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which they had made to warm themselves extinguished,—all this is a fearful answer to such writings, and too awful proof of the correctness of the poet's statements. So far from Irish landlords not destroying villages, so far from "anything like severity" being speedily known and resisted, the inquiries caused by this one flagrant case have shown to the horrified public, that in no country in the world are the rights of the peasantry so totally disregarded; in no country has the outrage of The Deserted Village been so often enacted. The scene which Goldsmith so pathetically describes, of the poor villagers whose homes had been destroyed, whose native haunts had been made to cast them forth, going on towards the shore seeking for an asylum beyond the ocean, was not a solitary scene. It has been reacted again and again. It has been repeated from that hour to this; and every year and almost every day sees sad thousands bidding adieu to their birthplaces, and crowding on board the ships that carry them to a more hospitable country.

"Even 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."

In five years, it is shown by official documents, that 72,000 persons have been thus cast out of their homes, and expatriated, and that the process of this exterminating system has, within twenty years, made outcasts of no less than two millions and a half of peasantry!

Seeing this wholesale depopulation, which has not merely gone on formerly, but is going on at this hour, in the face of all enlightened and humane England, it is quite too late to call in question the truth of the poet's descriptions. We no longer wonder that, in opposition to popular opinion, he stood boldly forward at the moment that he issued his poem to the world, in assertion of the truth of his descriptions; and we deplore the

fact, that his noble sentiments have not sooner become national and availing.

Under all these circumstances, Auburn or Lissoy, which you will, will always be visited with enthusiasm by the genuine lovers of purest poetry and of kindly humanity. The visitor will not find all there that he naturally looks for. He will not find the country very beautiful, or the mill, the brook, the ale-house, as rural and picturesque as he could wish; but he will find the very ground on which Oliver Goldsmith ran in the happy days of his boyhood, the ruins of the house in which that model of a village preacher, simple, pious, and warm-hearted, justly, indeed, dear to all the country,-lived, the father of the poet; the ruins of the house in which the poet himself spent a happy childhood, cherishing under such a parent one of the noblest spirits which ever glowed for truth and humanity-fearing no ridicule, contracting no worldliness, never abating, spite of harsh experience and repeated imposition, onet hrob of pity or of generous sympathy for the wretched. The ground where such a man was reared, is, indeed, holy. Goldsmith himself, not less than his father and brother, was one of the most genuine Christian preachers that ever lived. The sermons of the father and the brother perished with their hearers, but those of the poet live for ever in his writings. And how many of the personal characteristics of "the village preacher," which in his father he celebrates, lived in himself!

"Unpractised he to fawn or seek for power,

By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour:
For other aims his heart had learned to prize,
More skilled to raise the wretched than to rise."

How often did he present this trait in his own life! How zealous he was to help any one that he could; how careless to help himself! Thus, when requested by the minister to say if he could be of any service to him, he said, "Yes, he had a brother, a worthy clergyman, whom he would gladly see promoted." At this time he was in great distress himself. At another time, Lord North sent to him a Dr. Scott, with a carte blanche to induce him to write for the ministry, but Goldsmith was not to be bought. "I found him," said the Doctor, "in

a miserable set of chambers in the Temple; I told him my authority; I told him that I was empowered to pay most liberally for his exertions, and, would you believe it! he was so absurd as to say-'I can earn as much as will supply my wants without writing for any party; the assistance therefore you offer is unnecessary to me;' and so I left him," added Dr. Scott, "in his garret."

How completely was this Dr. Primrose! How thoroughly was he the same man in everything. When his aid was needed

by his fellow-man

"Careless their merits or their faults to scan,

His pity gave ere charity began."

It is because he embodied himself in all he wrote, that his writings command such undecaying interest; for in impressing his own heart on his page, he impressed there nature itself in its most unselfish and generous character. Every circumstance, therefore, connected with "The Deserted Village" of such a man will always be deeply interesting to the visitor of the spot, and we must for that reason notice one or two facts of the kind before quitting Lissoy. Mr. Best, an Irish clergyman, met by Mr. Davis, in his travels in the United States, said-" The name of the schoolmaster was Paddy Burns. I remember him well. He was indeed a man severe to view. A woman, called Walsey Cruse, kept the alehouse. I have often been in the house. The hawthorn bush was remarkably large, and stood opposite the house. I was once riding with Brady, titular Bishop of Ardagh, when he observed to me- Ma foy, Best, this huge, overgrown bush is mightily in the way; I will order it to be cut down!' What, sir,' said I, 'cut down Goldsmith's hawthorn bush, that supplies so beautiful an image in the Deserted Village!' 'Ma foy!' exclaimed the bishop, is that the hawthorn bush? Then ever let it be sacred from the edge of the axe, and evil to him that would cut from it a branch!'”

In other places, the Schoolmaster is called, not Paddy Burns, but Thomas Byrne, evidently the same person. He had been educated for school-teaching, but had gone into the army, and, serving in Spain during the reign of Queen Anne, became

quarter-master of the regiment. On the return of peace he took up his original calling. He is represented to be well qualified to teach; little more than writing, reading, and arithmetic were wanted, but he could translate extemporaneously Virgil's Eclogues into Irish verse, in considerable elegance. But his grand accomplishment was the narration of his adventures, which was commonly exercised in the alehouse; at the same time that, when not in a particular humour for teaching, he would edify his boys in the school with one of his stories. Amongst his most eager listeners was Oliver, who was so much excited by what he heard, that his friends used to ascribe his own love of rambling to this cause. The schoolmaster was, in fact, the very man to raise the imagination in the young poet. He was eccentric in his habits, of a romantic turn, wrote poetry, was well versed in the fairy superstitions of the country, and what is not less common in Ireland, believed implicitly in their truth.

A poor woman, named Catherine Geraghty, was supposed to be

"Yon widowed, solitary thing,

That feebly bends beside the plashy spring:
She, wretched matron, pressed in age for bread,
To strip the brook with mantling cresses spread."

The brook and ditches near where her cabin stood, still furnish cresses, and several of her descendants reside in the neighbourhood. The school-house is still pointed out, but it is unfortunate for its identity, that no school-house was built then, school being taught in the master's cottage. There is more evidence in nature of the poet's recalling the place of his boyhood as he wrote his poem. The waters and marshy lands, in more than one direction, gave him acquaintance with the singular bird which he has introduced with such effect, as an image of desolation.

"Along thy glades, a solitary guest,

The hollow-sounding bittern guards its nest."

Little charm as Lissoy has at the present moment, independent of association with Oliver Goldsmith, with him and genius it possesses one that grows upon you the more you trace the

scenes made prominent in his poem, and we leave it with regret.

There are various other places in the same part of Ireland which are connected with the early history of Goldsmith. At the school of Paddy Byrne he made little progress, as was to be expected, except in a growing attachment to the marvellous. He devoured not only the romantic stories of the schoolmaster, but of the peasantry. He listened enthusiastically to their ballads, their fairy tales and superstitions, of which they have in Ireland a plentiful stock. He got hold of, and read with equal avidity, what have been called the cottage classics of Ireland. Those books which may be found in their cabins everywhere. History of Witches and Ghosts; the Devil and Dr. Faustus; Parismus and Parismenus; Montelea, Knight of the Oracle ; Seven Champions of Christendom; Mendoza's Art of Boxing; Ovid's Art of Love; Lives of celebrated Pirates; History of the Irish Rogues and Rapparees; of Moll Flanders; of Jack the Bachelor, a notorious smuggler; of Fair Rosamond and Jane Shore; of Donna Rosena; the Life and Adventures of James Freny, a famous Irish robber, etc. A precious literature for a lad, it must be confessed. Luckily, if it excited his imagination it failed in corrupting his heart; and, thanks to the spread of knowledge, a better class of books has now found its way even into Irish cabins, amongst which not the least general are Chambers's Journal and Tracts. To put Oliver under more suitable tuition, he was sent to the Rev. Mr. Griffin of Elphin, master of the school once taught by his grandfather. Here he became an inmate of his uncle, Mr. John Goldsmith, of Ballyoughter, in the vicinity. Displaying now much talent, which was at once seen and cordially acknowledged by his uncle, he was destined for the university, and preparatory to that he was sent to a school of repute at Athlone. At this school he continued two years; when he was removed to Edgeworthstown, under the care of the Rev. Patrick Hughes, where he continued till he went to the university.

That we may take a connected view of his homes and haunts in this part of the country, we must include at once his life hereabout before he went to the university,

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