has caught him up, he is frequently ridiculed as a plodding, one-idead man! Would that the world had had a few more of such, when Romilly and Mackintosh sat with Brougham, Tierney and Hume, on one side of the House, and Castlereagh, Vansittart, Canning and Dundas sat on the other! It is idle to speculate upon what Mr. Hume might have been,-it is idle now to lament that he undertook more work than any human being could by any possibility get through -though we may just stop to say that his sympathy is answerable for that, for he has not to this day learned to say no to a request for assistance,it is idle to note errors which have now and then been detected in the work of the bee by the drones who stood by doing nothing! But we may fairly say that the work has been most unequally divided, and that Mr. Hume, if he has earned a lower place in the roll of fame than he might have obtained had he consulted only his own comfort and dignity, deserves, by that very self-negation, a higher position in the gratitude of posterity! The most common charge that is urged against him perhaps, is that he is parsimonious;-this for several reasons must be fairly weighed. He is accused of being unnecessarily critical in small matters, in short to practise meanness rather than economy. How did he earn this character? By denouncing a system of keeping the public accounts, which left peculation easy and without danger; by exposing disgraceful waste of the money wrung from the hard toil of honest industry, and squandered in disgusting profligacy. By demanding that the rulers of a great nation should themselves be above suspicion, and that elevated position should not be taken as an excuse for shameless dishonesty, he placed himself in the position of a man who goes amongst thieves and tells them to be honest, or into the abodes of infamy and denounces profligacy. He who refuses to follow the villanous habit of bribing a lazy scoundrel to do that which he is paid especially to do, or refuses to reward a lazy vagabond for not working at all, will earn from such gentry the name of a mean fellow-what wonder then that Mr. Hume escaped not? He Let us see what was the animus by which he was moved. He refused to sanction the taxing of the poor man's food; he refused to vote for an army or navy which he believed to be larger than necessary; he refused to vote unlimited supplies even to princes. He refused to increase the country's burdens for such purposes as these. did not, however, refuse to vote money for the education of a neglected and reviled "mob," he did not grudge the money that went to improve the health, the moral condition, the taste, or the recreation of the people; on the contrary, every proposal to vote money for such purpose met his warm and hearty support;-and no man in England has originated so many of such propositions. The deduction of of money from the unearned income of a profiigate peer, a sinecure secretary, or a bloated doorkeeper, in order to increase the funds for the education and improvement of the people, may be parsimonious, but if we were driven to chose amongst words of similar termination, we should rather call it religious! So much for Mr. Hume's publie meanness! With his private affairs we have nothing to do: we have no wish, if we had the opportunity, to break into his house, as certain people, figuratively speaking, are guilty of. We dare say Mr. Hume does not leave his cash-box open on his table: does not spend a fortune at the opera; does not even take a nice quiet rubber on Sunday, or on any other day, at his club-he may even choose to wear a four-and-ninepenny hat and short boots, as he was once accused of doing, and certainly he does object to pay more than a shilling a mile even if his cabman asks him for it: or, quitting negatives, let us suppose that he is a little close in private matters-what then? Why he has been thirty-three years in parliament without accepting place,-not without having had it offered to him; he has turned his house into an office; he has at times engaged several clerks to help in his labours; he has never been entirely without a secretary, a clerk, or some sort of paid assistance; he has spent a mint of money upon postages--sometimes under the old system, fire pounds in one day; the printers' bills which he has paid would amount to a nice round sum; there has scarcely been a society for the promotion of the welfare of the people that he has not subscribed to, and handsomely-frequently taking the leading business, and, like an amateur actor, paying the largest sum because of the importance of the part; he has been the working agent of several colonies without any remuneration whatever for his services; he has got up more subscriptions for deserving misfortune than any other man in the world, and not only put his name down, but paid the subscription too, as rumour says has not been the invariable rule with charitable patrons ;-all this he has done: and, although he has served on more committees in the House of Commons than any other man ever dreamed of; although he has been appointed, and has acted as a royal commissioner on innumerable occasions; although he has, for the purposes above-mentioned, drawn from his private purse for the benefit of the public, certainly one or two hundred a year, and probably a great deal more, for upwards of thirty years, he has never once received a single farthing of the public money from the time he entered parliament to the present day! Had Croesus acted in this manner, he might, almost, have worn a four-and-ninepenny hat without being considered stingy. We have felt sometimes that it was inconsistent for a man who had done so much for the public not to be paid 1 for his labour, and we used to hope for the day when the "whirligig of time", should make him Chancellor of the Exchequer. Perhaps we were wrong; and it may be more to his honour that he should finish his useful and noble life as plain Joseph Hume, so that we may continue to say of him as was said on the Middlesex hustings the other day by Lord Robert Grosvenor,-" He is one of the fairest men in the House of Commons. He has passed the whole of a long life in serving the people without fee or reward." OLIVER GOLDSMITH. ADVERSITY teaches many bitter lessons. It proclaims many unwelcome truths. It dispels many a bright daydream. It stops the healthful flow of many generous thought; quenches the fires of ambition-levels the lofti- Adversity is, nevertheless, an ordeal from which we all shrink: we shudder at it. Our thoughts, however wavering on other subjects, are, on this, firm and determined. The breath of that sound is as an ice-blast, chilling our very souls. We flee before the freezing breeze. We do not hesitate to acknowledge the evils oftentimes resulting from riches. We see that the steps which have led us to affluence, and opened to us the door of comfort and ease, have taken us, in some degree, out of the path we had intended to pursue, and that its traces are soon lost to us entirely. We know that the circle of our affections is narrowed; that our views are more restricted; that we glory more in self-estimation; are less sacrificing to ourselves, and more exacting from others. We feel that the tendency of riches is to abate our industry and to check our usefulness-and that, in fact, as worldly wealth accumulates, mental treasures fade and wither like the coins of the magician in the Arabian fable. But we worship riches, it is the idol before which we bow; it is the deity to whom we sacrifice the labour of years -the purcst thoughts--the loftiest re- and Athlone., Here Oliver's early days solves the dearest ties of kindred and were spent here his education first of country-and oftentimes even our commenced; and here his mind reown happiness. And why? because we ceived impressions of natural beauty fear the awful presence of adversity and of domestic misrule, which, in we see it hovering in the distance-after-time, elevated unpretending Lis Auburn" of the Deserted vague, terrible; and we surround it soy to the “ with strange and ghastly phantoms, Village. His aptitude for learning was even as imagination weaves fearful small. He was docile, retiring, easily forms from the spreading branches governed by gentleness-but, in the that are dimly visible in the waning words of his first teacher, a certain light of evening. We forget that ad- Miss Elizabeth Delap, who would have versity has its brighter pictures, and been proud, we could imagine, of hav that it hallows,l ike the touch of a ing laid the foundation of his mental blessed spirit, many scenes on which wealth-he was " a dull boy,", nay the shadow of its wing has fallen. impenetrably stupid." His next inThat it opens many hearts which, but structor thought otherwise, but then for its influence, would have denied he was a strange being, but ill fitted access to the most elevated feelings, for the training of youth perhaps and that it elicits from the soul Thomas Byrne--so was he named→→ those bright scintillations which was of a poetic disposition, overflow are the imperishable evidences of ing with fairy superstitions and legendivinity. dary lore. He had been a soldierhad seen good service, and his mind was full of the memory of many exciting events. He was not deficient in education; and the narratives, which he constantly related to his scholars were full of earnestness and dramatic interest. Little Oliver was an attentive listener. He heard with amazement and pleasure the wonderful: stories of distant lands, and the wild legends of his own country--the ter rible disasters of daring adventurers, and the playful freaks of the “good people." His little soul floated pensively away across, the broad sea of imagination, until the blue depths closed around and checked its further progress. These were sunny days, but they were of short duration. An attack of small-pox snatched him away from his lively master, and when he recovered, dreadfully marked and scarred, it was only to find that his former pleasure would return no more; he was to be sent to another school. At Elphin, in Roscommon, then under the management of the Rev. Mr. Griffin, Oliver Goldsmith was next placed. The result of his studies here was more satisfactory. He made tolerable progress in his education, obtained the favour of his instructor, by whom he was considered a promising boy, and even gave evidences of wit surprising in a youth of nine or ten years of age. As, on one occasion, when taunted with his resemblance to Esop by an amateur violinist, to whose music he was Little doubt is there that, to adversity, English literature owes the name of Oliver Goldsmith. Adversity, ere then, had trained many master spirits in her school: Oliver Goldsmith was another pupil. In his youth he showed no higher characteristics than are displayed by a generous disposition and a feeling heart. He was not an infant prodigy. He was not specially remarkable as a boy. As a young man he, at first, was all idleness and inattention-a lover of the sunny side a mere loiterer on the byways of thought. But afterwards, when he had tasted deeply of the cup of suffering when he had passed across the burning ploughshares and felt his spirit purified by the trial, and new strength throbbing at his heart-he emerged from the crowd of idlers-he stood erect and conspicuous, and men came and did him homage. His voice went far, far away; it took with it words of comfort and hope; it travelled over many lands; it touched many hearts with gladness; it was a happy welcome voice. Oliver Goldsmith was born at Pallas, a village in the county of Longford, in Ireland, on the 10th of November, 1728. His father, an upright excellent man, a clergyman of the Established Church, with a large family, and a small stipend, was, in 1730, appointed rector of Kilkenny West, and shortly afterwards removed to Lissoy, A small village between Ballymahon Too good a reply, perhaps, from one so young to be quite original; most probably a reminiscence of some verse, slightly altered to suit the occasion, but sufficient to spread the fame of Oliver amongst his relatives, and to change their determination-rendered necessary by poverty-to bestow upon him a less liberal education than upon his elder brother Henry, who was about to proceed to the University. Maternal intercession was mainly instrumental in producing this result, for Oliver was dear to his mother. She thought that in these and other little exhibitions of early genius, there were evidences of a latent power that some day was to shine forth conspicuously. She, with that beautiful sympathy for her offspring which only a mother possesses, read truths in that plain, rough face, and penetrated depths of that sensitive mind which her simple child, as yet, knew not of. While Henry was gaining high honours at the University, Oliver, at a school at Athlone, was preparing himself for similar distinctions. Henry, affectionately remembered by his brother in after life, as was shown amongst other ways, by the "Traveller" being dedicated to him, did not profit largely by the fame he acquired at college. Marrying when very young, his exertions were cramped, and he was compelled to sacrifice his ambition, and to settle humbly in life as a country curate and schoolmaster. Oliver studied, not very industriously, but with sufficient application to acquit himself creditably. He was not fond of learning, and during the vacations he compensated himself for past labour by amusements of an exciting character. "As author or vietim he was always ready for any act of mischief," says one of his biographers; and the story of a daring orchard robbery, in which Goldsmith played a prominent part, was recounted some years since by an old man, who well remembered the circumstance. But the most amusing incident of his holiday adventures, is that which suggested a portion of the plot of She stoops to Conquer." Arriving rather late at night, at the town of Ardah, he sought from a passing stranger to be directed to the best house in the place, meaning of course the best inn. The stranger was a wag. He discerned in the querist that mixture of boyish assumption and boyish ignorance, which it is so easy to detect, and he sent the youthful traveller to the well-stored mansion of a private gentleman. Arriving at the gate, Oliver, all unconscious of the hoax, authoritatively ordered his horse to be taken to the stable, and being mistaken by the servant for an expected guest, was ushered into the presence of the family, to whom, in the most offhand manner, he gave orders for an excellent supper. The host, perceiving the error of his visitor, humoured the deception-chatted and laughed, as Irish landlords were accustomed to do and rendered himself so agreeable, that Oliver would insist upon his conpany and that of his wife and daughter at table--and it was not until the next | morning that the mistake was explained. On the 11th of June, 1745, Oliver Goldsmith was admitted as a sizar of Trinity College, Dublin, not without considerable reluctance on his part; for a sizar, in return for the educa tional advantages he received, was compelled to perform a number of menial offices, revolting to a young man of sensitive disposition. Oliver firmly refused at first, to enter upon his studies in this capacity; but by the kind advice and friendly exhort ations of his uncle, Mr. Contarine, pride at length gave way, and the step was taken. Poor Goldsmith! He had no sooner fought this battle with his feelings than others awaited him on every side. His tutor, a certain Mr. Wilder, an educated ruffian, whose passions were of the most ungovernable kind, conceived a violent hatred for that little shrinking being who was his new pupil. Oliver quailed before the looks of his fierce instructor; he felt no pleasure in pursuing his studies, when every little inaccuracy was rewarded by a taunting jest or bitter sarcasm; he feared that ready laugh, which was so often raised against his smallness of stature and his awkward manners; and he took more pleasure in solitary musings and idle recreations in his own chamber, than in striving to remedy those imperfections for to the college. His mind, perhaps, which he was so harshly rebuked. was not accessible to purification. It He had a weary time of it. There was was too deeply encrusted with worldly little to make him in love with learn- dust to admit of cleansing: it would ing; little to make him in love with not repay any labour bestowed upon those with whom he was associated; it. But with his body the case was only one of his fellow students-Beatty, very different: and the unfortunate with whom he had formerly been at representative of the law, stripped and school--displayed any sympathizing well ducked, was no doubt made fully kindness towards him. This kindness, conscious of the enormity of the sin he carrying with it very frequently small had committed. The collegians grew loans of money, was most grateful to elated: their victory had been complete; Oliver, whose pecuniary resources, not their energies were not yet exhausted; improved by a generous disposition, triumph, indeed, had given them new were very limited in extent; and upon strength; they panted for a fresh field the death of his father, in 1747, became on which to show their prowess; aueven smaller. Now, indeed, was an thority was weak; it had been easily hour of trial; relatives sent occasional overturned; they would strike terroi aid to the poor sizar, but it was meagre into its very heart; they would attack and insufficient; and with a generosity Newgate and set all the prisoners free; peculiar to himself, was very frequently-they would do a deed by which their employed in relieving the poverty of others. He pawned his books, and lived for a time on the money thus realized he even wrote ballads for a bookseller at five shillings each, and, stealing out into the streets at evening, Eistened to the rude singing of his humble songs. But there was happiness in this-it was an hour snatched from the gloomy monotony of the day-from dull and wearying studies--from bitter thoughts of his own inefficiency-to revel in bright dreams of hope and fame. "Few and duil the beggar's audience at first," says Mr. Forster, "more thronging, eager, and delighted, when he shouted the newly-gotten ware. Cracked enough his ballad-singing tones, I dare say-but, harsh, discordant, loud, or low, the sweetest music that this earth affords fell with them on the ear of Goldsmith. Gentle faces pleased-old men stopping by the way-young lads venturing a purchase with their last remaining farthing -why here was a world in little, with its fame at the sizar's feet." But other amusements of a more exciting description shortly afterwards engaged his attention. In May, 1747, a scholar was arrested for debt. This was an indignity not to be borne. His fellow scholars determined to revenge themselves for the insult which had been offered to one of their body. They organized themselves into detachments. They sought out the unhappy bailiff who had been guilty of this high offence. They captured the delinquent. They bore him in triumph names would ever after become distinguished! Their names did become distinguished; but not in the manner intended. Instead of gaining a place on the scroll of Fame, they had a fair chance of becoming remembered in the records of assizes. They stood nearer to the hangman's rope than to the wreath of the victor. The attack was unsuccessful; the assailants were repulsed; and several lives were lost in the affray. Many of the ringleaders were expelled from the college; ani others, among whom was Oliver Goldsmith, were publicly admonished. This fell heavily upon Goldsmith. He had joined the scheme merely for the sake of the amusement it would afford; and the result was so far from being either gratifying or honourable, that he began to reflect upon his conduct. He began to feel displeased with the progress he had made since he first became a sizar at Trinity College He determined to become proficient in something besides inattention. He applied himself for some time to his studies, with a better heart, and with the consciousness that he had not availed himself of former opportunities; and he soon was recompensed for his labours, by gaining an exhibition, of but little value, but priceless, inasmuch as it was the evidence of his assiduity. He was greatly elated: he felt proud of the honour he had fought for and won, and he wished others to participate in that pride. He had been working hard; now was the fitting time for a little relaxation. All |