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Here, while the courtier glitters in brocade,
There, the pale artist plies the sickly trade;
Here, while the proud their long-drawn pomp display,
There, the black gibbet glooms beside the way;
The dome where Pleasure holds her midnight reign,
Here, richly decked, admits the gorgeous train;
Tumultuous Grandeur crowds the blazing square,
The rattling chariots clash, the torches glare.

4. Sure scenes like these no troubles e'er annoy!
Sure these denote one universal joy!

Are these thy serious thoughts?-Ah! turn thine eyes
Where the poor, houseless, shivering female lies:
She once, perhaps, in village plenty blessed,
Has wept at tales of innocence distrest;
Her modèst looks the cottage might adorn,

Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorn;
Now lost to all, her friends, her virtue fled,

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,
Do thy fair tribes participate her pain?
E'en now, perhaps, by cold and hunger led,
At proud men's doors they ask a little bread!
Ah, no. To distant climes, a dreary scene,
Where half the convex world intrudes between,
Through torrid tracts with fainting steps they go,
Where wild Altama murmurs to their woe.
Far different there from all that charmed before,
The various terrors of that horrid shōre;
Those blazing suns that dart a downward ray,
And fiercely shed intolerable day;

Those matted woods where birds forget to sing,
But silent bats in drowsy clusters cling;

Those poisonous fields with rank luxuriance crowned,
Where the dark scorpion gathers death around:
Where at each step the stranger fears to wake
The rattling terrors of the vengeful snake;

Where crouching tigers wait their hapless prey,
And savage men, mōre murderous still than they;
While oft in whirls the mad tornado flies,

Mingling the ravaged landscape with the skies.
6. Far different these from every former scene,—
The cooling brook, the grassy-vested green,
The breezy covert of the warbling grove,
That only sheltered thefts of harmless love.
Good Heaven! what sorrows gloomed that parting day
That called them from their native walks away;
When the poor exiles, every pleasure past,

Hung round the bowers, and fondly looked their last,
And took a long farewell, and wished in vain
For seats like these beyond the western main;
And shuddering still to face the distant deep,
Returned and wept, and still returned to weep!
7. The good old sire the first prepared to go
To new-found worlds, and wept for others' woe;
But for himself, in conscious virtue brave,
He only wished for worlds beyond the grave.
His lovely daughter, lovelier in her tears,
The fond companion of his helpless years,
Silent went next, neglectful of her charms,
And left a lover's for her father's arms.

With louder plaints the mother spoke her woes,
And blessed the cot where every pleasure rose ;
And kissed her thoughtless babes with many a tear,
And clasped them close, in sorrow doubly dear;
While her fond husband strove to lend relief,
In all the silent manliness of grief.

8. Oh, Luxury! thou cursed by Heaven's decree,
How ill-exchanged are things like these for thee!
How do thy pōtions, with insidious joy,
Diffuse their pleasures only to destroy!
Kingdoms by thee to sickly greatness grown,
Boast of a florid vigor not their own.

At every draught more large and large they grow,
A bloated mass of rank, unwieldy woe;
Till, sapped their strength, and every part unsound,
Down, down they sink, and spread a ruin round.

9. E'en now the devasta'tion is begun,

And half the business of destruction done;
E'en now, methinks, as pondering here I stand,
I see the rural virtues leave the land.

Down where yon anchoring vessel spreads the sail,
That, idly waiting, flaps with every gale,
Downward they move, a melancholy band,

Pass from the shore, and darken all the strand.
Contented Toil, and hospitable Care,
And kind connubial Tenderness, are there;
And Piety, with wishes placed above
And steady Loyalty, and faithful Love.

10. And thou, sweet Poëtry! thou loveliest maid,
Still first to fly, where sensual joys invade!
Unfit, in these degenerate times of shame,
To catch the heart, or strike for honèst Fame :
Dear, charming nymph, neglected and decried,
My shame in crowds, my solitary pride;
Thou source of all my bliss and all my woe,
That found'st me poor at first, and keep'st me so,
Thou guide by which the nobler arts excel,
Thou nurse of every virtue, fare thee well.
11. Farewell; and oh! where'er thy voice be tried,
On Torno's cliffs or Pambamarca's side,
Whether where equinoctial fervors glow,
Or winter wraps the polar world in snow,
Still let thy voice, prevailing over time,
Redress the rigors of the inclement clime;
And slighted Truth, with thy persuasive strain,
Teach ĕrring man to spurn the rage of gain;
Teach him, that States, of native strength possessed,
Though věry poor, may still be very blessed;
That trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay,
As ocean sweeps the labored mōle ǎway;
While self-dependent power can time defy,

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 ;
He smites the rock, upheaved in pride,-
See towers of strength and domes of taste!
Earth's teeming caves their wealth reveal;

Fire bears his banner on the wave;
He bids the mortal poison heal;

And leaps triumphant o'er the grave.

4. He plucks the pearls that stud the deep,
Admiring beauty's lap to fill ;

He breaks the stubborn marble's sleep,
And mocks his own Creator's skill.
With thoughts that fill his glowing soul,
He bids the ōre illume the page;
And, proudly scorning Time's control,
Commerces with an unborn age.

5. In fields of air he writes his name,
And treads the chambers of the sky;

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