Past his fiftieth year, he estimated the value of his existence in the threefold division of mind, body, and estate:

'The first and indispensable requisite of happiness is a clear conscience, unsullied by the reproach or remembrance of an unworthy action......I am endowed with a cheerful temper, a moderate sensibility, and a natural disposition to repose rather than to activity; some mischievous appetites and habits have perhaps been corrected by philosophy or time. The love of study, a passion which derives fresh vigor from enjoyment, supplies each day, each hour, with a perpetual source of independent and rational pleasure; and I am not sensible of any decay of the mental faculties.

Since I have escaped from the long perils of my childhood, the serious advice of a physician has seldom been requisite......

'I am indeed rich, since my income is superior to my expense, and my expense is equal to my wishes. My friend Lord Sheffield has kindly relieved me from the cares to which my taste and temper are most adverse: shall I add that, since the failure of my first wishes, I have never entertained any serious thoughts of a matrimonial connection?'

This solitude, however, at first a necessity, then a pleasure, seems not to have been borne without repining:

'I feel, and shall continue to feel, that domestic solitude, however it may be alleviated by the world, by study, and even by friendship, is a comfortless state, which will grow more painful as I descend in the vale of years.'

Afterwards he writes to a friend :

'Your visit has only served to remind me that man, however amused and occupied in his closet, was not made to live alone'

Influence. Great intellects are both representative and creative; mirroring the tendencies of their own time, they also modify them, spontaneously evolving events and ideas which, passing into the life of the world, become the originating cause of subsequent developments. Designedly or not, their energies bear us on. As a conspicuous factor in the sceptical movement of the eighteenth century, Gibbon has aided the march of the English mind. Scepticism, which to the ignorant is an abomination, is yet the necessary antecedent of progress. Intellectual content means intellectual stagnation. Without doubt, there would be no investigation; without investigation, no knowledge; without knowledge, no progress. To scepticism is due that spirit of inquiry which during the last two centuries has encroached on every possible subject. To it we owe, primarily, the correction of the three fundamental errors of the past,intolerance in religion, credulty in science, and despotism in politics. To examine the basis on which its opinions are built, is the duty of every thoughtful mind. When the Apostle says 'Prove all things,' he implicitly commands us to doubt all things. 'He,' says Bacon, 'who would be a philosopher, must commence by repudiating belief." Absolute certainty would be the paralysis of study. Unless we feel the darkness, we do not seek the light. True, scepticism forms temporarily a crisis—a period of mental distress; but it is still the fire by which the gold must be purged before it can leave its dross in the pot of the refiner. As a permanent state

of mind, nothing could be more calamitous. It is a mean, not an end. We are to doubt, that we may rationally believe,-doubt, not from fancy, or from the very wish to doubt, but from prudence, and through penetration of mind,-doubt that we may reach the the divine realities beyond the Slough of Despond and the Valley of Death.

Thus it is chiefly in this indirect way, as if blindly executing a trust, that Gibbon has added to the stature of the human tree. He has left no track of benevolence. He serves us, not by holy thoughts, which invite us to resist evil and subdue the world, but by the reflective power which compels us to ask whether things are as they are commonly supposed. Perhaps he has helped us also by his method. At least, he has furnished a new idea in the art of reading. We ought, he says, not to attend to the order of our books so much as of our thoughts.

'The perusal of a particular work gives birth perhaps to ideas unconnected with the subject it treats; I pursue these ideas, and quit my proposed plan of reading.'

Thus, in the midst of Homer he read Longinus; a chapter of Longinus led to an epistle of Pliny; and he followed the train of his ideas in Burke's Inquiry Concerning the Sublime and Beautiful. He offers an important advice to a writer engaged on a particulur subject:

'I suspended my perusal of any new book on the subject till I had reviewed all that I knew, or believed, or had thought on it, that I might be qualified to discern how much the authors added to my original stock.'

Of all our popular writers, he was the most experienced reader; and his precepts, as well as example, are valuable hints to students:

'Let us read with method, and propose to ourselves an end to which all our studies may point. Detached parcels of knowledge can not form a whole...

While we propose an end in our reading, let not this end be too remote; and when once we have attained it let our attention be directed to a different subject. Inconstancy weakens the understanding; a long and exclusive application to a single objecì, hardens and contracts it . . . .

To read with attention, exactly to define the expressions of our author, never to admit a conclusion without comprehending its reason, often to pause, reflect, aud interrogate ourselves; these are so many advices which it is easy to give, but difficult to follow.'

Yet we must deplore the bias of his mind which disqualified him to translate our human nature. During fifteen centuries he has Gibbonized it, denying to it any pure and exalted experience which could not be verified by his own. That he was honest in his researches does not prove that we can see in his pages the real truth of persons and events. He who has not an aspiring reverence, an anxiety of conscience—who does not realize the thirst of men for the Unknown-who can not sympathize with moral enthusiasm and trembling delicacy—who feels not a warm desire to be a free and helpful man, a lover and doer of good,—can render life and character but partially. Suppressing the religious instinct, he ties the right

arm of human strength and puts out the right eye of human light. He is himself a fraction, however great his intellect. Without this commanding affection, his soul may breathe this or that rich tone, but it is a lyre without its chief string—an organ with its central octave dumb.

GOLDSMITH.

Where eminent talent is united to spotless virtue, we are awed and dazzled into admiration, but our admiration is apt to be cold and reverential; while there is something in the harmless infirmities of a good and great, but erring individual, that pleads touchingly to our nature; and we turn more kindly towards the object of our idolatry, when we find that, like ourselves, he is mortal and is frail.—Irving.

Biography. Born in the small village of Pallas, Ireland, 1728. His father was a clergyman, whose whole income did not exceed forty pounds. 'And passing rich with forty pounds a year.'

Tradition says that his birthplace, a half rustic mansion in a lonely part of the country, was haunted ground. In after years, when it had fallen into decay, fairies held in it their midnight revels. Vain were the attempts to repair it. A huge goblin bestrode the house every evening, and with an immense pair of jack-boots kicked to pieces all the work of the preceding day.

About two years after his birth, his father removed to the pretty hamlet of Lissoy, which became the little world of his boyhood. It was the pride and boast of a good old motherly dame wheu ninety years of age, that she taught Goldsmith his letters. At six he passed into the hands of the village schoolmaster, an old soldier, who, when he ought to have been teaching his pupils their lessons, told them marvelous stories of his wanderings in foreign lands, tales of ghosts and pirates. The fruit of this tuition was an unconquerable passion for everything that savored of romance, fable, and adventure. His motley preceptor had also a disposition to dabble in poetry, and, before he was eight years old, Goldsmith had contracted a habit of scribbling verses on scraps of paper. A few of these were conveyed to his mother, who read them with a mother's delight, and saw at once that her son was a poet. A trifling incident soon induced a general concurrence in this opinion. While executing a hornpipe at an evening's social, the musician, making merry at his rather ludicrous figure, dubbed him his little Æsop. Nettled by the jest, he stopped short, and exclaimed:

'Our herald hath proclaimed this saying,
See Æsop dancing and his monkey playing.'

This was thought wonderful for a boy of nine years, and it was resolved to give him an education suitable to his talents, several of the relatives agreeing to contribute towards the expense.

To prepare him for the university, he was transferred to schools of a higher order, where he was the leader of all boyish sports, and was foremost in all mischievous pranks. In his seventeenth year he entered Trinity College, Dublin, as a sizer; * lodging in one of the top rooms, where it is said his name may still be seen, scratched by himself upon a pane of glass. The sense of his inferior station was very annoying, and he became at times moody and despondent. He was known, however, as a boon companion, a lover of convivial pleasures. Fond of classics, he had, naturally, a positive aversion to mathematics, ethics, and logic. The death of his father, in 1747, put him to great straits. In the intervals between occasional remittances from friends at home, he would borrow from his college associates; and when these supplies had failed, he would pawn his books. Again he would scribble a street-ballad, dispose of it for five shillings, then stroll privately through the streets at night to hear it sung, listening to the comments and criticisms of bystanders. His first distinction was the winning of a minor prize, amounting to but thirty shillings. This influx of success and wealth proved too much. He forthwith gave a supper and a dance at his chamber, in direct violation of rules. The sound of the unhallowed fiddle reached the ears of his tutor, who rushed to the scene of festivity, chastised the 'father of the feast,' and turned the astonished guests, male and female, out of doors. Unable to endure this humiliation, the next day he sallied forth upon life, resolved to bury his disgrace in some foreign land. For three whole days he subsisted on a shilling, then parted with some of the clothes from his back; then, starved into submission, as well as soothed by the gentle counsel of his brother, retraced his steps to the university. Nearly two years later he received his degree, and gladly took his final leave.

Returning to Lissoy, he spent two years idly among his relatives, most of whom shook their heads and shrugged their shoulders when they spoke of him. Ostensibly a period of probation for the clerical office, it was in reality a period of miscellaneous reading, of rural sports and careless enjoyments, on which he was wont to look back as one of the few sunny spots of his cloudy life. On the solemn occasion of his ordination, he presented himself luminously arrayed in scarlet breeches! The bishop rejected him-whether on account of deficient preparation, reports of irregularities, or his gay colors, is not determined.

A year's tutoring put him in possession of what seemed a fabulous

* A student of this class was taught and boarded gratuitously; and, in return for these advantages, was expected to be diligent, and to make himself useful in a variety of ways, several of which were derogatory and menial.

sum of money; and immediately procuring a good horse, without a word to his friends, with thirty pounds in his pocket, he made a second sally in quest of adventures, but came back, after the lapse of several weeks, forlorn as the prodigal son, mounted on a sorry creature, which he had named Fiddle-back.

It was then decided that he should be sent to London for the study of law. The necessary funds were advanced by his uncle, but he was beguiled into a gamblinghouse, and lost the whole amount before quitting Dublin.

A second contribution was raised, and in the autumn of 1752 he proceeded to Edinburgh, where he spent two winters in the stndy of medicine. Setting out, as usual, with the best intentions, he soon fell into convivial and thoughtless habits. He now prepared to finish his medical studies on the Continent, though his true motive was probably his long-cherished desire to see foreign parts. Accordingly he is next found at Leyden, where he was put to many a shift to meet his expenses. He thence desired to proceed to Paris, and was furnished by a fellow-student with money for the journey,-all of which he spent for tulips, having unluckily rambled into the garden of a florist just before his departure. Too proud to recede, too shamefaced to make another appeal to his friend, he set out to make the tour of Europe on foot, with but one spare shirt, a flute, and a guinea:

'I had some knowledge of music, with a tolerable voice; I now turned what was once my amusement into a present means of subsistence. I passed among the harmless peasants of Flanders, and among such of the French as were poor enough to be very merry, for I ever found them sprightly in proportion to their wants. Whenever I approached a peasant's house towards nightfall, I played one of my merriest tunes, and that procured me not only a lodging, but subsistence for the next day; but in truth I must own, whenever I attempted to entertain persons of a higher rank, they always thought my performance odious and never made me any return for my endeavors to please them.**

His ramblings took him into Germany, Switzerland, France and Italy. At Padua, where he remained some months, he is said to have taken his medical degree. After two years of pilgrimage, 'pursuing novelty', as he said, 'and losing content,' he reached England in 1756. penniless and without any definite plan of action, yet buoyed up by visions of hope and fame. In the gloomy month of February we find him, a houseless stranger, adrift in the streets of London at night. Long afterwards he startled a polite circle by humorously dating an anecdote from the time he 'lived among the beggars of Axe Lane.' After acting as general drudge to a chemist, he commenced the practice of medicine, in a small way, among the poor. There he might have been seen, at one

*The 'Philosophic Vagabond' in the Vicar of Wakefield.