competent to all his wants. But discretion is not a part of Goldsmith's nature; and it seems the property of these fairy gifts to be accompanied by moods and tem peraments to render their effect precarious. The heed lessness of his early days, his disposition for social enjoyment, his habits of throwing the present on the neck of the future, still continue. His expenses forerun his means; he incurs debts on the faith of what his magic pen is to produce, and then, under the pressure of his debts, sacrifices its productions for prices far below their value. It is a redeeming circumstance in his prodigality, that it is lavished oftener upon others than upon himself: he gives without thought or stint, and is the continual dupe of his benevolence and his trustfulness in human nature. We may say of him as he says of one of his heroes-" He could not stifle the natural impulse which he had to do good, but frequently borrowed money to relieve the distressed; and when he knew not conveniently where to borrow, he has been observed to shed tears as he passed through the wretched suppliants who attended his gate." *

*

"His simplicity in trusting persons whom he had no previous reasons to place confidence in, seems to be one of those lights of his character which, while they impeach his understanding, do honour to his benevolence. The low and the timid are ever suspicious; but a heart impressed with honourable sentiments expects from others sympathetic sincerity."

His heedlessness in pecuniary matters, which had rendered his life a struggle with poverty, even in the days of his obscurity, rendered the struggle still more intense when his fairy gifts had elevated him into the society of the wealthy and luxurious, and imposed on his simple and generous spirit fancied obligations to a more ample and bounteous display.

"How comes it," says a recent and ingenious critic, "that in all the miry paths of life which he had trod, no speck ever sullied the robe of his modest and graceful muse? How, amidst all that love of inferior company, which never to the last forsook him, did he keep his genius so free from every touch of vulgarity?"

We answer that it was owing to the innate purity and goodness of his nature: there was nothing in it that assimilated to vice and vulgarity. Though his circumstances often compelled him to associate with the poor, they never could betray him into companionship with the depraved. His relish for humour and for the study of character, as we have before observed, brought him often into convivial company of a vulgar kind; but he discriminated between their vulgarity and their amusing qualities, or rather wrought from the whole those familiar features of life which form the staple of his most popular writings.

Much, too, of this intact purity of heart may be ascribed to the lessons of his infancy under the paternal roof; to the gentle, benevolent, elevated, unworldly maxims of his father, who, "passing rich with forty pounds a year," infused a spirit into his child which riches could not deprave nor poverty degrade. Much of his boyhood, too, had been passed in the household of his uncle, the amiable and generous Contarine; where he talked of literature with the good pastor, and practised music with his daughter, and delighted them both by his juvenile attempts at poetry. These early associations breathed a grace and refinement into his mind, and tuned it up after the rough sports on the green, or the frolics at the tavern. These led him to turn from the roaring glees of the club to listen to the harp of his cousin Jane; and from the rustic triumph of "throwing sledge" to a stroll with his flute along the pastoral banks of the Inny. The gentle spirit of his father walked with him through life, a pure and virtuous monitor; and in all the vicissitudes of his career, we find him ever more chastened in mind by the sweet and holy recollections of the home of his infancy.

It has been questioned whether he really had any religious feeling Those who raise the question have never considered well his writings; his "Vicar of Wakefield," and his pictures of "the Village Pastor," present religion under its most endearing forms, and with a feeling that could only flow from the deep convictions of the heart. When his fair travelling companions at Paris urged him to read the Church Service on a Sunday, he replied that "he was not worthy to do it." He had seen in early life the sacred offices performed by his father and his brother, with a solemnity which had sanctified them in his memory; how could he presume to undertake such functions? His religion has been called into question by Johnson and by Boswell: he certainly had not the gloomy hypochondriacal piety of the one, nor the babbling mouth piety of the other, but the spirit of Christian charity breathed forth in his writings and illustrated in his conduct give us reason to believe he had the indwelling religion of the soul.

We have made sufficient comments in the preceding chapters on his conduct in elevated circles of literature and fashion. The fairy gifts which took him there were not accompanied by the gifts and graces necessary to sustain him in that artificial sphere. He can neither play the learned sage with Johnson, nor the fine gentleman with Beauclere, though he has a mind replete with wisdom and shrewdness, and a spirit free from vulgarity. The blunders of a fertile but hurried intellect, and the awkward display of the student assuming the man of fashion, fix on him a character for absurdity and vanity which, like the charge of lunacy, it is hard to disprove, however weak the grounds of the charge and strong the facts in oposition to it.

In truth, he is never truly in his place in these learned and fashionable circles, which talk and live for display. It is not the kind of society he craves. His heart yearns for domestic life; it craves familiar, confiding intercourse, family fireside, the guileless and happy company of children; these bring out the heartiest and sweetest sympathies of his nature.

Had it been his fate," says the critic we have already quoted, to meet a woman who could have loved him, despite his faults, and respected him despite his foibles, we cannot but think that his life and his genius would have been much more harmonious; his desultory affections would have been concentred, his craving self-love appeased, his pursuits more settled, his character more solid. A nature like Goldsmith's, so affectionate, so confiding-so susceptible to simple, innocent enjoyments— so dependent on others for the sunshine of existence, does not flower if deprived of the atmosphere of home."

The cravings of his heart in this respect are evident, we think, throughout his career; and if we have dwelt with more significancy than others upon his intercourse with the beautiful Horneck family, it is because we fancied we could detect, amid his playful attentions to one of its members, a lurking sentiment of tenderness, kept down by conscious poverty and a humiliating idea of personal defects. A hopeless feeling of this kindthe last a man would communicate to his friends-might account for much of that fitfulness of conduct and that gathering melancholy remarked, but not comprehended, by his associates during the last year or two of his life; and may have been one of the last troubles of the mind which aggravated his last illness, and only terminated with his death.

We shall conclude these desultory remarks with a few which have been used by us on a former occasion. From the general tone of Goldsmith's biography, it is evident that his faults at the worst were but negative, while his merits were great and decided. He was no one's enemy but his own; his errors, in the main, inflicted evil on none but himself, and were so blended with humorous and even affecting circumstances, as to disarm anger and conciliate kindness. Where eminent talent is united to

spotless virtue, we are awed and dazzled into admiration, but our admiration is apt to be cold and reverential; while there is something in the harmless infirmities of a good and great, but erring individual, that pleads touchingly to our nature; and we turn more kindly towards the object of our idolatry, when we find that, like ourselves, he is mortal and is frail. The epithet so often heard, and in such kindly tones, of "poor Goldsmith," speaks volumes. Few, who consider the real compound of admirable and whimsical qualities which form his character would wish to prune away its eccentricities,

trim its grotesque uxuriance, and clip it down to the decent formalities of rigid virtue. "Let not his frailties be remembered," said Johnson; "he was a very great man." But, for our part, we rather say "Let them be remembered," since their tendency is to endear: and we question whether he himself would not feel gratified in hearing his reader, after dwelling with admiration on the proofs of his greatness, close the volume with the kind-hearted phrase, so fondly and familiarly ejaculated, of" Poor Goldsmith."

EARTH,

CHAP. L.

A SKETCH OF THE UNIVERSE.

THE world may be considered as one vast mansion, where man has been admitted to enjoy, to admire, and to be grateful. The first desires of savage nature are merely to gratify the importunities of sensual appetite, and to neglect the contemplation of things, barely satisfied with their enjoyment; the beauties of Nature, and all the wonders of Creation, have but little charms for a being taking up in obviating the wants of the day, and anxious for precarious subsistence.

Our philosophers, therefore, who have testified such surprise at the want of curiosity in the ignorant, seem not to consider that they are usually employed in making provisions of a more important nature; in providing rather for the necessities than the amusements of life. It is not till our more pressing wants are sufficiently supplied, that we can attend to the calls of curio sity; so that in every age scientific refinement has been the latest effort of human industry.

But human curiosity, though at first slowly excited, being at last possessed of leisure for indulging its propensity, becomes one of the greatest amusements of life, and gives higher satisfactions than what even the senses can afford. A man of this disposition turns all nature into a magnificent theatre, replete with objects of wonder and surprise, and fitted up chiefly for his happiness and entertainment: he industriously examines all things, from the minutest insect to the most finished animal; and, when his limited organs can no longer make the disquisition, he sends out his imagination upon new inquiries.

Nothing, therefore, can be more august and striking than the idea which his reason, aided by his imagination, furnishes of the universe around him. Astronomers tell us, that this earth which we inhabit forms but a very minute part in that great assemblage of bodies of which the world is composed. It is a million of times less than the sun, by which it is enlightened. The planets also, which, like it, are subordinate to the sun's influence, exceed the earth one thousand times in magnitude. These, which were at first supposed to wander in the heavens without any fixed path, and that took their name from their apparent deviations, have long been found to perform their circuits with great ex actness and strict regularity. They have been discovered as forming with our earth a system of bodies circulating round the sun, all obedient to one law, and impelled by one common influence.

Modern philosophy has taught us to believe, that, when the great Author of Nature began the work of creation, he chose to operate by second causes; and that, suspending the constant exertion of his power, he endued inatter with a quality by which the universal economy of nature might be continued without his immediate assistance. This quality is called attraction; a sort of approximating influence, which all bodies, whether terrestrial or celestial, are found to possess; and which in all increases as the quantity of matter in each increases. The sun, by far the greatest body in our system, is, of consequence, possessed of much the greatest share of this attracting power; and all the planets, of which our earth is one, are, of course, entirely subject to its superior influence. Were this power, therefore, left uncontrolled by any other, the sun must quickly have attracted all the bodies of our celestial system to itself; but it is equably counteracted by another power of equal efficacy; namely, a progressive force which each planet received when it was impelled forward, by the divine Architect, upon its first formation. The heavenly bodies of our system being thus acted upon by two opposing powers; namely, by that of attraction, which draws them towards the sun; and that of impulsion, which drives them straight forward into the great void of space; they pursue a track between these contrary directions; and each, like a stone whirled about in a sling, obeying two opposite forces, circulates round its great centre of heat and motion.

In this manner, therefore, is the harmony of our planetary system preserved. The sun, in the midst, gives heat, and light, and circular motion to the planets which surround it; Mercury, Venus, the Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, perform their constant circuits at different distances, each taking up a time to complete its revolutions proportioned to the greatness of the circle which it is to describe. The lesser planets also, which are attendants upon some of the greater, are subject to the same laws; they circulate with the same exactness; and are, in the same manner, influenced by their respective centres of motion.

Besides those bodies which make a part of our pecu liar system, and which may be said to reside within its great circumference, there are others, that frequently come among us from the most distant tracts of space, and that seem like dangerous intruders upon the beauti ful simplicity of nature. These are comets, whose appearance was once so terrible to mankind, and the theory of which is so little understood at present: all we know is, that their number is greater than that of the planets, and that, like these, they roll in orbits, in some measure