and distinction are altogether lost; till disputants grow warm, moderator is unheard, audience take part in the debate, and the whole hall buzzes with erroneous philosophy. Passing into Switzerland, he saw Schaffhausen frozen quite across, and the water standing in columns where the cataract had formerly fallen. His Animated Nature, in which this is noticed, contains also masterly descriptions, from his own experience, of the wonders that present themselves to the traveller over lofty mountains ; and he adds that nothing can be finer or more exact than Mr. Pope's description of a traveller straining up the Alps.' Geneva was his resting-place in Switzerland; but he visited Basle and Berne; ate a savoury' dinner on the top of the Alps; flushed woodcocks on Mount Jura; wondered to see the sheep in the valleys, as he had read of them in the old pastoral poets, following the sound of the shepherd's pipe of reed; and, poet himself at last, sent off to his brother Henry eighty lines of verse, which were afterwards published in the Traveller.

Eternal blessings crown my earliest friend,
And round his dwelling guardian saints attend;
Blest be that spot, where cheerful guests retire
To pause from toil, and trim their evening fire;
Blest that abode, where want and pain repair,
And every stranger finds a ready chair;
Blest be those feasts with simple plenty crown'd,
Where all the ruddy family around
Laugh at the jests or pranks that never fail,

Or sigh with pity at some mournful tale;

Or press the bashful stranger to his food,

And learn the luxury of doing good.

Remembering his brother's humble kindly life, he had set in pleasant contrast before him the weak luxuriance of Italy, and the sturdy enjoyment of the rude Swiss home.

My soul, turn from them; turn we to survey
Where rougher climes a nobler race display,
Where the bleak Swiss their stormy mansion tread,
And force a churlish soil for scanty bread:
No product here the barren hills afford,
But man and steel, the soldier and his sword;
No vernal blooms their torpid rocks array,
But winter lingering chills the lap of May. . .
Yet still, even here, Content can spread a charm,
Redress the clime, and all its rage disarm.

Though poor the peasant's hut, his feast though small,
He sees his little lot the lot of all;

Sees no contiguous palace rear its head

To shame the meanness of his humble shed. . .
Cheerful at morn, he wakes from short repose,
Breathes the keen air and carols as he goes...
At night returning, every labour sped,
He sits him down the monarch of a shed;
Smiles by his cheerful fire, and round surveys
His children's looks, that brighten at the blaze;
While his loved partner, boastful of her hoard,
Displays her cleanly platter on the board:
And haply, too, some pilgrim, thither led,
With many a tale repays the nightly bed.
Thus every good his native wilds impart,
Imprints the patriot passion on his heart;
And e'en those ills that round his mansion rise
Enhance the bliss his scanty fund supplies.
Dear is that shed to which his soul conforms,
And dear that hill which lifts him to the storms;
And as a child, when scaring sounds molest,
Clings close and closer to the mother's breast,
So the loud torrent, and the whirlwind's roar,
But bind him to his native mountains more.

Descending into Piedmont he observed the floating beehouses of which he speaks so pleasantly in the Animated Nature. After this, proofs of his having seen Florence, Verona, Mantua, and Milan, are apparent; and in Carinthia the incident occurred with which his famous couplet has too hastily reproached a people, when, sinking with fatigue, after a long day's toilsome walk, he was turned from a peasant's hut at which he implored a lodging. At Padua he is supposed to have stayed some little time; and here, it has been asserted, though in this case also the official records are lost, he received his degree. Here, or at Louvain, or at some other of these foreign universities where he always boasted himself hero in the disputations to which his Philosophic Vagabond refers, there can hardly be a question that the degree, a very simple and accessible matter at any of them, was actually conferred. Of his having also taken a somewhat close survey of those countless academic institutions of Italy, in the midst of which Italian learning at this time withered, evidence is not wanting; and he always thoroughly discriminated the character of that country and its people.

But small the bliss that sense alone bestows,
And sensual bliss is all the nation knows.
In florid beauty groves and fields appear,

Man seems the only growth that dwindles here.

It is a hard struggle to return to England; but his steps are now bent that way. My skill in music,' says the Vagabond, could avail me nothing in Italy, where

'every peasant was a better musician than I: but by this 'time I had acquired another talent which answered my 'purpose as well, and this was a skill in disputation. In 'all the foreign universities and convents there are, upon 'certain days, philosophical theses maintained against every 'adventitious disputant; for which, if the champion opposes 'with any dexterity, he can claim a gratuity in money, a dinner, and a bed for one night. In this manner, then, 'I fought my way towards England; walked along from 'city to city; examined mankind more nearly; and, if I may so express it, saw both sides of the picture.' It was on the 1st of February, 1756, that Oliver Goldsmith stepped upon the shore at Dover, and stood again among his countrymen.

6

Stern o'er each bosom Reason holds her state

With daring aims irregularly great;

Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,

I see the lords of human kind pass by!

The comfort of seeing it must have been about all the comfort. At this moment, there is little doubt, he had not a single farthing in his pocket; and from the Lords of Human Kind it was much more difficult to get one, than from the careless good-humoured peasants of France or Flanders. In the struggle of ten days or a fortnight which it took him to get to London, there is reason to suspect that he attempted a comic performance in a country barn; and, at one of the towns he passed, had implored to be hired in an apothecary's shop. In the middle of

February he was wandering without friend or acquaintance, without the knowledge or comfort of even one kind face, in the lonely, terrible, LONDON Streets.

He thought he might find employment as an usher; and there is a dark uncertain kind of story, of his getting a bare subsistence this way for some few months, under a feigned name: which had involved him in a worse distress but for the judicious silence of the Dublin Doctor (Radcliffe), to whom he had been suddenly called on to apply for a character, and whose good-humoured acquiescence in his private appeal saved him from suspicion of imposture.