The character of Goldsmith is not of the most exalted kind, and though it is endeared to us from its simplicity, it does not command our highest admiration. It wanted self-denial; it therefore wanted the regulated foresight, the austere economy, by which lofty qualities are sustained and exercised. In virtues of the severe cast, that sacrifice is not the least, which, for the good of mankind, makes resignation of popular affections; and if we could perceive what great hearts have in this way endured, instead of esteeming them stoics, we would revere them as martyrs.

We

Goldsmith is one of those whom we cannot help liking, and whom we cannot criticize; yet he is one that should be praised with caution, if in our age there was much danger of his being imitated. are too busy for meditative vagrancy; we are too practical for the delusions of scholarship; even with the felicitous genius of Goldsmith, the literary profession would now be an insecure basis for subsistence, and none at all for prodigality. Extent of competition, the rigor of criticism, the difficulty of acting on an immensely multiplied reading public, repress the efforts of vanity; yet, except in few instances, they do not compensate the efforts of power; the vain are driven to obscurity, but the powerful have little more than their fame. And though we possessed the abilities of Gold

smith, and were tempted to his follies, his life is before us for a memento, and his experience is sufficient for a warning. Yet is it agreeable to lay aside our prudence for a little, and enjoy with him, in fancy at least, the advantage of the hour; to participate in his thoughtless good nature, and to enter into his careless gayety; to sit with him in some lonely Swiss glen; or to listen to his flute among the peasantry of France; or to hear him debate logical puzzles in monastic Latin; to share the pride of his new purple coat, which Johnson would not praise, and which Boswell could not admire. More grateful still, is the relief which we derive from the perusal of his works; for in these we have the beauty of his mind, and no shade upon its wisdom; the sweetness of humanity, and its dignity also.

We need the mental refreshment, which writers like Goldsmith afford. Our active and our thoughtful powers are all on the stretch; and such, unless it has appropriate relaxations, is not a state of nature or a state of health. From the troubles of business, which absorb the attention or exhaust it; from the acclivities of society, which exemplify, in the same degrees, the force of mechanism and the force of will; from the clamor of politics, from the asperity of religious discussions, we turn to philosophy and literature for less fatiguing or less disquieting inter

ests. But our philosophy, when not dealing with matter, is one which, in seeking the limits of reason, carries it ever into the infinite and obscure; our literature is one which, in its genuine forms, has equal intensity of passion and intensity of expression; which, in its spurious forms, mistakes extravagance for the one, and bombast for the other. Our genuine literature is the production of natural causes, and has its peculiar excellence. But from the excitement of our present literature, whether genuine or spurious, it is a pleasant change to take up the tranquil pages of Goldsmith; to feel the sunny glow of his thoughts upon our hearts, and on our fancies the gentle music of his words. In laying down his writings, we are tempted to exclaim, "O that the author of The Deserted Village' had written more poetry! O that the author of The Vicar of Wakefield' had written more novels!"

66

SPIRIT OF IRISH HISTORY.*

It is now some years since I began to speak in Boston. Among the first of my efforts, Ireland was my theme. I endeavored, as best I could, to tell her story. I was heard with generous interest, but it was the story, and not the teller, that inspired it. It was called for throughout the length and breadth of New England; it was repeated in city halls and in village lyceums. Old and young, grave and gay, listened to it with open ears and with eager hearts; and to many of them it seemed a new and wild and strange recital. It is no longer novel. It is now, not a story, but a drama; a black and fearful drama, which civilized nations gaze upon with a terrified astonishment, that has no power to weep. It was then gloomy and sad enough, and to those who know life only in its general comforts, it appeared a condition which it would be hard to render worse. But the presumptuousness of man is con

*This Lecture was given for relief of the Irish poor, in 1847.

stantly rebuked by the vicissitude of events.

too surely so in this case.

It is but

There was yet the vial of a

deeper woe in store, and that vial is now open. Tragic as the story of Ireland was, when first I tried to tell it, it might yet be given with those flashes of mirth and wit, those outburstings of fun, and drollery, and oddity, and humor, which can be crushed in the Irish heart only by the heaviest load of sorrow. Of such weight is now

the burden that lies upon it.

Ireland, now, is not simply a place of struggle, of want, of hard work, and of scanty fare, it has become a wilderness of starvation. The dreariest visitation which humanity can receive, rests upon it—not of fire, not of the sword, not of the plague; but that, compared with which, fire, and sword, and plague, are but afflictions; that is, Hunger-hunger, that fell and dreadful thing, which, in its extremity, preys more horribly on the mind, even than the body; which causes friend to look on friend with an evil eye, and the heart of a maiden to be stern to her lover; and the husband to glare upon the wife that nestled in his bosom, and the mother to forget her sucking child. Such, though we trust never to come to this awful extremity, is the nature of that calamity, which lately has been preying upon Ireland. It has not indeed come to this awful extremity, but it has approached far enough towards it,