are appointed to man. All these troubles should, by demonstrating the real poverty of the earth, teach your thoughts to soar in quest of purer bliss. Yet, alas, these very things often make men lean to the world with stronger desire, and throw themselves with more intensity of devotion into its arms. Poor deluded creatures! So does Satan deceive you, and chain your souls in the hardest bondage, and so unless a great revolution speedily take place in your hearts and characters you must be lost for ever.

The Nature of Man as Spiritual, Immortal, and Responsible, will be the most frequent topic of this department: though sometimes we shall introduce MISCELLANEOUS Subjects.

ON SOME OF THE WRITINGS OF OLIVER

GOLDSMITH.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH has achieved fame as a prose writer and as a poet. He has for his readers both the young and the old. The grave and the gay, the learned and the illiterate, all find something in his pages suited to their varied tastes and requirements. The names of many learned men might be mentioned who have given expression, in their writ ings or recorded conversations, to the pleasure which his works have yielded them. Nor them alone: there are few persons at all acquainted with our national literature, who are not ready to bear witness to their charms; who would not gladly confess how great has been the measure of delight they have occasioned them; or, who can deny how entirely they were led captive by them on a first perusal; how again and again recourse has been had to their pages; and how on each fresh perusal, their love for the man has increased with their admiration of the author. One cause of Goldsmith's universal popularity is his entire truthfulness to nature. All his pictures and they are not a few-are faithful living transcripts of originals. Another cause is, as one of his biographers observes, because "few have so eminently possessed the magic gift of identifying themselves with their writings. We read Goldsmith's character in every page he has written; and grow into familiar intimacy with him as we read."

Our intention on the present occasion is to notice only a portion of his works:-"The Citizen of the World," and "The Vicar of Wakefield;" "The Traveller," and "The Deserted Village;" with a few passing remarks on his comedies. His essays, compilations, and biographers we shall not refer too.

His "Chinese Letters," which were subsequently modified into "The Citizen of the World," first appeared in a newspaper, called The Public Ledger, and were commenced in 1760. In the whole there are one hundred and twenty-three letters, most of which are pretendedly written by a Chinese Philosopher, one Lieu Chi Altangi, who is represented to have

overcome the prejudices of his countrymen, and visited the land of barbarians, so that by experience he might "get wisdom." In this assumed character, Goldsmith remarks pleasantly and not unfrequently with pointed force on the follies, foibles, and characteristic traits of the English people; and whimsically enough holds them up for ridicule, contempt, and amend

ment.

Amongst other things he points out the silliness of many customs which were greatly in vogue in his day; some of which are equally so in

ours:

"To appear wise," says he, "nothing more is requisite here than for a man to borrow hair from the heads of all his neighbours, and clap it like a brush on his own." There are others, who "have their hair cut close to the crown; and then with a composition of meal and hog's lard covers the whole in such a manner as to make it impossible to distinguish whether the patient wears a cap or a plaster; but to make the picture more perfectly striking, conceive the tail of some beast-a greyhound's tail or a pig's for instance-appended to the back of his head, reaching down to that place where tails in other animals usually begin." Thus equipped, "the fine gentleman" "is qualified to make love, and hopes for success more from the powder on the outside of his head than the sentiments within.

"Yet when I consider," he continues, "what sort of a creature the 'fine lady' is, to whom he is supposed to pay his addresses, it is not strange to find him thus equipped in order to please. She is herself every whit as fond of powder and tails and hog's lard as he."

Indeed the ladies are represented as being so peculiar in their tastes, that "they like to have the face of various colours as among the Tartars of Koreki, frequently sticking on with spittle little black patches on every part of it except the tip of the nose." Of one of these faces he promises to send his friend a map as soon as he has prepared one.

The fashion of having strangely-incongruous signs to our taverns and public-houses is thus ridiculed:

"The houses borrow very few ornaments from architecture; their chief decoration seems to be a paltry piece of painting, hung out at their doors or windows,-at once a proof of their indigence and vanity: their vanity in each having one of those pictures exposed to public view; and their indigence in being unable to get them better painted. In this respect the fancy of their painters is also deplorable. Could you believe it? I have seen five black lions and three blue boars in less than the circuit of half-a-mile; and yet you know that animals of these colours are no where to be met with except in the wild imaginations of Europe."

The subjects upon which his wit and humour, his gentle yet telling satire are exercised, are many and various. Our innumerable laws and the intricasies and long-windedness of our Courts of Justice, are not forgotten :

"The laws of England" he compares "to the books of the Sybils; they

are held in great veneration, but seldom read, or seldomer understood: even those who pretend to be their guardians dispute the meaning of many of them, and confess their ignorance of others." And again," to em barrass justice by a multiplicity of laws, or to hazard it by too great a confidence in our judges, are the opposite rocks on which legislative wis dom has even split: in one case the client resembles the Emperor, who is said to have been suffocated by the bed-clothes which were only designed to keep him warm; in the other, to that town which let the enemy take possession of its walls, in order to show the world how little they de pended upon ought but courage."

The fondness of the English to witness sights, especially when monsters formed the staple of the exhibition. The abuse of the Church patronaga system, by means of which "clergymen are appointed to preside over temples they never visit; and while they receive all the money are content with letting others do all the work." The custom of writing laudatory epitaphs, which in the graveyard represent all men as equally remarkable for being the most sincere Christians, the most benevolent neighbours, and the honestest men of their time." The peculiarities of an English election, "in which eating makes so grand an ingredient." These with many others are topics discussed in "The Citizen of the World."

Of all Goldsmith's works, "The Vicar of Wakefield" has attained the widest and most enduring popularity. It is our first genuine novel of domestic life. In its portrayal of those pure and hallowed feelings which have an abiding place round the home of a truly Christian man, it has undoubtedly been the instrument of much good. It makes us acquainted with the life and trials of one, who united "in himself the three greatest characters upon earth,"-" the priest, the husbandman, and the father of a family." He is introduced to us as possessed of affluence and rural ease; surrounded by a loving wife and children, the acquaintanceship of kind neighbours, and all else that can render happy man's life here below. Suddenly his riches are lost; and he and his family are reduced to comparative poverty. Yet he does not repine. He seeks in humbler circumstances that peace with which all may be made happy. He is tried with a multitude of trials, quickly succeeding each other, like as in the olden day, Job was tried. His daughter is stolen from him; his house is consumed by fire; he is reduced to beggary and unjustly sent to goal; and yet never is a murmur heard arising from his lips: but even cheerful himself in the belief that "all is for the very best,"—and that there is no situation, however wretched, but has some sort of comfort attending it;he tried to make others cheerful too: an attempt in which, as the readers of his story know, he was thoroughly successful.

mory

We read the account of his trials again and again, and "bless the meof an author who contrives so even to reconcile us to human nature." Each fresh perusal makes us happier and more charitable. The chord of human sympathy, which runs throughout the book, from the first chapter to the last, is continued in our breast and seems to influence our entire nature. An inexpressible something which has found its way to our hearts

Sir Walter Scott.

has fortified us against the trials and the troubles of the day. We have learned the lesson of patience, hope, and resignation; and have gained determination to "practice what we know." We do not stay, as we read, to notice the plot of the story,-which in many parts is unlikely and unreal; we are impelled onwards by an unseen power, as though the result had some personal interest for us. And when we have at last read the concluding sentence, how much have we learned and gained! We have seen the patient suffering of this good vicar; have watched him as heavily burdened with trials, he practiced unmurmering resignation; and found the secret of it all to be his trust in God. We have learned, that though his life has been darkened by sorrow, the shadow was occasioned by the sun of happiness which eventually shed its light across his path, and warmed the most distant recesses of his inward self;-and the story has taught us, that there is good to be done in every position-even the humblest; that in no situation of life ought we to repine,-for whatever it is, we may make it subservient to our being, men-men in the truest and highest sense; that each has "a work to do"-little it may be, but yet a work; and that, in the providential arrangement of things, though the wicked may seem to prevail, that the righteous have the real, the enduring victory. It teaches us not to rail against the weaknesses and foibles of our broken worm, but to look on them with the eye of pity;-it would not, however, let any thing hurtful remain unmended. The bad it would have good, and the good better.

Goldsmith saw many evils, whose roots had sunk deep below the surface of our social system. One of these was the penal laws. They were to him a matter of frequent and earnest consideration. He saw in them one of the curses of humanity. The principle of love was in them no where to be found. They were throughout blackened by the direst revenge. But he would have

He would not punish to gratify a passion but to reform. In the "Vicar of Wakefield" he gives, in a picture of the prison, as it was and as it might be. And he indicates a plan-which having since been weighed in the balance of experience he has not been found wanting, whereby the change might be produced.

It will be remembered how the Vicar is thrown into goal by his rascally landlord. While there he is horrified by the lewdness and brutality of its inmates. He went back into his cell and pondered "upon the strange infatuation of wretches, who, finding all mankind in open arms against them, were labouring to make themselves a future and tremendous enemy also."*

Their insensibility excited his highest compassion. It appeared a duty incumbent upon him to attempt their reclamation. He resolved, therefore, once more to return to them, and in spite of their contempt, to give his advice and conquer them by perseverance. At first he meets with ridicule; but, nothing daunted he holds on his way, upheld by the considera

• Vide chaps. xxvi, and xxvii.