach me, burns as brightly in my bosom as it does in theirs, and, had fortune favored me, nothing would have been more pleasant to me than to have lived where my fathers have lived before me, and when my days on earth were numbered, to have laid my |