and-out fiery Chartist, I have at least seen some smouldering
specimens--men with much of the eloquence and a little of the enterprise
of the original five-pointers. It may be that as I grow older, my most
interesting historical period will move with me, keeping always at a
distance of sixty years from the present, until, when I get within hail
of the Psalmist's stint, I shall be most interested in childish things."
These words rather staggered me, and set me thinking of geometrical
_loci_. A man holding such views would find it difficult to obtain a
bird's-eye view of history.

GOLDSMITH IN GAELIC.

If I had an adequate knowledge of Gaelic, combined with plenty of money
and leisure, I should set myself the task of translating the whole of
Goldsmith's Essays and Tales into that language, for the benefit of
those who had no English. It would be a great feat if one could impress
on the modern Celtic mind the conviction that piety and diversion are by
no means incompatible. Goldsmith's _Auburn_ introduces us to the most
delightful prospect on earth: a simple village community, unacquainted
with luxury and uncorrupted by vice. The inhabitants are full of health
and joy--they till the soil and gain ample satisfaction for their
unambitious wants. Life passes along bringing a pleasant succession of
happy hours. After the labours of the day, the young people dance
merrily on the green, and the old folk look on and regret that their own
legs are too stiff to keep time to the fiddles. Certain Highland
landlords might also read with advantage the exquisitely pathetic lines
in which the poet pictures the desolation and ruin of the rural
paradise, and perhaps conclude therefrom that, when glen and strath are
depleted of their inhabitants, and these latter driven over the seas to
seek a foothold in strange lands, it is the very heart's blood of
Britain that is being drained away.

On the whole, probably no English writer has given such genuine delight
as Goldsmith, and such genuine instruction too. Ineradicably frivolous,
culpably negligent of the morrow, whimsically vain and living all his
days from hand to mouth, he had the faculty of drawing upon himself the
pity, and even the contempt, of his associates. But in the eyes of
posterity, his happy-go-lucky life is amply redeemed by the work he has
left behind him, for _it_ is pure and good. His river of speech flows
ever on shining like molten gold. No man of his time possessed t