motive for this visit to the Continent, but the real one, in all probability, was his long-cherished desire to see foreign parts. This, however, he would not acknowledge even to himself, but sought to reconcile his roving propensities with some grand moral purpose. "I esteem the traveller who instructs the 5 heart," says he, in one of his subsequent writings, "but I despise him who only indulges the imagination. A man who leaves home to mend himself and others, is a philosopher; but he who goes from country to country, guided by the blind impulse of curiosity, is only a vagabond." He, of course, was to 10 travel as a philosopher, and in truth his outfits for a Continental tour were in character. "I shall carry just £33 to France," said he, "with good store of clothes, shirts, &c., and that with economy will suffice." He forgot to make mention of his flute, which it will be found had occasionally to come in play when 15 economy could not replenish his purse, nor philosophy find him a supper. Thus slenderly provided with money, prudence, or experience, and almost as slightly guarded against "hard knocks as the hero of La Mancha, whose head-piece was half iron, half pasteboard, he made his final sally forth upon the 20 world; hoping all things; believing all things; little anticipating the checkered ills in store for him; little thinking when he penned his valedictory letter to his good uncle Contarine, that he was never to see him more; never to return after all his wandering to the friend of his infancy; never to revisit his 25 early and fondly remembered haunts at "sweet Lissoy" and Ballymahon. The agreeable Fellow-Passengers. - Risks from Friends picked up by the Wayside. -Sketches of Holland and the Dutch. - Shifts while a poor Student at Leyden. - The Tulip-Speculation — The provident Flute. Sojourn at Paris. -Sketch of Voltaire.—Travelling Shifts of a Philosophic Vagabond. His usual indiscretion attended Goldsmith at the very outset of his foreign enterprise. He had intended to take shipping at Leith for Holland; but on arriving at that port, he found a 30 ship about to sail for Bordeaux, with six agreeable passengers, whose acquaintance he had probably made at the inn. He was not a man to resist a sudden impulse; so, instead of embarking for Holland, he found himself ploughing the seas on his way 5 to the other side of the Continent. Scarcely had the ship been two days at sea, when she was driven by stress of weather to Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Here "of course "Goldsmith and his agreeable fellow-passengers found it expedient to go on shore and "refresh themselves after the fatigues of the voyage." "Of 10 course" they frolicked and made merry until a late hour in the evening, when, in the midst of their hilarity, the door was burst open, and a sergeant and twelve grenadiers entered with fixed bayonets, and took the whole convivial party prisoners. It seems that the agreeable companions with whom our 15 greenhorn had struck up such a sudden intimacy, were Scotchmen in the French service, who had been in Scotland enlisting recruits for the French army. In vain Goldsmith protested his innocence; he was marched off with his fellow-revellers to prison whence he with difficulty 20 obtained his release at the end of a fortnight. With his customary facility, however, at palliating his misadventures, he found everything turn out for the best. His imprisonment saved his life, for during his detention the ship proceeded on her voyage, but was wrecked at the mouth of the Garonne, and 25 all on board perished. Goldsmith's second embarkation was for Holland direct, and in nine days he arrived at Rotterdam, whence he proceeded, without any more deviations, to Leyden. He gives a whimsical picture, in one of his letters, of the appearance of the Hol30 landers. "The modern Dutchman is quite a different creature from him of former times: he in everything imitates a Frenchman but in his easy, disengaged air. He is vastly ceremonious, and is, perhaps, exactly what a Frenchman might have been in the reign of Louis XIV. Such are the better bred. But the 35 downright Hollander is one of the oddest figures in nature. Upon a lank head of hair he wears a half-cocked narrow hat laced with black ribband; no coat, but seven waistcoats and nine pair of breeches, so that his hips reach up almost to his armpits. This well-clothed vegetable is now fit to see company or make love. But what a pleasing creature is the object of his appetite! why, she wears a large fur cap, with a deal of Flanders lace; and for every pair of breeches he carries, she puts on two petticoats. "A Dutch lady burns nothing about her phlegmatic admirer 5 but his tobacco. You must know, sir, every woman carries in her hand a stove of coals, which, when she sits, she snugs under her petticoats, and at this chimney, dozing Strephon lights his pipe." In the same letter he contrasts Scotland and Holland. "There, 10 hills and rocks intercept every prospect; here, it is all a continued plain. There you might see a well-dressed Duchess issuing from a dirty close, and here a dirty Dutchman inhabiting a palace. The Scotch may be compared to a tulip, planted in dung; but I can never see a Dutchman in his own house, but 15 I think of a magnificent Egyptian temple dedicated to an ox." The country itself awakened his admiration. "Nothing," said he, "can equal its beauty; wherever I turn my eyes, fine houses, elegant gardens, statues, grottos, vistas, present themselves; but when you enter their towns, you are charmed 20 beyond description. No misery is to be seen here, every one is usefully employed." And again, in his noble description in The Traveller: "To men of other minds my fancy flies, Imbosom'd in the deep where Holland lies. 25 30 35 He remained about a year at Leyden, attending the lectures 40 of Gaubius on chemistry and Albinus on anatomy; though his studies are said to have been miscellaneous, and directed to literature rather than science. The thirty-three pounds with which he had set out on his travels were soon consumed, and he was put to many a shift to meet his expenses until his pre5 carious remittances should arrive. He had a good friend on these occasions in a fellow-student and countryman, named Ellis, who afterwards rose to eminence as a physician. He used frequently to loan small sums to Goldsmith, which were always scrupulously paid. Ellis discovered the innate merits 10 of the poor awkward student, and used to declare in after-life that "it was a common remark in Leyden, that in all the peculiarities of Goldsmith, an elevation of mind was to be noted; a philosophical tone and manner; the feelings of a gentleman, and the language and information of a scholar." 15 Sometimes, in his emergencies, Goldsmith undertook to teach the English language. It is true he was ignorant of the Dutch, but he had a smattering of the French, picked up among the Irish priests at Ballymahon. He depicts his whimsical embarrassment in this respect, in his account in the Vicar of Wakefield 20 of the "Philosophic Vagabond" who went to Holland to teach the natives English, without knowing a word of their own language. Sometimes, when sorely pinched, and sometimes, perhaps, when flush, he resorted to the gambling-tables, which in those days abounded in Holland. His good friend Ellis repeat25 edly warned him against this unfortunate propensity, but in vain. It brought its own cure, or rather its own punishment, by stripping him of every shilling. Ellis once more stepped in to his relief with a true Irishman's generosity, but with more considerateness than generally char30 acterizes an Irishman, for he only granted pecuniary aid on condition of his quitting the sphere of danger. Goldsmith gladly consented to leave Holland, being anxious to visit other parts. He intended to proceed to Paris and pursue his studies there, and was furnished by his friend with money for the journey. 35 Unluckily, he rambled into the garden of a florist just before quitting Leyden. The tulip-mania was still prevalent in Holland, and some species of that splendid flower brought immense prices. In wandering through the garden, Goldsmith recollected that his uncle Contarine was a tulip-fancier. The thought suddenly struck him that here was an opportunity of testifying, in a delicate manner, his sense of that generous uncle's past kindnesses. In an instant his hand was in his pocket; a number of choice and costly tulip-roots were purchased and packed up for Mr. Contarine; and it was not until 5 he had paid for them that he bethought himself that he had spent all the money borrowed for his travelling expenses. Too proud, however, to give up his journey, and too shamefaced to make another appeal to his friend's liberality, he determined to travel on foot, and depend upon chance and good luck for 10 the means of getting forward; and it is said that he actually set off on a tour of the Continent, in February, 1755, with but one spare shirt, a flute, and a single guinea. 66 "Blessed," says one of his biographers, "with a good constitution, an adventurous spirit, and with that thoughtless, or, per- 15 haps, happy disposition which takes no care for to-morrow, he continued his travels for a long time in spite of innumerable privations." In his amusing narrative of the adventures of a Philosophic Vagabond" in the Vicar of Wakefield, we find shadowed out the expedients he pursued. "I had some knowl- 20 edge of music, with a tolerable voice; I now turned what was once my amusement 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. When- 25 ever I approached a peasant's house towards nightfall, I played one of my merriest tunes, and that procured me not only a lodging, but subsistence for the next day; but in truth I must own, whenever I attempted to entertain persons of a higher rank, they always thought my performance odious, and never made 30 me any return for my endeavors to please them." At Paris he attended the chemical lectures of Rouelle, then in great vogue, where he says he witnessed as bright a circle of beauty as graced the court of Versailles. His love of theatricals also led him to attend the performances of the celebrated 35 actress Mademoiselle Clairon, with which he was greatly delighted. He seems to have looked upon the state of society with the eye of a philosopher, but to have read the signs of the times with the prophetic eye of a poet. In his rambles about the en |