CHAPTER V.

The agreeable Fellow-Passengers.-Risks from Friends picked up by the Wayside. - Sketches of Holland and the Dutch. Shifts while a poor Student at Leyden. - The Tulip-Speculation. The provident Flute. Sojourn at Paris. Sketch of Voltaire. -Travelling Shifts of a Philosophic Vagabond.

FIS usual indiscretion attended Goldsmith

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at the very outset of his foreign enterprise. He had intended to take shipping at Leith for Holland; but on arriving at that port, he found a ship about to sail for Bordeaux, with six agreeable passengers, whose acquaintance he had probably made at the inn. He was not a man to resist a sudden impulse; so, instead of embarking for Holland, he found himself ploughing the seas on his way to the other side of the continent. Scarcely had the ship been two days at sea, when she was driven by stress of weather to Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Here "of course" Goldsmith and his agreeable fellow-passengers found it expedient to go on shore and "refresh themselves after the fatigues of the voyage." "Of course" they frolicked and made merry until a late hour in the evening, when, in the midst of their hilarity, the door was burst open, and a sergeant and twelve grenadiers entered with fixed bayonets, and took the whole convivial party prisoners.

SKETCHES OF HOLLAND.

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It seems that the agreeable companions with whom our greenhorn had struck up such a sudden intimacy, were Scotchmen in the French service, who had been in Scotland enlisting recruits for the French army.

In vain Goldsmith protested his innocence; he was marched off with his fellow-revellers to prison, whence he with difficulty obtained his release at the end of a fortnight. With his customary facility, however, at palliating his misadventures, he found everything turn out for the best. His imprison

ment saved his life, for during his detention the ship proceeded on her voyage, but was wrecked at the mouth of the Garonne, and all on board perished.

Goldsmith's second embarkation was for Holland direct, and in nine days he arrived at Rotterdam, whence he proceeded, without any more deviations, to Leyden. He gives a whimsical picture, in one of his letters, of the appearance of the Hollanders. "The modern Dutchman is quite a different creature from him of former times: he in everything imitates a Frenchman but in his easy, disengaged air. He is vastly ceremonious, and is, perhaps, exactly what a Frenchman might have been in the reign of Louis XIV. Such are the better bred. But the downright Hollander is one of the oddest figures in nature. Upon a lank head of hair he wears a half-cocked narrow hat, laced with black ribband; no coat, but seven waistcoats and nine pair of breeches, so that his hips reach up almost to his armpits. This wellclothed vegetable is now fit to see company or make love

But what a pleasing creature is the object

of his appetite! why, she wears a large fur cap, with a deal of Flanders lace; and for every pair of breeches he carries, she puts on two petticoats.

"A Dutch lady burns nothing about her phlegmatic admirer but his tobacco. You must know, sir, every woman carries in her hand a stove of coals, which, when she sits, she snugs under her petticoats, and at this chimney, dozing Strephon lights his pipe."

In the same letter he contrasts Scotland and Holland. "There, hills and rocks intercept every prospect; here, it is all a continued plain. There you might see a well-dressed Duchess issuing from a dirty close, and here a dirty Dutchman inhabiting a palace. The Scotch may be compared to a tulip, planted in dung; but I can never see a Dutchman in his own house, but I think of a magnificent Egyptian temple dedicated to an ox." The country itself awakened his admiration. 'Nothing," said he, "can equal its beauty; wherever I turn my eyes, fine houses, elegant gardens, statues, grottos, vistas, present themselves; but when you enter their towns, you are charmed beyond description. No misery is to be seen here, every one is usefully employed." And again, in his noble description in "The Traveller ":

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"To men of other minds my fancy flies,
Imbosom'd in the deep where Holland lies.
Methinks her patient sons before me stand.
Where the broad ocean leans against the land,
And, sedulous to stop the coming tide,
Lifts the tall rampire's artificial pride.
Onward, methinks, and diligently slow,
The firm connected bulwark seems to grow;

SHIFTS AS A STUDENT.

Spreads its long arms amid the watery roar,
Scoops out an empire, and usurps the shore.
While the pent ocean, rising o'er the pile,
Sees an amphibious world before him smile:
The slow canal, the yellow blossom'd vale,
The willow-tufted bank, the gliding sail,
The crowded mart, the cultivated plain,
A new creation rescued from his reign."

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He remained about a year at Leyden, attending the lectures of Gaubius or chemistry and Albinus on anatomy; though his studies are said to have been miscellaneous, and directed to literature rather than science. The thirty-three pounds with which he had set out on his travels were soon consumed, and he was put to many a shift to meet his expenses until his precarious remittances should arrive. He had a good friend on these occasions in a fellow-student and countryman, named Ellis, who afterwards rose to eminence as a physician. He used frequently to loan small sums to Goldsmith, which were always scrupulously paid. Ellis discovered the innate merits of the poor awkward student, and used to declare in after-life that "it was a common remark in Leyden, that in all the peculiarities of Goldsmith, an elevation of mind was to be noted; a philosophical tone and manner; the feelings of a gentleman, and the language and information of a scholar."

Sometimes, in his emergencies, Goldsmith undertook to teach the English language. It is true he was ignorant of the Dutch, but he had a smattering of the French, picked up among the Irish priests at Ballymahon. He depicts his

whimsical embarrassment in this respect, in his account in the "Vicar of Wakefield” of the philosophical vagabond who went to Holland to teach the natives English, without knowing a word of their own language. Sometimes, when sorely pinched, and sometimes, perhaps, when flush, he resorted to the gambling-tables, which in those days abounded in Holland. His good friend Ellis repeatedly warned him against this unfortunate propensity, but in vain. It brought its own cure, or rather its own punishment, by stripping him of every shilling.

Ellis once more stepped in to his relief with a true Irishman's generosity, but with more considerateness than generally characterizes an Irishman, for he only granted pecuniary aid on condition of his quitting the sphere of danger. Goldsmith gladly consented to leave Holland, being anxious to visit other parts. He intended to proceed to Paris and pursue his studies there, and was furnished by his friend with money for the journey. Unluckily, he rambled into the garden of a florist just before quitting Leyden. The tulip-mania was still prevalent in Holland, and some species of that splendid flower brought immense prices. In wandering through the garden, Goldsmith recollected that his uncle Contarine was a tulip-fancier. The thought suddenly struck him that here was an opportunity of testifying, in a delicate manner, his sense of that generous uncle's past kindnesses. In an instant his hand was in his pocket; a number of choice and costly tulip-roots were purchased and packed