living, worth about £200 à-year, near the village of Lissoy, in Westmeath County, where the boy passed his youth and received his preparatory instruction. In his seventeenth year Oliver went up to Trinity College, Dublin, as a sizar. He was quartered, not alone, in a garret, on the window of which his name, scrawled by himself, is still read with interest. He neglected the studies of the place, stood low at the examinations, and led a life divided between squalid distress and squalid dissipation. His father died, leaving a mere pittance. Oliver obtained his bachelor's degree, and left the university. He was now in his twentyfirst year; it was necessary that he should do something; and his education seemed to have fitted him to do nothing of moment. He tried five or six pro fessions, in turn, without success. He went to Edinburgh in his twenty-fourth year, where he passed eighteen months in nominal attendance on lectures, and picked up some superficial information about chemistry and natural history. Thence he went to Leyden, still pretending to study physic. He left that celebrated university in his twenty-seventh year, without a degree, and with no property but his clothes and his flute. His flute, however, proved a useful friend. He rambled on foot through Flanders, France, and Switzerland, playing tunes which everywhere set the peasantry dancing, and which often procured for him a supper and a bed. In 1756 the wanderer landed at Dover, England, without a shilling, without a friend, and without a calling. After several expedients had failed, the unlucky adventurer, at thirty, took a garret in a miserable court in London, and sat down to the lowest drudgery of literature. In the succeeding six years he produced articles for reviews, magazines, and newspapers; chil dren's books; “An Inquiry into the State of Polite Learning in Europe," a "Life of Beau Nash," an excellent work of its kind; a superficial, but very readable "History of England;" and "Sketches of London Society." All these works were anonymous; but some of them were well known to be Goldsmith's. He gradually rose in the estimation of the booksellers, and became a popular writer. He took chambers in the more civilized region of the Inns of Court, and became intimate with Johnson, Reynolds, Burke, and other eminent men. In 1764 he published a poem, entitled "The Traveler." It was the first work to which he put his name; and it at once raised him to the rank of a legitimate English classic. Its execution, though deserving of much praise, is far inferior to the design. No philosophic poem, ancient or modern, has a plan so noble, and at the same time so simple. Soon after his novel, the "Vicar of Wakefield," appeared, and rapidly obtained a popularity which is likely to last as long as our language. This was followed by a dramatic piece, entitled the "Good-natured Man." It was acted at Covent Garden in 1768, but was coldly received. The author, however, cleared by his benefit nights, and by the sale of the copyright, no less than £500. In 1770 appeared the "Deserted Village." In diction and versification, this celebrated poem is fully equal, perhaps superior, to "The Traveler." In 1773, Goldsmith tried his chance at Covent Garden with "She Stoops to Conquer," an incomparable farce in five acts, which met with unpreecdented success. While writing the "Deserted Village," and "She Stoops to Conquer," he compiled, for the use of schools, a "History of Rome," by which he made £300; a "History of England," by which he made £600; a "History of Greece," for which he received £250; and a "Natural History," for which the booksellers covenanted to pay him 800 guineas. He produced these works by selecting, abridging, and translating into his own clear, pure, and flowing language, what he found in books well known to the world, but too bulky or too dry for boys and girls. He was a great, perhaps an unequaled master of the arts of selection and condensation. He died on the 4th of April, 1774, in his forty. sixth year. SECTION IX. I. 50. THE POWER OF ART. WHEN, from the sacred garden driven, Man fled before his Maker's wrath, An angel left her place in heaven, And crossed the wanderer's sunlèss path. 'Twas Art! sweet Art!-new radiance broke Where her light foot flew o'er the ground; And thus with seraph voice she spoke,"The curse a blessing shall be found." 2. She led him through the tracklèss wild, Where noontide sunbeams never blazed; The thistle shrank, the harvest smiled, And nature gladdened as she gazed. Earth's thousand tribes of living things, At Art's command to him are given ; The village grows, the city springs, And point their spires of faith to heaven. 3. He rends the oak, and bids it ride, To guard the shōres its beauty graced; He bids the mortal poison heal; And leaps triumphant o'er the grave. 4. He plucks the pearls that stud the deep, He breaks the stubborn marble's sleep, 5. In fields of air he writes his name, He reads the stars, and grasps the flame He moves in greatness and in grace; SPRAGUE CHARLES SPRAGUE was born in Boston, on the 26th day of October, 1791. He was educated in the schools of his native city, which he left at an early period to acquire a practical knowledge of trade. At twenty-one years of age, he commenced the business of merchant on his own account, and continued in it until 1820, when he was elected cashier of the Globe Bank. He is still connected with that institution. In this period he has found leisure to study the works of the greatest authors, particularly those of the masters of English poetry, and to write the admirable poems on which is based his own reputation. Mr. Sprague's first productions that attracted much attention, were a series of brilliant prologues, the first of which was written for the Park Theater, in New York, in 1821. " 'Shakspeare Ode," delivered in Boston Theater, in 1823, at the exhibition of a pageant in honor of Shakspeare, is one of the most vigorous and exquisite lyrics in the English language. 'Curiosity," the longest and best of his poems, was delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, in August, 1829. Several of his short poems evince great skill in the use of language, and show him to be a master of the poetic art. THER II. 51. WORK. HERE is a perennial' nobleness, and even sacredness, in work. Were he never so benighted, forgetful of his high calling, there is always hope in a man that actually and earnestly works; in idleness alone is there perpetual despair. Work, never so Mammonish,' mean, is in communication with Nature: the real desire to get work done will itself lead one more and more to truth, to Nature's appointments and regulations which are truth. 2. Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness. He has a work, a life-purpose; he has found it, and will follow it. How, as a free flowing channel, dug and torn by noble force through the sour mud-swamp of one's existcnce, like an ever-deepening river there, it runs and flows!draining off the sour festering water gradually from the root of the remotest grass blade; making, instead of pestilential swamp, a green fruitful meadow with its clear flowing stream. How 'Per ĕn' ni al, literally, through or beyond a year; hence, enduring; lasing perpetually. * Măm mon ish, relating to Mammon, the Syrian god of riches; mercenary, or procured by money. ge but what thou hast got by working: the rest othesis' of knowledge; a thing to be argued of ng floating in the clouds in endlèss logic vor'ticès' d fix it. "Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended n all preached gospels3 was this unpreached, inneradicable,* for-ever-enduring gospel: work, and ell-being. Man, Son of Earth and Heaven, lies the innermost heart of thee, a spirit of active for work:-and burns like a painfully smoldering e no rest till thou unfold it, till thou write it down facts around thee! What is immethodic, waste, ze methodic, regulated, arable,' obedient and proe. Wheresoever thou findèst disorder, there is my: attack him swiftly, subdue him; make order bject not of chaos, but of intelligence, divinity, e thistle that grows in thy path, dig it out that a grass, a drop of nourishing milk, may grow there waste cotton-shrub, gather its waste white down, t; that, in place of idle litter, there may be folded naked skin of man be covered. s, a proposition or for the purpose of position. whirlpools; whirl ogical vortices are ents, or arguments many windings as to -d news, hence the relate the history are called gospels; the great truths of Christianity. 'In`e răd ́ica ble, that can not be uprooted or destroyed. "Be něf i cent, doing good; abounding in acts of goodness; char itable. • * Im`me thŏd ic, having no method; without systematic arrangement, order, or regularity. "Ar'a ble, fit for tillage or plow. ing; plowed; productive. ched gospels' was this unpredi le, 'for-ever-enduring gospel: Man, Son of Earth and He ost heart of thee, a spirit of -and burns like a painfully s thou unfold it, till thou writer I thee! What is immethodic' regulated, arable," obedienti ever thou findest disorder, the make nim swiftly, subdue him; mal chaos, but of intelligence, grows in thy path, dig it out of nourishing milk, may grow hrub, gather its waste white i ce of idle litter, there may be man be covered. f r the great truths of Christiani . "Im'method' ic, having no medi od; without systematic arrangeme order, or regularity. 7 Ar'a ble, fit for tillage or pl ng; plowed; productive. dry-do not these speak to thee what deep death-kingdoms, the stars in their space and all time, proclaim it to thee nition. Thou, too, if ever man shoul called to-day; for the night cometh, w 6. All truc work is sacred; in all tr hand-labor, there is something of div the earth, has its summit in heaven. up from that to sweat of the brain, sv includes all Kepler' calculations, New ences, all spoken epics, all acted her that" agony of bloody sweat," which al O brother, if this is not "worship," th for worship; for this is the noblest th God's sky. 7. Who art thou that complainèst o plain not. Look up, my wearied brot men there, in God's eternity; surviving ing sacred band of the immortals, ce empire of mind. Even in the weak 1 vive so long, as saints, as heroes, as go 'Sinai, a mountain of Arabia Petræa, famous in Scripture. Height above the sea, 7,497 feet. John Kepler, a distinguished mathematician and astronomer, was born at Wiel, in Wirtemberg, on the 21st of December, 1571, and died November 5th, o. s., 1631. was bo Decem tions h moder discov of ligh gravita which 'Sir Isaac Newton, the greatest exists. of philosophers and mathematicians, theory |