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OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

THE VILLAGE OF AUBURN.

*

OW often have I paused on every

charm!

The sheltered cot, the cultivated farm;

The never-failing brook, the busy mill, The decent church that topped the neighbouring hill;

The hawthorn-bush, with seats beneath the shade,
For talking age and whispering lovers made!
How often have I blessed the coming day,
When toil remitting lent its turn to play;
And all the village train, from labour free,
Led up their sports beneath the spreading tree;
While many a pastime circled in the shade,
The young contending as the old surveyed;
And many a gambol frolicked o'er the ground,
And sleights of art and feats of strength went
round.

And still, as each repeated pleasure tired,
Succeeding sports the mirthful band inspired :
The dancing pair that simply sought renown,
By holding out to tire each other down;
The swain, mistrustless of his smutted face,
While secret laughter tittered round the place;
The bashful virgin's sidelong looks of love,
The matron's glance that would these looks
reprove,-

These were thy charms, sweet village! sports like these,

With sweet succession, taught e'en toil to please.

THINK of him, reckless, thriftless, vain
if you like, but merciful, gentle, gene-
rous, full of love and pity.
He passes

out of our life and goes to render his account; think of the poor pensioners weeping at his grave; think of the noble spirits that admired and deplored him, think of the righteous pen that wrote his epitaph, and of the wonderful and unanimous response of affection with which the world has paid back the love he gave it.

W. M. THACKERAY.

He was a friend to virtue, and in his most playful pages never forgets what is due to it. A gentleness, delicacy, and purity of feeling distinguishes whatever he wrote, and bears a correspondence to the generosity of a disposition which knew no bounds but his last guinea.

SIR WALTER SCOTT.

Few who consider the real compound of admirable and whimsical qualities which form his character, would wish to prune away its eccentricities, trim its grotesque luxuriance, and clip it down to the decent formalities of rigid virtue. gifted pen transmutes everything into gold, and his own genial nature reflects its sunshine through all his pages.

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WASHINGTON IRVING.

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WILLIAM COWPER.

TEACHER should be sparing of his smile.
Unless a love of virtue light the flame,
Satire is, more than those he brands, to
blame;

He hides behind a magisterial air
His own offences, and strips others bare;
Affects indeed a most humane concern,
That men, if gently tutor'd will not learn;
That mulish folly, not to be reclaim'd
By softer methods, must be made ashamed;
But [I might instance in St. Patrick's dean]
Too often rails to gratify his spleen.

Most satirists are indeed a public scourge;
Their mildest physic is a farrier's purge;
Their acrid temper turns, as soon as stirr'd,
The milk of their good purpose all to curd.

AD as was Cowper's history, with the vapours of a low insanity, if not always filling his garden, yet ever brooding on

the hill-tops of his horizon, he was, though his faith in God, however darkened by the introversions of a neat, poverty-stricken theology, yet able to lead his life to the end.

G. MACDONALD.

O poets, from a maniac's tongue was poured the deathless singing!

O Christians, at your cross of hope a hopeless hand was clinging!

O men, this man in brotherhood your weary paths beguiling,

Groaned wily while he taught you peace, and died while you were smiling.

E. B. BROWNING.

A heart at onće broken and playful, whose sorrows and amusements are our own.

SIR J. STEPHEN.

He had the richest wit and humour, yet a large part of his life was spent in sadness. Of an eminently humble and confiding spirit, he lived in dread of eternal condemnation. Happily all this has now passed away. He bequeathed an inexhaustible treasure to mankind, and he now knows the blessedness he has so touchingly described.

JOSEPH ANGUS.

KEATS.

TO A NIGHTINGALE.

FOR a draught of vintage, that hath been Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,

Tasting of Flora and the country-green, Dance, and Provençal song, and sun-burnt mirth! O for a beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,

And purple-stained mouth;

That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, And with thee fade away into the forest dim.

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret.

Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

And leaden-eyed despairs; Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, Or new love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

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