converse upon such subjects.' Some little time he also seems to have passed at Brussels. At Maestricht, there is trace of his having examined an extensive cavern, or stone quarry, at that time much visited by travellers. And it was doubtless at Antwerp (a 'fortification in Flanders') that he saw the maimed, deformed, chained, yet cheerful slave, to whom he refers in that charming essay wherein he argues that happiness and pleasure are in ourselves, and not in the objects offered for our amusement. He did not travel to see that all was barren; he did not merely outface the poverty, the hardship, the fatigue; he made them his servants, and ministers to entertainment and wisdom.

Before he passed through Flanders good use had been made of his flute; and when he came to the poorer provinces of France, he found it greatly serviceable. 'I had 'some knowledge of music,' says the Vagabond, with a 'tolerable voice; I now turned what was once my amuse'ment into a present means of subsistence. I passed 'among the harmless peasants of Flanders, and among such of the French as were poor enough to be very merry; for I ever found them sprightly in proportion 'to their wants. Whenever I approached a peasant's 'house towards night-fall, I played one of my most 'merry tunes, and that procured me not only a lodging, 'but subsistence for the next day. I once or twice attempted to play for people of fashion; but they always 'thought my performance odious, and never rewarded me ' even with a trifle.' In plain words, he begged, as

Holberg had done; supported by his cheerful spirit, and the thought that Holberg's better fate might one day yet be his. Not, we may be sure, the dull round of professional labour, but intellectual distinction, popular fame, were now within the sphere of Goldsmith's vision: and what these will enable a man joyfully to endure, he afterwards bore witness to. The perspective of life brightens upon us when terminated by objects so charming. 'Every intermediate image of want, banishment, or sorrow, receives a lustre from their distant influence. With 'these in view, the patriot, philosopher, and poet, have 'looked with calmness on disgrace and famine, and rested on their straw with cheerful serenity.' Straw, doubtless, was his own peasant-lodging often; but from it the wanderer rose, refreshed and hopeful, and bade the melody and sport resume, and played with a new delight to the music of enchanting verse already dancing in his brain.

Gay sprightly land of mirth and social ease,

Pleas'd with thyself, whom all the world can please,
How often have I led thy sportive choir,

With tuneless pipe, beside the murmuring Loire!
Where shading elms along the margin grew,

And, freshen'd from the wave, the zephyr flew ;
And haply, though my harsh touch falt'ring still,
But mock'd all tune, and marr'd the dancer's skill;
Yet would the village praise my wondrous power,
And dance, forgetful of the noon-tide hour.
Alike all ages. Dames of ancient days

Have led their children through the mirthful maze,
And the gay grandsire, skill'd in gestic lore,
Has frisk'd beneath the burden of threescore.
So blest a life these thoughtless realms display,
Thus idly busy rolls their world away :

Theirs are those arts that mind to mind endear,
For honour forms the social temper here.
Honour, that praise which real merit gains
Or e'en imaginary worth obtains,

Here passes current; paid from hand to hand,
It shifts in splendid traffic round the land;
From courts to camps, to cottages it strays,
And all are taught an avarice of praise.

They please, are pleased; they give to get esteem;
Till, seeming blest, they grow to what they seem.

Arrived in Paris, he rested some brief space, and, for the time, a sensible improvement is to be observed in his resources. This is not easily explained; for, as will appear a little later in our history, many applications to Ireland of this date remained altogether without answer, and a sad fate had fallen suddenly on his best friend. But in subsequent communication with his kinsman Hodson, he remarked that there was hardly a kingdom in Europe in which he was not a debtor; and in Paris, if anywhere, he would find many hearts made liberal by the love of learning. His early memoir writers assert with confidence, that in at least some small portion of these travels he acted as companion to a young man of large fortune (nephew to a pawnbroker, and articled-clerk to an attorney); and there are passages in the Philosophic Vagabond, which, if they did not themselves suggest this, would tend to bear it out. 'I was to be the young gentleman's governor, 'with a proviso that he should always be permitted to govern himself. He was heir to a fortune of two hun'dred thousand pounds, left him by an uncle in the West

Indies; and all his questions on the road were, how

'much money could be saved. Such curiosities as could 'be seen for nothing, he was ready enough to look at; 'but if the sight of them was to be paid for, he usually 'asserted that he had been told they were not worth 'seeing.'

Poor Goldsmith could not have profited much by so thrifty a young gentleman, but he certainly seems to have attended the fashionable chemical lectures of the day ('I 'have witnessed as bright a circle of beauty at the lectures ' of Rouelle as gracing the court of Versailles'); to have seen and admired the celebrated actress Mademoiselle Clairon (of whom he speaks in an essay); and to have had leisure to look quietly around him, and form certain grave and settled conclusions on the political and social state of France. He says, in his Animated Nature, that he never walked about the environs of Paris that he did not look upon the immense quantity of game running almost tame on every side of him, as a badge ' of the slavery of the people.' What they wished him to observe as an object of triumph, he added, he regarded with a secret dread and compassion. Nor was it the badge of slavery that alone arrested his attention. on every side he saw this, he saw liberty at but a little distance beyond, and predicted, in words that are really very remarkable, the issue which was so terrible and yet so glorious. 'As the Swedes are making concealed ap'proaches to despotism, the French, on the other hand, ' are imperceptibly vindicating themselves into freedom.

If

'When I consider that these parliaments, the members of which are all created by the court and the presidents of 'which can only act by immediate direction, presume

even to mention privileges and freedom, who till of late ' received directions from the throne with implicit humility;

' when this is considered, I cannot help fancying that the genius of Freedom has entered that kingdom in disguise. If they have but three weak monarchs more successively on the throne, the mask will be laid aside, and the country will certainly once more be free.' Some thirty years after this was written, and when the writer had been fifteen years in his grave, the crash of the falling Bastille resounded over Europe.

Before Goldsmith quitted Paris, he is said by Mr. Prior to have seen and become known to Voltaire. But at Paris this could not have been. The great wit was then selfexiled from the capital, which he had not seen from the luckless hour in which he accepted the invitation of Frederick of Prussia. Mr. Prior speaks, it is quite true, on Goldsmith's own authority; but the passage is loosely written, does not appear in a work which bore the writer's name, and may either have been tampered with by others, or even mistakenly set down by himself in confusion of memory. The error does not vitiate the statement in an integral point, since it can hardly be doubted, I think, that the meeting actually took place. The time when Goldsmith passed through the Genevese territory, is the time when Voltaire had settled himself, in greater quiet