untuned and jarring senses which the cruelty of his other daughters had so violently shaken. Let us return to say a word or two about those cruel daughters. These monsters of ingratitude, who had been so false to their old father, could not be expected to prove more faithful to their own husbands. They soon grew tired of paying even the appearance of duty and affection, and in an open way showed they had fixed their loves upon another. It happened that the object of their guilty loves was the same. It was Edmund, a natural son of the late earl of Gloucester, who by his treacheries had succeeded in disinheriting his brother Edgar the lawful heir from his earldom, and by his wicked practices was now earl himself: a wicked man, and a fit object for the love of such wicked creatures as Gonerill and Regan. It falling out about this time that the duke of Cornwall, Regan's husband, died, Regan immediately declared her intention of wedding this earl of Gloucester, which rousing the jealousy of her sister, to whom as well as to Regan this wicked earl had at sundry times professed love, Gonerill found means to make away with her sister by poison: but being detected in her practices, and imprisoned by her husband the duke of Albany, for this deed, and for her guilty passion for the earl which had come to his ears, she in a fit of disappointed love and rage, shortly put an end to her own life. Thus the justice of Heaven at last overtook these wicked daughters.

While the eyes of all men were upon this event, admiring the justice displayed in their deserved deaths, the same eyes were suddenly taken off from this sight to admire at the mysterious ways of the same power in the melancholy fate of the young and virtuous daughter, the lady Cordelia, whose good

deeds did seem to deserve a more fortunate conclusion; but it is an awful truth, that innocence and piety are not always successful in this world. The forces which Gonerill and Regan had sent out under the command of the bad earl of Gloucester were victorious, and Cordelia by the practices of this wicked earl, who did not like that any should stand between him and the throne, ended her life in prison. Thus, Heaven took this innocent lady to itself in her young years, after showing her to the world an illustrious example of filial duty. Lear did not long survive this kind child.

Before he died, the good earl of Kent, who had still attended his old master's steps from the first of his daughters' ill usage to this sad period of his decay, tried to make him understand that it was he who had followed him under the name of Caius; but Lear's care-crazed brain at that time could not comprehend how that could be, or how Kent and Caius could be the same person: so Kent thought it needless to trouble him with explanations at such a time; and Lear soon after expiring, this faithful servant to the king, between age and grief for his old master's vexations, soon followed him to the grave.

How the judgment of Heaven overtook the bad earl of Gloucester, whose treasons were discovered, and himself slain in single combat with his brother, the lawful earl; and how Gonerill's husband, the duke of Albany, who was innocent of the death of Cordelia, and had never encouraged his lady in her wicked proceedings against her father, ascended the throne of Britain after the death of Lear, is needless here to narrate; Lear and his Three Daughters being dead, whose adventures alone concern our story.

VILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY was born in

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the East Indies in 1810. He spent 7 or 8 terms at Cambridge with the intention of becoming a barrister,

however at the expiration of that time he gave up all idea of following such a profession, and travelled to Paris in order to study painting. Here he afforded his

companions much amusement by his pen-and-ink sketches; but, after two or three years of great industry he determined to devote himself to literature. He originated a weekly publication on the plan of the 'Athenæum' and 'Literary Gazette,' which notwithstanding the ability of the editor and his friends, was not able to compete with its contemporaries. He wrote several articles for 'Fraser's Magazine' and 'Punch,' which were so well received that he was induced to publish them in 1840 under the name of The Paris Sketch-Book by Michael Angelo Titmarsh.' In 1841 "Comic Tales and Sketches' made their appearance, and in 1842 followed The Irish Sketch-Book,' which is considered the best of those yet mentioned. In 1846 he published 'Notes of a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo by way of Lisbon, Athens, Constantinople and Jerusalem, performed in the steamer of the Peninsular and Oriental Company, by Mr. M. A. Titmarsh,' but he has obtained his greatest celebrity by his 'Vanity Fair, a novel without a hero, which appeared in

OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

Goldsmith's father was no doubt the good Doctor Primrose, whom we all of us know. Swift was yet alive, when the little Oliver was born at Pallas, or Pallasmore, in the county of Longford, in Ireland. In 1730, two years after the child's birth, Charles Goldsmith removed his family to Lissoy, in the county Westmeath, that sweet 'Auburn,' which every person who hears me has seen in fancy. Here the kind parson brought up his eight children; and loving all the world, as his son says, fancied all the world loved him. He had a crowd of poor dependents besides those hungry children. He kept an open table; round which sate flatterers and poor friends, who laughed at the honest rector's many jokes, and ate the produce of his seventy acres of farm. Those who have seen an Irish house in the present day, can fancy that one of Lissoy. The old beggar still has his allotted corner by the kitchen turf; the maimed old soldier still gets his potatoes and buttermilk; the poor cottier still asks his honour's charity, and prays God bless his Reverence for the sixpence: the ragged pensioner still takes his place by right and sufferance. There is still a crowd in the kitchen, and a crowd round the parlour-table, profusion, confusion, kindness, poverty. If an Irishman comes to London to make his fortune, he has half a dozen of Irish dependents who take a percentage of his earnings. The good Charles Goldsmith left but little

monthly parts in 1847-1848, and placed him at once among the most distinguished novelists of England. His style is similar to that of Dickens, with this difference that he describes the life of the higher classes, of which he was a keen observer, while Dickens takes the manners of the poorer ranks for his subject. The freedom and frankness with which he writes, the thorough absence of affectation, the severity with which he censures all unworthy actions, constitute the principal charms of his writings. It has been said, that he has failed in exciting continuous or lively sympathy by interesting incidents, or by the display of deep feeling. His remaining works are 'The history of Pendennis, 1851, "The History of Henry Esmond, Colonel in the service of Queen Anne,' 1852, a curious publication, being written in the prevailing style of the eighteenth century, the 'Virginians,' 'Lovel the Widower, &c. His last work is a valuable series of lectures on "The English Humorists of the eighteenth Century. He died on 24th Dec. 1863.

provision for his hungry race when death summoned him: and, one of his daughters being engaged to a Squire of rather superior dignity, Charles Goldsmith impoverished the rest of his family to provide the girl with a dowry.

The small-pox, which scourged all Europe at that time, and ravaged the roses off the cheeks of half the world, fell foul of poor little Oliver's face, when the child was eight years old, and left him scarred and disfigured for his life. An old woman in his father's village taught him his letters, and pronounced him a dunce: Paddy Byrne, the hedge-schoolmaster, took him in hand; and from Paddy Byrne, he was transmitted to a clergyman at Elphin. When a child was sent to school in those days, the classic phrase was that he was placed under Mr. So and So's ferule. Poor little ancestors! It is hard to think how ruthlessly you were birched; and how much of needless whipping and tears our small forefathers had to undergo! A relative, kind uncle Contarine, took the main charge of little Noll; who went through his schooldays righteously doing as little work as he could: robbing orchards, playing at ball, and making his pocketmoney fly about whenever fortune sent it to him. Everybody knows the story of that famous 'Mistake of a Night,' when the young schoolboy, provided with a guinea and a nag, rode up to the 'best house' in Ardagh, called for the landlord's company over a bottle of wine at supper, and for a hot cake for breakfast in the morning; and found

when he asked for the bill, that the best house was Squire Featherstone's, and not the inn for which he mistook it. Who does not know every story about Goldsmith? That is a delightful and fantastic picture of the child dancing and capering about in the kitchen at home, when the old fiddler gibed at him for his ugliness-and called him Æsop, and little Noll made his repartee of 'Heralds proclaim aloud this saying-see Esop dancing and his monkey playing.' One can fancy a queer pitiful look of humour and appeal upon that little scarred face-the funny little dancing figure, the funny little brogue. In his life, and his writings which are the honest expression of it, he is constantly bewailing that homely face and person; anon he surveys them in the glass ruefully; and presently assumes the most comical dignity. He likes to deck out his little person in splendour and fine colours. He presented himself to be examined for ordination in a pair of scarlet breeches, and said honestly that he did not like to go into the church because he was fond of coloured clothes. When he tried to practise as a doctor, he got by hook or by crook a black-velvet suit, and looked as big and grand as he could, and kept his hat over a patch on the old coat: in better days he bloomed out in plum-colour, in blue silk, and in new velvet. For some of those splendours the heirs and assignees of Mr. Filby, the tailor, have never been paid to this day; perhaps the kind tailor and his creditor have met and settled the little account in Hades. They showed until lately a window at Trinity College, Dublin, on which the name of O. Goldsmith was engraved with a diamond. Whose diamond was it? Not the young Sizar's who made but a poor figure in that place of learning. He was idle, penniless, and fond of pleasure: he learned his way early to the pawnbroker's shop. He wrote ballads, they say, for the street singers, who paid him a crown for a poem: and his pleasure was to steal out at night and hear his verses sung. He

was chastised by his tutor for giving a dance in his rooms, and took the box on the ear so much to heart, that he packed up his all, pawned his books and little property, and disappeared from college and family. He said he intended to go to America, but when his money was spent, the young prodigal came home ruefully, and the good folks there killed their calf-it was but a lean one-and welcomed him back.

After College, he hung about his mother's house, and lived for some years the life of a buckeen-passed a month with this relation and that, a year with one patron, a great deal of time at the public-house. Tired of this life, it was resolved that he should go to London, and study at the Temple; but he got no farther on the road to London and the woolsack than Dublin, where he gambled away the fifty pounds given him for his outfit, and whence he returned to the indefatigable forgiveness of home. Then he determined to be a doctor, and Uncle Contarine helped him to a couple of years at Edinburgh. Then from Edinburgh he felt that he ought to hear the famous professors of Leyden and Paris, and wrote most amusing pompous letters to his uucle about the great Farheim, Du Petit and Duhamel du Monceau, whose lectures he proposed to follow. If Uncle Contarine believed those letters-if Oliver's mother believed that story which the youth related of his going to Cork, with the purpose of embarking for America, of his having paid his passage-money, and having sent his kit on board; of the anonymous captain sailing away with Oliver's valuable luggage, in a nameless ship, never to return; if Uncle Contarine and the mother at Ballymahon believed his stories, they must have been a very simple pair; as it was a very simple rogue indeed who cheated them. When the lad, after failing in his clerical examination, after failing in his plan for studying the law, took leave of these projects and of his parents, and set out for Edinburgh, he saw mother, and uncle, and lazy Ballymahon, and green native turf, and

sparkling river for the last time. He was never to look on old Ireland more, and only in fancy revisit her.

I spoke in a former lecture of that high courage which enabled Fielding, in spite of disease, remorse, and poverty, always to retain a cheerful spirit and to keep his manly benevolence and love of truth intact, as if these treasures had been confided to him for the public benefit, and he was accountable to posterity for their honourable employ; and a constancy equally happy and admirable I think was shown by Goldsmith, whose sweet and friendly nature bloomed kindly always in the midst of a life's storm, and rain, and bitter weather. The poor fellow was never so friendless but he could befriend some one; never so pinched and wretched but he could give of his crust, and speak his word of compassion. If he had but his flute left, he could give that, and make the children happy in the dreary London court. He could give the coals in that queer coal-scuttle we read of to his poor neighbour: he could give away his blankets in college to the poor widow, and warm himself as he best might in the feathers: he could pawn his coat to save his landlord from gaol: when he was a schoolusher, he spent his earnings in treats for the boys, and the good-natured schoolmaster's wife said justly that she ought to keep Mr. Goldsmith's money as well as the young gentlemen's. When he met his pupils in later life, nothing would satisfy the Doctor but he must treat them still. 'Have you seen the print of me after Sir Joshua Reynolds?' he asked of one of his old pupils. 'Not seen it? not bought it? Sure, Jack, if your picture had been published, I'd not have been without it half-an-hour.' His purse and his heart were everybody's, and his friends' as much as his own. When he was at the height of his reputation, and the Earl of Northumberland, going as Lord-Lieutenant to Ireland, asked if he could be of any service to Dr. Goldsmith? Goldsmith recommended his brother, and not himself, to the great man. 'My patrons,'

he gallantly said, 'are the booksellers, and I want no others.' Hard patrons they were, and hard work he did; but he did not complain much: if in his early writings some bitter words escaped him, some allusions to neglect and poverty, he withdrew these expressions, when his works were republished, and better days seemed to open for him; and he did not care to complain tha printer or publisher had overlooked his merit, or left him poor. The Court face was turned from honest Oliver, the Court patronised Beattie; the fashion did not shine on him-fashion adored Sterne. Fashion pronounced Kelly to be the great writer of comedy of his day. A little-not ill-humour, but plaintiveness -a little betrayal of wounded pride which he showed rendered him not the less amiable. The author of the 'Vicar of Wakefield' had a right to protest when Newberry kept back the MS. for two years; had a right to be a little peevish with Sterne; a little angry when Colman's actors declined their parts in his delightful comedy, when the manager refused to have a scene painted for it, and pronounced its damnation before hearing. He had not the great public with him; but he had the noble Johnson, and the admirable Reynolds, and the great Gibbon, and the great Burke, and the great Fox-friends and admirers illustrious indeed, as famous as those who, fifty years before, sate round Pope's table.

Nobody knows, and I dare say Goldsmith's buoyant temper kept no account of all the pains which he endured during the early period of his literary career. Should any man of letters in our day have to bear up against such, Heaven grant he may come out of the period of misfortune with such a pure kind heart as that which Goldsmith obstinately bore in his breast. insults to which he had to submit are shocking to read of,-slander, contumely, vulgar satire, brutal malignity perverting his commonest motives and actions: he had his share of these, and one's anger is roused at reading of them, as it is at seeing a woman insulted or a

The

child assaulted, at the notion that a creature so very gentle and weak, and full of love, should have had to suffer so. And he had worse than insult to undergo-to own to fault, and deprecate the anger of ruffians. There is a letter of his extant to one Griffiths, a bookseller, in which poor Goldsmith is forced to confess, that certain books sent by Griffiths are in the hands of a friend from whom Goldsmith had been forced to borrow money. 'He was wild, Sir,' Johnson said, speaking of Goldsmith to Boswell, with his great, wise benevolence and noble mercifulness of heart, 'Dr. Goldsmith was wild, Sir; but he is so no more.' Ah! if we pity the good and weak man who suffers undeservedly, let us deal very gently with him from whom misery extorts not only tears, but shame; let us think humbly and charitably of the human nature that suffers so sadly and falls so low. Whose turn may it be to-morrow? What weak heart, confident before trial, may not succumb under temptation invincible? Cover the good man who has been vanquished-cover his face and pass on. For the last half dozen years of his life, Goldsmith was far removed from the pressure of any ignoble necessity and in the receipt, indeed, of a pretty large income from the booksellers, his patrons. Had he lived but a few years more, his public fame would have been as great as his private reputation, and he might have enjoyed alive a part of that esteem which his country has ever since paid to the vivid and versatile genius who has touched on almost every subject of literature, and touched nothing that he did not adorn. Except in rare instances a man is known in our profession, and esteemed as a skilful workman, years before the lucky hit, which trebles his usual gains, and stamps him a popular author. In the strength of his age, and the dawn of his reputation, having for backers and friends the most illustrious literary men of his time, fame and prosperity might have been in store for Goldsmith, had fate so willed; and, at forty-six, had not sudden disease

carried him off. I say prosperity rather than competence, for it is probable that no sum could have put order into his affairs or sufficed for his irreclaimable habits of dissipation. It must be remembered that he owed L. 2000 when he died. 'Was ever poet,' Johnson asked, 'so trusted before? As has been the case with many another good fellow of his nation, his life was tracked and his substance wasted by crowds of hungry beggars and lazy dependents. If they came at a lucky time (and be sure they knew his affairs better than he did himself, and watched his pay day), he gave them of his money: if they begged on empty-purse days he gave them his promissory bills: or he treated them to a tavern where he had credit; or he obliged them with an order upon honest Mr. Filby for coats, for which he paid as long as he could earn, and until the shears of Filby were to cut for him no more. Staggering under a load of debt and labour, tracked by bailiffs and reproachful creditors, running from a hundred poor dependents, whose appealing looks were perhaps the hardest of all pains for him to bear, devising fevered plans for the morrow, new histories, new comedies, all sorts of new literary schemes, flying from all these into seclusion, and out of seclusion into pleasure

at last, at five and forty, death seized him and closed his career. I have been many a time in the chambers in the Temple which were his, and passed up the stair-case, which Johnson, and Burke, and Reynolds trod to see their friend, their poet, their kind Goldsmith-the stair on which the poor women sate weeping bitterly when they heard that greatest and most generous of all men was dead within the black oak door. Ah, it was a different lot from that for which the poor fellow sighed, when he wrote with hard yearning for home those most charming of all fond verses, in which he fancies he revisits Auburn

Here as I take my solitary rounds, etc.

In these verses, I need not say with what melody, with what touching truth,