For him light Labor spread her wholesome store,
Just gave what life required, but gave no more,
His best companions, innocence and health,
And his best riches, ignorance of wealth.

But times are altered: Trade's unfeeling train
Usurp the land and dispossess the swain;
Along the lawn, where scattered hamlets rose,
Unwieldy wealth and cumbrous pomp repose,
And every want to luxury allied,

And every pang that folly pays to pride:

Those gentle hours that plenty bade to bloom, Those calm desires that asked but little room, Those healthful sports that graced the peaceful

scene,

Lived in each look, and brightened all the green,-
These, far departing, seek a kinder shore,
And rural mirth and manners are no more.

Sweet Auburn! parent of the blissful hour,
Thy glades forlorn confess the tyrant's power.
Here, as I take my solitary rounds

Amidst thy tangling walks and ruined grounds,
And, many a year elapsed, return to view
Where once the cottage stood, the hawthorn grew,
Remembrance wakes, with all her busy train,
Swells at my breast, and turns the past to pain.

Sweet was the sound, when oft, at evening's close,
Up yonder hill the village murmur rose;
There, as I passed, with careless steps and slow,
The mingling notes came softened from below,-
The swain responsive as the milkmaid sung,
The sober herd that lowed to meet their young,
The noisy geese that gabbled o'er the pool,
The playful children just let loose from school,

The watch-dog's voice that bayed the whispering

wind,

And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind:
These all in sweet confusion sought the shade,
And filled each pause the nightingale had made.
But now the sounds of population fail :

No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale;
No busy steps the grass-grown footway tread,
But all the blooming flush of life is fled,-
All but yon widowed solitary thing

That feebly bends beside the plashy spring;
She, wretched matron, forced in age, for bread,
To strip the brook with mantling cresses spread,
To pick her wintry fagot from the thorn,

To seek her nightly shed and weep till morn,—
She only left of all the harmless train,
The sad historian of the pensive plain.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

Spell and pronounce :- gambol, feats, loveliest, accumulates, peasantry, usurp, unwieldy, cumbrous, allied, rural, bayed, fluctuate, varying, fagot, matron, plashy, mantling, cresses, and vacant.

FOR THE MEMORY.

KNOWLEDGE AND WISDOM.

"Knowledge and Wisdom, far from being one,
Have ofttimes no connection. Knowledge dwells
In heads replete with thoughts of other men;
Wisdom in minds attentive to their own.
Knowledge-a rude unprofitable mass,

The mere materials with which Wisdom builds,
Till smoothed, and squared, and fitted to its place-
Does but encumber whom it seems to enrich.
Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much
Wisdom is humble that he knows no more."

COWPER.

LESSON CXXVII.

děl'i ea çy, critical niceness.
ĕl'e gy, a mournful poem.
fie tl'tious, feigned; imaginary.
věr'sa tile, changeable.

pros pěr'i ty, success in any en-
terprise.

de pendents, retainers.

prom'is so ry, containing a promise.

se elu'şion, separation from so-
ciety.

u năn’i mošs, of one mind.
be něv'o lent, having a dispo-
sition to do good.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

Who of the millions whom he has amused, does not love him? To be the most beloved of English writers, what a title that is for a man! "He was

a friend to virtue," says Sir Walter Scott, "and in his most playful pages never forgets what is due to it. A gentleness, delicacy, and purity of feeling distinguishes whatever he wrote, and bears a correspondence to the generosity of a disposition which knew no bounds but his last guinea."

A wild youth, wayward, but full of tenderness and affection, quits the country village where his boyhood has been passed in happy musing, in idle shelter, in fond longing to see the great world out of doors, and achieve name and fortune; and after years of dire struggle, and neglect, and poverty, his heart turning back as fondly to his native place as it had longed eagerly for a change when sheltered there, he writes a book and a poem, full of the recollections and feelings of home.

He paints the friends and scenes of his youth, and peoples Auburn and Wakefield with remembrances of Lissoy. Wander he must, but he carries away a home-relic with him, and dies with it on his breast. His nature is truant; in repose he longs

for a change, as on the journey he looks back for friends and quiet. He passes to-day in building an air-castle for to-morrow, or in writing yesterday's elegy; and he would fly away this hour but that a cage and necessity keep him.

What is the charm of his verse, his style, and humor? His sweet regrets, his delicate compassion, his soft smile, his tremulous sympathy, the weakness which he owns ? Your love for him is half pity. You come hot and tired from the day's battle, and this sweet minstrel sings to you.

Who could harm the kind vagrant harper? Whom did he ever hurt? He carries no weapon save the harp on which he plays to you, and with which he delights great and humble, young and old, the captains in the tents or the soldiers round the fire, the women and children in the villages, at whose porches he stops and sings his simple songs of love and beauty. With that sweet story of "The Vicar of Wakefield" he has found entry into every castle and every hamlet in Europe.

"We read it," says the gentle Sir Walter, “in youth and in age-we return to it again and again, and bless the memory of an author who contrives so well to reconcile us to human nature. The admirable ease and grace of the narrative, as well as the pleasing truth with which the characters are designed, make 'The Vicar of Wakefield' one of the most delicious morsels of fictitious composition on which the human mind was ever employed."

Goldsmith's sweet and friendly nature bloomed kindly always in the midst of life's storm, and rain, and bitter weather. The poor fellow was never so friendless but he could befriend some one; never so pinched and wretched but he could give of his crust,

and speak a word of compassion. If he had but his flute left, he could give that and make the children happy in the dreary London Court. While he was an under-teacher in a school, he spent all his earnings in treats for the boys. His purse and his heart were everybody's, his friends' as much as his own.

For the last half dozen years of his life, Goldsmith was in receipt of a pretty large income from the booksellers, his patrons. Had he lived but a few years more, his public fame would have been as great as his private reputation, and he might have enjoyed a part of that esteem which his country has paid to the vivid and versatile genius who has touched on almost every subject of literature, and touched nothing that he did not adorn.

In the strength of his age, and the dawn of his reputation, having for patrons and friends the most illustrious literary men of his time, fame and prosperity might have been in store for Goldsmith, had fate so willed it. I say prosperity rather than competence, for it is probable that no sum could have put order into his affairs or sufficed for his habits.

As has been the case with many another good fellow of his nation, his life was tracked and his substance wasted by hungry beggars and lazy dependents. If they came at a lucky time, — and be sure they knew his affairs better than he did himself, and watched his pay-day-he gave them of his money; if they begged on empty-purse-days, he gave them his promissory bills, or took them to a house where he had credit.

Staggering under a load of debt and labor, tracked by reproachful creditors, running from a