In vain; where'er they fled, the fates pursued.
Others, with hopes more specious, crossed the main,
To seek protection 'neath far-distant skies,

But none they found. It seemed the general air,
From pole to pole, from Atlas to the east,
Was then at enmity with English blood;
For, but the race of England, all were safe
In foreign climes; nor did this fury taste
The foreign blood which England then contained,
Where should they fly? The circumambient heaven
Involved them still, and every breeze was bane.
Where find relief? The salutary art

Was mute, and, startled at the new disease,

In fearful whispers hopeless omens gave.

To Heaven with suppliant rites they sent their prayers;
Heaven heard them not. Of every hope deprived,
Fatigued with vain resources, and subdued

With woes resistless, and enfeebling fear,
Passive they sunk beneath the mighty blow.
Nothing but lamentable sounds were heard,
Nor aught was seen but ghastly views of death.
Infectious horror ran from face to face,
And pale despair. 'Twas all the business then
To tend the sick, and in their turn to die.
In heaps they fell; and oft the bed, they say,
The sickening, dying, and the dead contained.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH (1728-1774).-One of the most agreeable and general writers and one of the best of the British poets was Oliver Goldsmith. He cared nothing for money, and his life is one which can be read with the greatest interest, for he was not only a man of the highest order of genius, but one

who cared nothing for the morrow and one who had a "heart for any fate." He studied medicine, and, while he made literature his life's work, he frequently practiced his profession. The list of his productions would be long, as many of them were written according to contract for booksellers; they would add nothing to his glory if mentioned. His "Animated Nature" was written to supply the demand which some bookseller had for a work on natural history, and so were many other of his works. His fame, however, if trusted only to his great novel, "The Vicar of Wakefield," and only two of his many poems, "The Deserted Village" and "The Traveller," would be as lasting as the "eternal hills."

The poems of Goldsmith are so familiar that I shall quote only a few:

EXTRACTS FROM THE TRAVELLER."

Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow,
Or by the lazy Scheld, or wandering Po;
Or onward, where the rude Corinthian boor
Against the houseless stranger shuts the door;
Or where Campania's plain forsaken lies,
A weary waste expanding to the skies;
Where'er I roam, whatever realms to see,
My heart untravelled fondly turns to thee;

But me not destined such delights to share,
My prime of life in wandering spent and care;
Impelled with steps unceasing to pursue

Some fleeting good, that mocks me with the view;

That, like the circle bounding earth and skies,
Allures from far, yet, as I follow, flies;
My fortune leads to traverse realms alone,
And find no spot of all the world my own.
Ev'n now, where Alpine solitudes ascend,
I sit me down a pensive hour to spend;
And, placed on high above the storm's career,
Look downward where an hundred realms appear;
Lakes, forests, cities, plains extending wide,
The pomp of kings, the shepherd's humbler pride.
When thus creation's charms around combine,
Amidst the store should thankless pride repine?
Say, should the philosophic mind disdain

That good which makes each humbler bosom vain?
Let school-taught pride dissemble all it can,
These little things are great to little man;

And wiser he, whose sympathetic mind

Exults in all the good of all mankind.

Ye glittering towns, with wealth and splendour crowned,

Ye fields, where summer spreads profusion round;

Ye lakes, whose vessels catch the busy gale;

Ye bending swains, that dress the flowery vale;
For me your tributary stores combine:

Creation's heir, the world, the world is mine!

DR. ERASMUS DARWIN (1731-1802). This gentleman was one of the most distinguished and scholarly physicians of his time. He was a great and ardent lover of nature. He loved and cultivated botany. His home was picturesque and in all respects the abode of a poet. He feared that to publish his poems would injure his practice. A second marriage added $3,000 to his income, and he began

to indulge his poetic desires, and to give to the world those divine thoughts and conceits which fill the reader of his poems with such rapture. The following quotations will serve to give the reader an idea of the beauty and field of his poetical work:

INVOCATION TO THE GODDESS OF BOTANY.

[From the “Botanic Garden.”]

Stay your rude steps! whose throbbing breasts infold
The legion-fiends of glory and of gold!

Stay, whose false lips seductive simpers part,
While cunning nestles in the harlot heart!
For you no dryads dress the roseate bower,
For you no nymphs their sparkling vases pour;
Unmarked by you, light graces swim the green,
And hovering Cupids aim their shafts unseen.

But thou whose mind the well attempered ray
Of taste and virtue lights with purer day;
Whose finer sense the soft vibration owns
With sweet responsive sympathy of tones-
So the fair flower expands its lucid form
To meet the sun, and shuts it to the storm-
For thee my borders nurse the fragrant wreath,
My fountains murmur, and my zephyrs breathe;
Slow slides the painted snail, the gilded fly
Smooths his fine down, to charm thy curious eye;
On twinkling fins my pearly pinions play,
Or win with sinuous train their trackless way;
My plumy pairs, in gay embroidery dressed,
Form with ingenious bill the pensile nest,
To love's sweet notes attune the listening dell,
And Echo sounds her soft symphonious shell.

And if with thee some hapless maid should stray,

Disastrous love companion of her way,
Oh, lead her timid steps to yonder glade,

Whose arching cliffs depending alders shade;

Where, as meek evening wakes her temperate breeze,
And moonbeams glitter through the trembling trees,
The rills that gurgle round shall soothe her ear,
The weeping rocks shall number tear for tear;

There, as sad Philomel, alike forlorn,

Sings to the night from her accustomed thorn
While at sweet intervals each falling note
Sighs with the gale and whispers round the grot,
The sister woe shall calm her aching breast,
And softer slumbers steal her cares to rest.
Winds of the north! restrain your icy gales,
Nor chill the bosom of these happy vales!
Hence in dark heaps, ye gathering clouds, revolve!
Disperse, ye lightnings! and ye mists, dissolve!
Hither, emerging from yon orient skies,
Botanic goddess, lend thy radiant eyes;

O'er these soft scenes assume thy gentle reign,
Pomona, Ceres, Flora in thy train;

O'er the still dawn thy placid smile effuse,
And with thy silver sandals print the dews;
In noon's bright blaze thy vermeil vest unfold,
And wave thy emerald banner starred with gold.
Thus spoke the genius as he stept along,

And bade these lawns to peace and truth belong;
Down the steep slopes he led with modest skill

The willing pathway and the truant rill;

Stretched o'er the marshy vale yon willowy mound,
Where shines the lake amid the tufted ground;

Raised the young woodlands, smoothed the wary green,
And gave to beauty all the quiet scene.

She comes the goddess! Through the whispering air,