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 alehouse, 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, one throb 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;
Far 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 of state 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, a base ministerial hack, 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. How could a clerical vampyre like this Scott, himself crammed with two fat livings, the price of subservience understand such high principle? 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 excite the imagination of 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 those 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. To put Oliver under more suituable 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, and his visits hither during an interval of two years, between his quitting the university and his quitting Ireland, to study physic in Edinburgh, and, in fact, never again to return to Ireland.

There are several facts connected with his school days at Edgeworthstown that are very interesting. He is said to have become acquainted, either here or at Ballyoughton, with Turlogh O'Carolan, the last of the ancient Irish bards. This popular musician and poet, whose songs have been translated into English and published, maintained the style and life of the minstrel. He disdained to play for money, but went as an admired and honoured guest from house to house amongst the most ancient and opulent families of Connaught.

To complete his character as a harper, he was blind; and had been so from the age of eighteen. His songs, which are sung by the peasantry with enthusiasm, are numerous, and celebrate the persons and families of his patrons. If they do not in the mind of an Englishman appear to possess an originality equal to their fame in Ireland, it is to be remembered that they have there all the charm of association; their very titles being the names of lords and ladies of old families: O'Connor Faby; Dennis O'Connor; Planxty Stafford ; Nelly Plunket; Mrs. French; Anna M'Dermott Roe, etc.

The influence which the other local poet, Laurence Whyte, had on the mind and genius of Goldsmith is very striking. Whyte wrote, as part of a larger poem, The Parting Cup, or the Humours of Deoch an Doruis, in four cantos. It is a lively picture of a Westmeath farmer's life, about the year 1710, and shows not only how its themes had sunk into the mind of Goldsmith as a boy when they reappeared in the Deserted Village, but also how old and how fixed a portion of Irish history are the miseries and outrages of eviction; the stream of consequent emigration; and the curse of absenteeism. Whyte's poem is very clever, and deserves to be better known. Speaking of the better condition of farmers in the seventeenth century, he proceeds :

"Thus farmers lived like gentlemen,

Ere lands were raised from five to ten;
Again from ten to three times five,
Then very few could hope to thrive;
But tugged against the rapid stream,
Which drove them back from whence
they came :

At length 'twas canted to a pound,
What tenant then could keep his ground?
Not knowing which, to stand or fly,
When rent-rolls mounted zenith high,
They had their choice to run away,
Or labour for a groat a day.
Now beggared and of all bereft,
Are doomed to starve or live by theft.
Take to the mountain or the roads,
When banished from their old abodes.
Their native soil were forced to quit,
So Irish landlords thought it fit;
Who without ceremony or rout,

For their improvements turned them out.

If a poet at the present hour were describing the acts and deeds of the Irish exterminators, could he have done it more literally?

To turn to a more agreeable subject. The chief incident in "She Stoops to Conquer" is said to have originated in an amusing adventure of Goldsmith's, on his last going from home to the school at Edgeworthstown; and is thus related by Prior :-"Having set off on horseback, there being then, and indeed now, no regular wheeled conveyance from Ballymahon, he loitered on the road, amusing himself by viewing the neighbouring gentlemen's seats. A friend had presented him with a guinea; and the desire, perhaps, of spending it-to a schoolboy-in a most independent manner at an inn, tended to slacken his diligence on the road. Night overtook him in the

small town of Ardagh, about half-way on his journey. Inquiring for the best house in the place, meaning the best inn, he chanced to address, as is said, a person named Cornelius Kelly, who boasted of having taught fencing to the Marquis of Granby, and was then domesticated in the house of Mr. Featherstone, a gentleman of fortune in the town: he was known as a notorious wag; and, willing to play off a trick upon one whom he had no doubt discovered to be a swaggering schoolboy, directed him to the house of his patron.

Suspecting no deception, Oliver proceeded as directed; gave authoritative orders about the care of his horse; and, being thence conceived by the servants to be an expected guest, was ushered into the presence of their master, who immediately discovered the mistake. Being, however, a man of humour, and willing to enjoy an evening's amusement with a boy under the influence of so unusual a blunder, he encouraged it, particularly when, by the communicative disposition of the guest, it was found he was the son of an old acquaintance on his way to school. Nothing occurred to undeceive the self-importance of the youth, fortified by the possession of a sum he did not often possess; wine was therefore ordered, in addition to a good supper, and the supposed landlord, his wife and daughters, were invited to partake of it. On retiring for the night, a hot cake was ordered for breakfast the following morning; nor was it until preparing to quit the house next day that he discovered he had been entertained in a private family."

Ballymahon, the little foreign-looking town near his native place, figures conspicuously in Goldsmith's early life. After his father's death, which took place while he was at college, his mother removed thither; and thither during vacations Oliver betook himself. Again, when he quitted college, he spent two years amongst his relations, with no fixed aim; sometimes he was with his uncle Contarine in Roscommon; sometimes at Lissoy, where now his brother-in-law, Mr. Hodson, lived in the old house; at other times he was with his brother Henry, who, officiating as curate, lived at Pallasmore in the house where Öliver was born, and, to eke out his small salary, kept a school, in which Oliver assisted him. No place was so dear to him, however, as Lissoy, where he entered into all the rural sports and occupations of his brother-in-law with fullest enjoyment. There is no doubt that, had he had sufficient means, he would have continued to live here a country life, and the world would most probably have lost a poet. As it is, he has made the life and characters of Lissoy familiar to all the world, in both the Deserted Village and the Vicar of Wakefield. No man drew more from real, and especially from his own past life, than Goldsmith. The last years he spent in the country he was a tutor in the family of a gentleman in the county of Roscommon, of the name of Flinn ; and the nature of his impressions regarding such a situation he is supposed to have recorded in the history of The Man in Black.

His mother's house at Ballymahon, where she lived as a widow about twenty years, is still pointed out to the curious; it forms one corner of the road to Edgeworthstown. Some shop accounts have

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