Here, while the courtier glitters in brocade, 4. Sure scenes like these no troubles e'er annoy! Are these thy serious thoughts?-Ah! turn thine eyes Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorn; Near her betrayer's door she lays her head, And, pinched with cold, and shrinking from the shower, With heavy heart deplores that luckless hour, When idly first, ambitious of the town, She left her wheel and robes of country brown. 5. Do thine, sweet Auburn, thine, the loveliest train, Those matted woods where birds forget to sing, Those poisonous fields with rank luxuriance crowned, Where crouching tigers wait their hapless prey, Mingling the ravaged landscape with the skies. Hung round the bowers, and fondly looked their last, With louder plaints the mother spoke her woes, 8. Oh, Luxury! thou cursed by Heaven's decree, At every draught more large and large they grow, 9. E'en now the devasta'tion is begun, And half the business of destruction done; Down where yon anchoring vessel spreads the sail, Pass from the shore, and darken all the strand. 10. And thou, sweet Poëtry! thou loveliest maid, As rocks resist the billows and the sky. GOLDSMITH. OLIVER GOLDSMITH, one of the most pleasing English writers of the eighteenth century, was born at Pallas, Ireland, in November, 1728. He was of a Protestant and Saxon family which had long been settled in Ireland. At the time of Oliver's birth, his father with difficulty supported his family on what he could earn, partly as a curate and partly as a farmer. Soon after, he was presented with a living, worth about £200 a-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 professions, 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; children'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 unprecedented 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. W SECTION IX. I. 50. THE POWER OF ART. HEN, 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 trackless 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 ; Fire bears his banner on the wave; 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, |