Now drooping, woeful, wan, like one forlorn, Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love. "One morn I missed him on the accustomed hill, Along the heath, and near his favorite tree; Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he." And ye, that from the stately brow Of Windsor's heights the expanse below Of grove, of lawn, of mead survey, Whose turf, whose shade, whose flowers among His silver winding way. “Ah, happy hills! ah, pleasing shade! Where once my careless childhood strayed, A stranger yet to pain! I feel the gales that from ye blow, A momentary bliss bestow." The third is again from the Elegy: "Beneath those rugged elms, that yew tree's shade, Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap, Each in his narrow cell forever laid, The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. "The breezy call of incense-breathing morn, The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed, The fourth bears this inscription: 'This Monument, in honor of THOMAS GRAY, Was erected A.D. 1799, Among the scenery Celebrated by that great Lyric and Elegiac Poet. He died in 1771, And lies unnoted in the adjoining Church-yard, And pathetically recorded the interment Of his Aunt and lamented Mother." This monument is inclosed in a neatly-kept garden-like inclosure, with a winding walk approaching from the shade of the neighboring trees. To the right, across the park, at some little distance, backed by fine trees, stands the rural little church and churchyard where Gray wrote his Elegy, and where he lies. As you walk on to this, the mansion closes the distant view between the woods with fine effect. The church has often been engraved, and is therefore tolerably familiar to the general reader. It consists of two barn-like structures, with tall roofs, set side by side, and the tower and finely-tapered spire rising above them at the northwest corner. The church is thickly hung with ivy, where "The moping owl may to the moon complain The structure is as simple and old-fashioned, both without and within, as any village church can well be. No village, however, is to be seen. Stoke consists chiefly of scattered houses, and this is now in the midst of the park. In the churchyard, "Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade, Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap, Each in his narrow cell forever laid, The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep." All this is quite literal; and the tomb of the poet himself, near the southeast window, completes the impression of the scene. It is a plain brick altar tomb, covered with a blue slate slab, and, besides his own ashes, contains those of his mother and aunt. On the slab are inscribed the following lines by Gray himself: "In the vault beneath are deposited, in hope of a joyful resurrection, the remains of Mary Antrobus. She died unmarried, Nov. 5, 1749, aged sixty-six. In the same pious confidence, beside her friend and sister, here sleep the remains of Dorothy Gray, widow; the tender, careful mother of many children, ONE of whom alone had the misfortune to survive her. She died, March 11, 1753, aged sixty-seven." No testimony of the interment of Gray in the same tomb was inscribed any where till Mr. Penn, in 1799, erected the monument already mentioned, and placed a small slab in the wall, under the window, opposite to the tomb itself, recording the fact of Gray's burial there. The whole scene is well worthy of a summer day's stroll, especially for such as, pent in the metropolis, know how to enjoy the quiet freshness of the country, and the associations of poetry and the past. The Great Western Railway now will set such down in about one hour at Slough, a pleasant walk from Stoke. The late Mr. Penn, a gentleman of refined taste, and a great reverencer of the memory of Gray, possessed his autographs, which have been sold at great prices. It is to be regretted that his house, too, is now gone, but the church and the tomb will remain to future ages. 02 Or all our poets, there is none who more completely ver fied the words of Crabbe than Oliver Goldsmith: "And never mortal left this world of sin More like the infant that he entered in." He was a genuine Irishman, all heart and impulse. Imposed upon, ill treated, often made the butt of witlings, and compelled to labor and live on with that cancer of the heart, constant anxiety to procure the ordinary means of existence-none of these things could convert the milk of human kindness within him into gall, could teach him one lesson of malevolence, or dim the godlike sense of truth and humanity in his soul. Through a long experience of men and things, living by shifts, and writing for mere bread, he still remained the same simple, warm-hearted, generous, and unsophisticated creature that he was at the beginning. Improvident he was, out of the overflowing goodness of his nature; ready, at the first cry of distress, to give away that which he had bitterly toiled for, and which had been grudgingly paid; but he never made others the victims of his improvidence. He remained single, and made all that were in suffering his family, and helped them even when he needed help himself. I know not whether more to admire the exquisite beauty of his poetry, the life and vir tues of the Vicar of Wakefield, or the gloriously unworldly texture of his heart. Thousands of brilliant spirits have risen, glittered, and died in the field of our literature, having astonished and wounded their neighbors, as they have gone along in their pride, dreaming of an everlasting reputation, who are now justly forgotten, or are remembered without respect or emotion. They had intellect unallied to heart, and the cold meteor dazzled in its descent to earth, and left no blessing behind it. But the genial spirit of Goldsmith, all love and pity in itself, is, and will be forever, remembered with love and reverence-the last the very quality that he received least of in his lifetime. One of the most amiable and attractive points of view in which we contemplate Dr. Johnson, is that of his attachment to Goldsmith, and of his acknowledgment of his genius. The life of Oliver Goldsmith has been well written by Mr. Prior. It is almost the only one that I have found, during the researches necessary for this work, which might have rendered unnecessary a visit to the actual "homes and haunts" of the poet under notice. It is a most rare circumstance that a biographer possesses the faculty of landscape-painting, and, besides detailing the facts of a person's life, can make you see the places where that life was passed. Mr. Prior possesses this faculty in a high degree. He was at the pains to visit Ireland, and see, with his own eyes, the scenes where Goldsmith was born, and where he lived; and the different sojourns of Goldsmith in that counɩry are so accurately sketched, that they might have been transferred literally to these pages with advantage, had not I myself also gone over the same ground. Goldsmith was of a very respectable family in Ireland, many of whom had been clergymen, residing principally |