He indulges the imagination. A man who leaves home to mend himself and others, is a philosopher; but he who goes from country to country, guided by the blind impulse of curiosity, is only a vagabond." He, of course, was to travel as a philosopher, and in truth his outfits for a Continental tour were in character. "I shall carry just £33 to France," said he, "with good store of clothes, shirts, &c., and that with economy will suffice." forgot to make mention of his flute, which it will be found had occasionally to come in play when economy could not replenish his purse, nor philosophy find him a supper. Thus slenderly provided with money, prudence or experience, and almost as slightly guarded against "hard knocks as the hero of La Mancha, whose headpiece was half iron, half pasteboard, he made his final sally forth upon the world; hoping all things; believing all things: little anticipating the checkered ills in store for him; little thinking when he penned his valedictory letter to his good uncle Contarine, that he was never to see him more; never to return after all his wandering to the friend of his infancy: never to revisit his early and fondly remembered haunts at "sweet Lissoy" and Ballymahon. 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. IS usual indiscretion attended Goldsmith 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 fellowpassengers found it expedient to go on shore and "refresh themselves after the fatigues of the voyage." 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 grena "Of diers entered with fixed bayonets, and took the whole convivial party prisoners. 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-travellers 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 imprisonment 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 SKETCHES OF HOLLAND. 79 waistcoats and nine pair of breeches, so that his hips reach up almost to his armpits. This well-clothed 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 welldressed 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": "To men of other minds my fancy flies, A new creation rescued from his reign." He remained about a year at Leyden, attending the lectures of Gaubius on 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 |