Chapter XIII: Part 13

Goldsmith was of a very respectable family in Ireland, many of whom had been clergymen, residing principally in the counties of Roscommon, Westmeath, and Longford. Two of them were deans of Elphin, another dean of Cloyne. Goldsmith used to boast that, by the female side, he was remotely descended from Oliver Cromwell, from whom his Christian name was derived. It seems, however, more likely, that he owed his name to his mother's father, the Rev. Oliver Jones, master of the diocesan school at Elphin. The poet's own father, Charles Goldsmith, was a poor curate at the time of the poet's birth. He had married Ann Jones at a time when he was without occupation, and therefore to the great dissatisfaction of her friends. Mrs. Goldsmith's uncle, however, was rector of Kilkenny West, near Lissoy, afterward to become the residence of Goldsmith himself, and to receive from him the immortal name and celebrity of Auburn. This uncle provided the young couple with a house, about six miles from Kilkenny West, at a small hamlet called Pallasmore, and with a salary for officiating at the church of the parish in which Pallas or Pallasmore was situated, and also in that of his own, Kilkenny West. It seems Goldsmith's parents continued to reside twelve years at Pallas, and here the poet was born, on the 10th of November, 1728. He was one of eight children, five boys and three girls. He was the second son, his elder brother being Henry, who afterward became curate of Kilkenny West, and lived at Lissoy, where Oliver addressed to him his poem, "The Traveler." That Goldsmith was come of a good stock, we may infer by the character of simple piety which both his poetry and local tradition give to his father, the good parish priest--"passing rich, with forty pounds a year"--and not the less from the spirit and decision which his grandmother, Mrs. Jones, displayed in order to improve the scanty income of Oliver's parents. The husband of this lady, the Rev. Oliver Jones, was now dead; she was a widow; her daughter and son-in-law were living at Pallas, on the poor stipend derived from his curacy. Her husband had rented a considerable tract of land on very advantageous terms, which now fell out of lease. She determined, if possible, to secure this for her son-in-law and daughter. She was refused; but, nothing daunted, she mounted behind her own son on a pillion, and set out on the long and arduous journey to Dublin, to try her personal influence with the landlord. Here the same refusal met her; but, as a last argument, she took out a hundred guineas, which she had provided herself with, and held them open in her hand while she pleaded. This had the effect that she procured _half_ the land on the same easy terms as before, and she used jocularly to regret that she had not taken two hundred guineas, and thus got the whole. This noble act of maternal heroism is the more to be admired, as it cost her the life of her son, who received an injury of some kind on the journey.

Pallasmore, then, where Oliver Goldsmith was born, is a mere cluster of two or three cottages, called in Ireland farm-houses, but which, to an English eye, would present only the appearance of huts. The place lies quite out of the track of high-roads, about a mile and a half from Ballymahon in a direct line, but perhaps three, taking in all the windings of the ways to it. It is now the property of the Edgeworths. There is nothing remarkable in the aspect of the country. It is rather flat, naked of trees, and cultured by small tenants. It was with some difficulty that I got at it. My car-driver from Edgeworthstown knew nothing more of it than its name, and we had proceeded somewhat beyond the proper turning, as it lay quite off the highway, and were obliged to obtain permission to pass through the park of Newcastle, in order to reach it without making a great circuit. Having approached to within half a mile of it, a peasant pointed it out, as a group of white cottages standing in a clump of trees. The lanes were now become so narrow and stony that I was obliged to quit my car, as Mr. Prior describes himself to have done, and proceed across the fields on foot. I passed along the deep, stony, and narrow lanes, here and there a regular Irish cabin sticking in the bank, the smoke coming out of the door, or issuing from the thatched roof about on a level with the fields above. A boy who was teaching school in one of these came out with his book in his hand, and directed me into a footpath across the fields. Here I advanced through the standing corn, and at length reached this out-of-the-world spot, dignified with the sounding title of Pallasmore. Here about three whitewashed cottages, of a superior description to the cabins I had passed in the narrow lanes, stood amid a number of ash-trees, looking out over an ordinary sort of country. A man, the inhabitant of one of them, advanced to show me the spot where the poet was born. He plunged into a potato-field, and at a few hundred yards from the cottages, in the bank of the next field, showed me a few stones, like the foundation of a wall, which have the reputation of being the sole remains of the house where the poet was born. Poets are, certainly, often born in odd places, but it certainly did strike me strangely, that the man who was destined to spend the greater portion of his life in the dense crowd of London, should have sprung out of this obscure and almost inaccessible location. There is nothing in the view around to suggest to the mind any the most faint dream of poetry. Oliver Goldsmith, however, was a mere, infant when first removed from this place. His father, two years after his birth, succeeded, on the death of his wife's uncle, to the rectory of Kilkenny West, and removed to Lissoy; but Oliver was accustomed to come thither, and made considerable sojourns with his brother Henry, who lived here when Oliver was grown up. The house is said to have been a good country house, looking toward Forney Church, at which Oliver's father and brother used to preach, and which still rises to view between it and some distant woods, one of the most pleasing objects of the scene.

Popular tradition ascribes the utter destruction of the house to the fairies, who, on its becoming untenanted, used to take up their quarters there, and pursue their nocturnal sports in great content. But a tenant being found, and repairs of the house being commenced, a huge man in huge jack-boots used to come every night, and making a horse of it by bestriding the roof, would push his legs through the tiles, and, imitating galloping, shake the roof to pieces. It was therefore obliged to remain empty, till, falling into ruin, it was at length cleared clean away, with the exception of these few stones.

The very ordinary character of this scene, and of the country round, almost extinguished my desire for proceeding onward five miles further to Lissoy, the reputed Auburn, especially as the Edgeworths had told me it was not worth my while. I inquired, however, of a farmer that I met on my return to the car that waited for me on the road, what sort of a place Lissoy was. "Oh, a very beautiful place!" said he, "a very beautiful place! You must see it: that was where Oliver Goldsmith lived and died." "Lived, but not died," I replied: "he died in London." "Oh no! your honor," replied the man, "I assure you he died there, and lies buried at Kilkenny West."

The accuracy of the man's account was about equal in all its parts. Lissoy was just as truly beautiful as Goldsmith was buried there. But this is always the way with the Irish peasantry. Unlike the Scotch, whose local knowledge is generally very correct, they seem to look upon all remarkable men as they do on their saints, and insist on their remains being preserved among them. At Kilcolman Castle I was assured with equal positiveness that Spenser was buried just below the castle, and the spot pointed out to me. There was, however, sufficient charm in the farmer's assurance that Lissoy was a very beautiful place, to turn the scale for going on. In such cases one is willing to be deceived, and follow the slightest word, though with an inward consciousness that we shall not find what we are promised. We drove on, therefore, six or seven miles further, over a very monotonous, naked country, only marked by a few banks for fences, and a few little smoky cabins with a poor population. It is a country that to Goldsmith's boyish fancy might be charming, but is certainly to an English eye by no means romantic. A part of an old round tower, however, stands near Auburn. There are the ruins of an old castle not far off, and old parks that _are_ charming. One I passed, old, gray, craggy, and full of fern, but having not a single tree in it except old thorn-trees, large and of venerable age. There was a desolate antiquity about it that was attractive to the imagination. From the higher part of the road, too, approaching Lissoy, you see the Shannon hastening on toward the west. Presently, at a turn of the road, we passed the public house said to be that alluded to in The Deserted Village, and were in that "very beautiful place," Lissoy. It consists, in fact, of a few common cottages by the road side, on a flat, and by no means particularly interesting scene. A few hundred yards beyond these cottages stand, at some distance from the road, the ruins of the house where Goldsmith's father lived, and which continued in the family till 1802, when it was sold by Henry, the son of Henry, Oliver Goldsmith's brother, the nephew of the poet who had gone to America. This house was described in 1790 by the Rev. Mr. Hancock, of Athlone, who was intimately acquainted with the Goldsmith family, and, indeed, managed their property for them, as "a snug farm-house, in view of the high road, to which a straight avenue leads, with double rows of ash-trees, six miles northeast of this town--Athlone. The farm is still held under the Naper family, by a nephew of Goldsmith at present in America. In the front view of the house is the 'decent church' of Kilkenny West, that literally 'tops the neighboring hill;' and in a circuit of not more than half a mile diameter around the house, are 'the never-failing brook,' 'the busy mill,' 'the hawthorn bush with seats beneath the shade,' 'the brook with mantling cresses spread,' 'the straggling fence that skirts the way, with blossomed furze unprofitably gay,' 'the thorn that lifts its head on high, where once the sign-post caught the passing eye,' 'the house where nut-brown draughts inspired;' in short, every striking object of the picture. There are, besides, many ruined houses in the neighborhood, bespeaking a better state of population than at present."

Such it was. Prior's description of it at his visit a few years ago would very nearly do for it now. "The house once occupied by the rector of Kilkenny West, pleasantly situated and of good dimensions, is now a ruin, verifying the truth of the pathetic lines of his son--

'Vain, transitory splendors! Could not all
Reprieve the tottering mansion from its fall!'

The front, including a wing, extends, as nearly as could be judged by passing it, sixty-eight feet by a depth of twenty-four; it consisted of two stories, with five windows in each. The roof has been off for a period of twenty years: the gable-ends remain, but the front and back walls of the upper story have crumbled away, and if the hand of the destroyer be not stayed, will soon wholly disappear. Two or three wretched cottages for laborers, surrounded by mud, adjoin it on the left. Behind the house is an orchard of some extent, and the remains of a garden, both utterly neglected. In fact, a pretty avenue of double rows of ash-trees, which formed the approach from the high road, about sixty yards distant, and at one time presented an object of interest to travelers, has, like every other trace of care or superintendence, disappeared--cut down by the ruthless hand of some destroyer. No picture of desolation can be more complete. As if an image of the impending ruin had been present, the poet has painted with fearful accuracy what his father's house was to be:

'Near yonder copse, where once the garden smiled,
And still where many a garden flower grows wild;
There, where a few torn shrubs the place disclose,
The village preacher's modest mansion rose.'"

Little can be added to that account. There still stands the long, white ruin of the house which sheltered Goldsmith as a boy, at the right-hand end one tall gable and chimney remaining aloft, the other having, since Mr. Prior's visit, fallen in. At the left hand, near the house, still remains _one_ of the wretched cottages he mentions. I went into it. The floor of mud was worn into hollows, in which geese were sitting in little pools. There was a dresser on one side, with a few plates laid on it; a few chairs of a rudeness of construction such as no Englishman who has not visited an Irish cabin has any conception of; and the interior of the roof, for ceiling it had none, was varnished into a jetty brilliancy with the smoke.

Behind the ruins of the house there are still the orchard and wild remains of a garden, inclosed with a high, old stone wall. One could imagine this retreat a play-place for the embryo poet, whose charm would long linger in his memory; and, in truth, when the house was complete, with its avenue of ashes, along which you looked to the highway, and thence across a valley to the church of Kilkenny West, on a hill about a mile distant, the abode of Goldsmith's boyhood must have been a very pleasant one. It is now seen as stripped of all its former attractions, its life, its completeness as a house, its trees; and stands a white, bare, and solitary ruin.

Many people think, that as Goldsmith's father was the clergyman, this was the parsonage. It was not so. The parsonage was at Kilkenny West, where the present rector resides. This house was attached to the farm which the pastor had here, and was probably a much better and more commodious dwelling than the parsonage.

Returning to the village--if three or four poor cottages by the roadside can deserve that name--the public house is the object which attracts your attention. This is said to be the very house of which Goldsmith speaks in The Deserted Village. Goldsmith, however, tells you himself, in The Deserted Village, that the public house, among others, was destroyed:

"Low lies that house where nut-brown draughts inspired,
Where graybeard mirth and smiling toil retired," &c.

In fact, it was rebuilt by Mr. Hogan, a gentleman living near, who, being an ardent admirer of Goldsmith's poetry, did all that he could to restore to Lissoy the characteristics of Auburn. He rebuilt the public house on the spot where tradition placed the old one, with the traditionary thorn in front. He gave it the sign of "The Jolly Pigeons," he supplied it with new copies of "The Twelve Good Rules," and "The Royal Game of Goose;" he went even to the length of the ludicrous in his zeal for an accurate _fac-simile_ of the genuine house, and

"Broken tea-cups, wisely kept for show,
Ranged o'er the chimney, glistened in a row."

These, to perpetuate them, were fast imbedded in the mortar--but in vain; relic-hunters knocked them out, fictitious as they were, and carried them off as genuine. The very sign did not escape this relic mania--it is no longer to be seen; nor, I suppose, were a new one to be set up, would it long remain. The new "Twelve Good Rules," and new "Royal Game of Goose," have gone the same way; and there is no question that a brave trade in such things might be carried on with what Goldsmith calls "the large family of fools," if a supply were kept here. The very thorn before the door has been cut down piecemeal, and carried off to all quarters of the world. In 1830, Mr. Prior, when visiting the place, making inquiries for Goldsmith's biography, observed that "a tender shoot had again forced its way to the surface, which he, in emulation of so many other inconsiderate idlers, felt disposed to seize upon as a memorial of his visit; but which, if permitted to remain, though this is unlikely, may renew the honors of its predecessor." Vain hope! there is not an atom of it left! He himself tells us, that "every traveler thither for forty years had carried away a portion of the tree, as a relic either of the poem or of his pilgrimage; when the branches had been destroyed, the trunk was attacked; and when this disappeared, even the roots were dug up, so that, in 1820, scarcely a vestige remained, either above or below ground, notwithstanding a resident gentleman had built a wall round it, to endeavor to prevent its extermination." There is now neither vestige of tree, root, nor wall. I suppose the rage of relicism has carried off the very stones that had stood on so hallowed a spot. There is still a slight mound left, or rather made, to mark the spot where the thorn stood.

The public house presents not a resemblance to Goldsmith's picture in his poem. The road from Ballymahon runs right toward this house. On arriving at it, the house stands on the further side of the road, facing you and the Ballymahon highway. Another road runs at right angles, that is, parallel with the house, so that it stands at what is usually called "where three roads meet." The road on your right hand runs down to the village; and some space is left in front of the house, the stone wall on your right, which fences in the field, being carried in a circular sweeping, instead of coming up to an abrupt corner. On the space left by this arrangement, on the side of the road, and directly opposite to the house, stood the tree. But how different is the house itself to that whose delightful picture your imagination has carried away from the page of the poet!

"Near yonder thorn, that lifts its head on high,
Where once the sign-post caught the passing eye,
Low lies that house where nut-brown draughts inspired,
Where graybeard mirth and smiling toil retired.
Where village statesmen talked with looks profound,
And news much older than their ale went round.
Imagination fondly stoops to trace
The parlor splendors of that festive place;
The whitewashed wall, the nicely sanded floor,
The varnished clock that clicked behind the door;
The chest contrived a double debt to pay,
A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day.
The pictures, placed for ornament and use,
The twelve good rules, the royal game of goose.
The hearth, except when winter chilled the day,
With aspen boughs, and flowers, and fennel gay,
While broken tea-cups, wisely kept for show,
Ranged o'er the chimney, glistened in a row.
Vain, transitory splendor! could not all
Reprieve the tottering mansion from its fall!
Obscure it sinks, nor shall it more impart
An hour's importance to the poor man's heart;
Thither no more the peasant shall repair
To sweet oblivion of his daily care;
No more the farmer's news, the barber's tale,
No more the woodman's ballad shall prevail;
No more the smith his dusky brow shall clear,
Relax his ponderous strength, and lean to hear;
The host himself, no longer to be found,
Careful to see the mantling bliss go round;
Nor the coy maid, half willing to be pressed,
Shall kiss the cup to pass it to the rest."

These are all the attractive characteristics of a nice old village public house in England. Clean, quiet, sweet, and breathing of the olden time. They are characteristics professedly gathered by the poet in his rural rambles in England, where he had lived at least twenty years when he wrote the poem. In his preface he talks of these "country excursions for four or five years past," in which he had "taken all possible pains" to be correct in his details. Where, indeed, did any one see in an Irish country ale-house "the parlor splendors of a festive place;" "the whitewashed wall, the nicely sanded floor;" "the varnished clock that clicked behind the door;" "the hearth, except when winter chilled the day, with aspen boughs, and flowers, and fennel gay?" Where does he find the nut-brown ale? They all belong to the healthy, wholesome, well-to-do village ale-house of rural and prosperous England. An Irish village ale-house! What is it? A poor and filthy cabin; the walls of rough stones, the roof often with nothing between it and the floor. The floor! nicely sanded?--a bed of mud, full of holes, in which geese, and ducks, and pigs, are dabbling and wallowing! If floored at all, paved with pebbles, which stand up in heaps by places, and by places are gone, leaving the aforesaid duck-pools and pig-troughs. A parcel of ragged people sprawling on the hearth around the peat fire, the coy maid, a bare-legged, shock-headed body, hard at work in tending the potato kettle, or contending with the ass, the cow, the pigs, that make part of the family. The parlor splendors? Half the house separated by a counter, behind which the landlord stands, amid a stock of candles and bread for sale, and dealing out, not the generous nut-brown ale, but the deadly liquid fire called whisky. Such are the almost universal attributes of a village ale-house in Ireland. Goldsmith knew better than to draw on his memory for them; he turned to the more poetical scene of the English village ale-house, which, clean as hands could make it, sweet, and all that he describes, had charmed him in his numerous rural excursions in this country.

The Three Jolly Pigeons is just a regular Irish ale-house, or, rather, whisky-shop. On going in, you look in vain for the picture Goldsmith has so beautifully drawn. The varnished clock clicking behind the door, the pictures placed for ornament and use, the twelve good rules, the royal game of goose, where are they? Not there; but in many an old-fashioned hamlet of England. The mud floor, the dirty walls, the smell of whisky, these are what meet you. You look for "the parlor splendors," and on your left hand there is, for a wonder, a separate room, but it is, as usual, filled with the candles, the herrings, the bread, of the Irish ale-house, and the whisky is doled out over the suspicious counter, instead of the nut-brown ale being brought in the generous foaming cup, to the bright, clean fireside, by the neat and blooming maid.

In all Goldsmith's description of his Auburn, he has clearly blended the Doric charm of the English village and English scenery with the fond boyish memories of his actual native place. He has evidently intended to represent the scene as in England, or, at all events, to make his poem of general application, though he has drawn on his memory for features connected with his native place, and imparted soul and sentiment to it by indulging the feelings of old, affectionate regret. Thus the ale-house, the parsonage, the mill, the brook, the village green, the schoolmaster, the pious clergyman, were all portions of his native place, and actual inhabitants of it, yet mixed with touches from the later observations of his English life. The very circumstance of depopulation, which no doubt had occurred at Lissoy, and had sunk deep into his indignant heart, he tells us, in his dedication to Sir Joshua Reynolds, was going on in England, and that his description meant to apply to England. "But I know you will object--and, indeed, several of our best and wisest friends concur in the opinion--that the depopulation it deplores is nowhere to be seen, and the disorders it laments are only to be found in the poet's own imagination. To this I can scarcely make any other answer, than that I sincerely believe what I have written; that I have taken all possible pains in my country excursions, for these four or five years past, to be certain of what I allege, and that all my views and inquiries have led me to believe those miseries real which I here attempt to display."

The fact is only too much a fact. From Goldsmith's time to our own, the process of rural depopulation has been going on, by the absorption of smaller properties into larger ones. The rapid growth of capital in England has created a demand for landed investments, which has tempted the small proprietors to sell the old cottages and crofts. Whole hamlets have disappeared one after another, and ample parks have taken their place, and solitary halls have sprung up where there used to be a long, populous village, buried in its gardens and orchards. As new men, merchants, lawyers, successful speculators, and cits grown wealthy, have carried out these changes, the old aristocracy have withdrawn further and further from the contact of these new erections, and, demolishing the little hamlets, have extended their immense park walls so as to create a vast solitude for themselves, where amid woods and wide fields have stood their proud seats. It were easy to cite almost innumerable instances of this, but in every neighborhood the old inhabitants are living chronicles of all these changes; we need only refer to the general and striking fact developed by our statistics, that about 1770, or in Goldsmith's time, the landed proprietors of England were about 200,000--they are now about 30,000! that is, proprietors of considerable estates; for the proprietors of small lots, on which houses and gardens, or town property stand, amount to about three millions. The proportion of _estates_, however, is as above, and it tells a fearful tale of the conglomeration of landed property during the last seventy years.

What is more strange than the doubt of the progress of rural depopulation in England is, that Mr. Prior, the biographer of Goldsmith, doubts even the justice of his strictures as applied to Ireland. He admits that there appeared to have been some such circumstance at Lissoy in Goldsmith's youth as he has described in The Deserted Village; but he is inclined to palliate it till it becomes a mere trifle. "In November, 1738, a part of the town lands of Lissoy, and the adjoining lands of Cannorstown, to the number of 600 acres, were sold by Jeffery Frend, Esq., of the Middle Temple, to the Honorable Robert Naper, lieutenant-general of his majesty's forces in Ireland, for the sum of £3300, but the general died before the purchase was completed. Upon this property, named Ballybegg, lying behind the house of Mr. Goldsmith, about half a mile distant, Mr. William Naper, son of the general, several years afterward built the family residence, named Littleton. In the preliminary arrangements, some circumstances, probably neither harsh nor unjust in themselves, connected with the removal of part of the tenantry, gave rise in the mind of Goldsmith, morbidly acute in his benevolent feelings, and particularly toward the poorer classes of society, to the idea of The Deserted Village."--Vol. i., p. 18. This, however, does not agree with Mr. Prior's own account of the appearance of the place on his own visit, given at page 257 of vol. ii. "There are, besides, many ruined houses in the neighborhood, bespeaking a better state of population than at present." It as little agrees with Goldsmith's assertion, that the very ale-house of the village was pulled down. Nay, at this very part of Mr. Prior's account (vol. ii., p. 259), he gives a more extended history of Mr. Naper or Napier's transactions; and while he endeavors to persuade us that the tradition of the neighborhood was not to be trusted, he shows that Mr. Naper had 1200 acres of land, a great part of which had been converted into demesne. The story of the neighborhood, as given by himself, is, that Lieutenant-general Robert Naper, returning from Vigo, in Spain, with a large fortune, purchased, as has been stated, the adjoining lands. In erecting a residence, and forming a demesne around it, the habitations of some, as is alleged, respectable tenants and several of the peasantry stood in the way, and being unwilling to remove for his convenience, were at length, after much resistance, all, except the Goldsmith family, ejected for non-payment of rent. Their houses were pulled down, and the park enlarged to a circumference of nine miles; but so great was the indignation of the people at the proceeding, that on the general's death, which occurred soon afterward, they assembled in a tumultuous manner, destroyed most of the property in and around it, and, among other things, plantations to the value of £5000.

What are the reasons assigned by the biographer for doubting the story? His own belief, that "the wanton destruction of a thriving and pretty village, in a country where such are carefully encouraged by all proprietors of lands, is wholly improbable." He farther fancies that Goldsmith's morbid imagination "had converted a few mud cabins into a beautiful village, and, perhaps, their turbulent and vindictive occupants into injured, and innocent, and expatriated peasants." Lastly, and most unfortunately of all, he adds, "Proprietary rights can not always be exercised by landlords in Ireland, even in a reasonable manner, without extreme jealousy on the part of the people. Circumstances, therefore, which daily occur in England, and produce neither concern nor notice, excite in the former loud complaint, if not open hostility. Any thing resembling severity becomes speedily known and loudly censured; and such impressions, however untrue, taken up and acted upon by the imagination and eloquence of a poet, are dangerous assailants of reputation."

The revolting case of the expulsion of the tenants from the estate of the Gerrards, at Ballinasloe, in Ireland, occurring at the moment at which I write this, in which 270 poor people are turned out to the elements, their houses pulled to the ground, themselves chased from the roadside ditches, where they had sought a night's shelter from the piercing wind, and the fires which they had made to warm themselves extinguished--all this is a fearful answer to such writings, and too awful proof of the correctness of the poet's statements. So far from Irish landlords not destroying villages, so far from "any thing like severity" being speedily known and resisted, the inquiries caused by this one flagrant case have shown to the horrified public, that in no country in the world are the rights of the peasantry so totally disregarded; in no country has the outrage of The Deserted Village been so often enacted. The scene which Goldsmith so pathetically describes, of the poor villagers whose homes had been destroyed, whose native haunts had been made to cast them forth, going on toward the shore seeking for an asylum beyond the ocean, was not a solitary scene. It has been reacted again and again. It has been repeated from that hour to this; and every year and almost every day sees sad thousands bidding adieu to their birth-places, and crowding on board the ships that carry them to a more hospitable country:

"Even now, methinks, as pondering here I stand,
I see the rural virtues leave the land.
Down where yon anchoring vessel spreads the sail,
That, idly waiting, flaps with every gale,
Downward they move, a melancholy band,
Pass from the shore, and darken all the strand.
Contented toil, and hospitable care,
And kind, connubial tenderness are there;
And piety, with wishes placed above,
And steady loyalty, and faithful love."

In five years, it is shown by official documents, that 72,000 persons have been thus cast out of their homes and expatriated, and that the process of this exterminating system has, within twenty years, made outcasts of no less than two millions and a half of peasantry!

Seeing this wholesale depopulation, which has not merely gone on formerly, but is going on at this hour, in the face of all enlightened and humane England, it is quite too late to call in question the truth of the poet's descriptions. We no longer wonder that, in opposition to popular opinion, he stood boldly forward, at the moment that he issued his poem to the world, in assertion of the truth of his descriptions, and we deplore the fact that his noble sentiments have not sooner become national and availing.

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 ale-house 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 forever in his writings. And how many of the personal characteristics of "the village preacher," which in his father he celebrates, lived in himself!

"Unpracticed he to fawn or seek for power,
By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour;
For 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 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, 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 every thing. 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 ale-house. 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 foi, 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 foi!' exclaimed the bishop, 'is that the hawthorn bush? Then ever let it be sacred from the edge of the ax, 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 ale-house; at the same time that, when not in a particular humor for teaching, he would edify his boys in the school with one of his stories. Among 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 raise the imagination in 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 Catharine 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 neighborhood. 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 marvelous. He devoured not only the romantic stories of the schoolmaster, but 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 every where--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, &c. 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, among which not the least general are Chambers's Journal and Tracts. To put Oliver under more suitable 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's house, 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 Ballyoughter, 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 honored guest from house to house among 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 Plunkett; Mrs. French; Anna M'Dermot Roe &c.

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 Humors 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 those miseries and outrages on the people which are at this hour the topic of public wonder in England. The exactions of the landlords; the casting forth from house and home the wretched tenantry; 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 the 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 labor 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._

*...*...*...*

_How many villages they razed,
How many parishes laid waste,
To fatten bullocks, sheep, and cows_,
When scarce one parish has two plows.
Their flocks do range on every plain,
That once produced all kinds of grain.
Depopulating every village,
Where we had husbandry and tillage;
Fat bacon, poultry, and good bread,
By which the poor were daily fed.

*...*...*...*

Instead of living well and thriving,
There's nothing now but leading--_driving_;
The lands are all monopolized,
The tenants racked and sacrificed;
_Whole colonies, to shun the fate
Of being oppressed at such a rate,
By tyrants who still raise their rent,
Sail to the Western Continent.
Rather than live at home like slaves,
They trust themselves to winds and waves._"

If a poet at the present hour were describing the acts and deeds of the Gerrards, the Waterfords, and like exterminators, could he have done it more literally? Thus, independent of the other miseries and wrongs of Ireland, this system of turning out human creatures to make way for bullocks has been going on exactly for a hundred years; and the Irish aristocracy, having made themselves the scandal of the whole civilized world, still sleep in warm beds and dream that they are Christians! and England, the most powerful and humane nation on the earth, has overlooked the dreadful scene, having her eyes fixed, full of tears, on the far-off negro, the Esquimaux, and the South Sea Islander. Till this crying iniquity and disgrace be removed out of our borders, every Bible Society, and Missionary Society, and Society for Humanity to _Animals_, should stop its ordinary operations, and combine each and all into a great and omnipotent association to convert the Irish aristocracy to Christianity, and to teach to the oppressed and trodden-on people that there is really such a thing as "loving our neighbors as ourselves."

How unvarying are the features of the Irish gentry:

"Our squires of late through Europe roam;
Are too well bred to live at home:
Are not content with Dublin College,
But range abroad for greater knowledge;
To strut in velvets and brocades
At balls, and plays, and masquerades.
To have their rent their chiefest care is,
In bills to London and to Paris.
Their education is so nice,
They know all chances on the dice;

*...*...*...*

Those absentees we here describe
_Are chiefly of our Irish tribe_,
Who live in luxury and pleasure,
And throw away their time and treasure;
Cause poverty and devastation,
And sink the credit of the nation,"

Who has not seen their deserted homes, so picturesquely sketched here?

"Their mansions molder quite away,
And run to ruin and decay;
Left like a desert wild and waste,
Without the track of man or beast;
Where wild fowl may with safety rest,
At every gate may build a nest:
Where grass or weeds on pavements grow,
And every year is fit to mow.
No smoke from chimneys does ascend,
Nor entertainment for a friend;
Nor sign of drink, or smell of meat,
For human creatures there to eat."

To turn to a more agreeable circumstance. 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 neighboring 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 humor, 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 among 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 Oliver 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 country 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.