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next, while feverish from the burn in his arm, he was taken from his bed, on a sharp winter morning, to be carried eleven miles to gaol for debt, on the bond lately given to repay money advanced for his son George's commission. The Vicar found among the prisoners a certain Ephraim Jenkinson, who had cheated his son Moses into taking a gross of green spectacles in exchange for one of the two old horses retained for field service by the family, after its first fall from fortune, and afterwards had cheated the Vicar himself into taking a piece of worthless paper for the other horse. But into the prison Dr. Primrose brought his abiding spirit of charity.

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The next morning early I was awakened by my family, whom I found in tears at my bed-side. The gloomy appearance of everything about us, it seems, had daunted them. gently rebuked their sorrow, assuring them I had never slept with greater tranquillity, and next inquired after my eldest daughter, who was not among them. They informed me that yesterday's uneasiness and fatigue had increased her fever, and it was judged proper to leave her behind. My next care was to send my son to procure a room or two to lodge my family in, as near the prison as conveniently could be found. He obeyed, but could only find one apartment, which was hired at a small expense for his mother and sisters, the gaoler with humanity consenting to let him and his two little brothers lie in the prison with me. A bed was therefore prepared for them in a corner of the room, which I thought answered very conveniently. I was willing, however, previously to know whether my little children chose to lie in a place which seemed to fright them upon entrance.

"Well," cried I, "my good boys, how do you like your bed? I hope you are not afraid to lie in this room, dark as it appears."

"No, papa," says Dick; "I am not afraid to lie anywhere where you are."

"And I," says Bill, who was yet but four years old, "love every place best that my papa is in."

After this I allotted to each of the family what they were to do. My daughter was particularly directed to watch her sister's declining health; my wife was to attend me; my little boys were to read to me: "And as for you, my son,' continued I, "it is by the labour of your hands we must all hope to be supported. Your wages as a day-labourer will be fully sufficient, with proper frugality, to maintain us all, and comfortably too. Thou art now sixteen years old, and hast strength, and it was given thee, my son, for very useful purposes; for it must save from famine your helpless parents and family. Prepare then this evening to look out for work against to-morrow, and bring home every night what money you earn for our support."

Having thus instructed him, and settled the rest, I walked down to the common prison, where I could enjoy more air and room. But I was not long there when the execrations, lewdness, and brutality that invaded me on every side, drove me back to my apartment again. Here I sat for some long time pondering upon the strange infatuation of wretches who, finding all mankind in open arms against them, were labouring to make themselves a future and tremendous enemy.

Their insensibility excited my highest compassion, and blotted my own uneasiness from my mind. It even appeared a duty incumbent upon me to attempt to reclaim them. I resolved, therefore, once more to return, and in spite of their contempt, to give them my advice, and conquer them by perseverance. Going therefore among them again, I in

formed Mr. Jenkinson of my design, at which he laughed heartily, but communicated it to the rest. The proposal was received with the greatest good humour, as it promised to afford a new fund of entertainment to persons who had now no other resource for mirth but what could be derived from ridicule or debauchery.

Quiet, religious earnestness, and persevering charity, conquered the spirit of mockery so far that in less than six days some were penitent, and all were attentive. Still the troubles deepened. Olivia, brought to him at his wish, seemed to be dying. He next heard that she was dead. Soon afterwards his other daughter had been carried off by ruffians. The crushed heart yielded its fragrance only the more surely. And yet in his agony, the Vicar was about to curse the murderer of his children when his son George came to him as another victim, a fettered prisoner, for having-upon impulse of a hasty letter from his mother-challenged the betrayer of Olivia. Supported by his wife and his son, out of the depths of his own affliction, without earthly hope, the Vicar preached to the prisoners God's comfort to those who sorrow here.

But there was an earthly joy when news came of the finding of his daughter Sophy, and she was brought to the prison by her rescuer, her old friend, Mr. Burchell.

"Ah, Mr. Burchell!" cried I, "this is but a wretched habitation you now find us in ; and we are now very different from what you last saw us. You were ever our friend: we have long discovered our errors with regard to you, and repented of our ingratitude. After the vile usage you then received at my hands, I am almost ashamed to behold your face; yet I hope you'll forgive me, as I was deceived by a base, ungenerous wretch, who under the mask of friendship has undone me."

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"It is impossible," replied Mr. Burchell, that I should forgive you, as you never deserved my resentment. I partly saw your delusion then, and, as it was out of my power to restrain, I could only pity it."

"It was ever my conjecture," cried I, "that your mind was noble; but now I find it so. But tell me, my dear child, how hast thou been relieved, or who the ruffians were that carried thee away."

"Indeed, sir," replied she, "as to the villain who carried me off I am yet ignorant. For as my mamma and I were walking out he came behind us, and almost before I could call for help, forced me into the post-chaise, and in an instant the horses drove away. I met several on the road to whom I cried out for assistance, but they disregarded my entreaties. In the meantime the ruffian himself used every art to hinder me from crying out; he flattered and threatened me by turns, and swore that, if I continued but silent, he intended no harm. In the meantime I had broken the canvas that he had drawn up, and whom should I perceive at some distance but your old friend Mr. Burchell, walking along with his usual swiftness, with the great stick for which we used so much to ridicule him! As soon as we came within hearing, I called out to him by name, and entreated his help. I repeated my exclamation several times, upon which, with a very loud voice, he bade the postilion stop; but the boy took no notice, but drove on with still greater speed. I now thought he could never overtake us, when in less than a minute I saw

Mr. Burchell come running up by the side of the horses, and with one blow knocked the postilion to the ground. The horses, when he was fallen, soon stopped of themselves, and the ruffian stepping out, with oaths and menaces, drew his sword, and ordered him, at his peril, to retire; but Mr. Burchell, running up, shivered his sword to pieces, and then pursued him for near a quarter of a mile; but he made his escape. I was by this time come out myself, willing to assist my deliverer; but he soon returned to me in triumph. The postilion, who was recovered, was going to make his escape too; but Mr. Burchell ordered him, at his peril, to mount

SOPHIA RESCUED.

From an Illustration by Walker, to Harrison's Edition (1780).

again, and drive back to town. Finding it impossible to resist, he reluctantly complied, though the wound he had received seemed to me at least to be dangerous. He continued to complain of the pain as we drove along, so that he at last excited Mr. Burchell's compassion; who, at my request, exchanged him for another at an inn where we called on our return."

"Welcome, then," cried I, "my child! and thou her gallant deliverer, a thousand welcomes! Though our cheer is but wretched, yet our hearts are ready to receive you. And now, Mr. Burchell, as you have delivered my girl, if you think her a recompense, she is yours: if you can stoop to an alliance with a family so poor as mine, take her; obtain her consent, as I know you have her heart, and

you have mine. And let me tell you, sir, that I give you no small treasure: she has been celebrated for beauty, it is true; but that is not my meaning-I give you a treasure in her mind."

"But I suppose, sir," cried Mr. Burchell, "that you are apprised of my circumstances, and of my incapacity to support her as she deserves?"

"If your present objection," replied I, "be meant as an evasion of my offer, I desist; but I know no man so worthy to deserve her as you; and if I could give her thousands, and thousands sought her from me, yet my honest, brave Burchell should be my dearest choice!"

Mr. Burchell, when George entered, could no longer escape recognition as Sir William Thornhill. All the clouds were now suddenly lifted. Ephraim Jenkinson had a knowledge of scamps that enabled him to identify from Sophia's description the particular Timothy Baxter who had snatched her off, and applied to use also an exact knowledge of his haunts. Mr. Thornhill was unmasked before his uncle, and also before Miss Wilmot, whom he was on the point of marrying. Timothy Baxter told his plot against Sophia. Miss Wilmot had been about to marry him upon his assurance that George Primrose, to whom her affection had been constant, had married, and was going to America with his wife. When she turned from him to George, Mr. Thornhill reminded her that he had her fortune, which was all he cared for; the lawyer's papers were already signed. George Primrose took her the more readily without her wealth, but Ephraim Jenkinson, who had been partner in many of the Squire's misdeeds, next caine to the rescue with a suggestion that there could be no valid marriage articles in the case of a man who was proposing to take a new wife while the first was living. Squire Thornhill declared with warmth that he was never legally married to any woman. But Ephraim Jenkinson said that he had aided at several false marriages, but had taken care in one case to get a true licence and a true priest, and marry him indeed, meaning then to keep the licence, and use it as a means of getting money at will for concealment. Jenkinson went to fetch the true wife, and she proved to be Olivia. Her death had been feigned by the family in hope of persuading the Vicar to obtain his own release by ceasing to oppose Squire Thornhill's marriage to Miss Wilmot. Mr. Thornhill was left by his uncle with a bare subsistence; for anything more he was dependent upon Olivia, to whom Sir William gave a third part of that which he had entrusted to his nephew. Sir William married Sophia, who had loved him for himself alone when she believed him to be poor Mr. Burchell. George married Miss Wilmot; and the merchant who had, by his failure, ruined the Primroses at the beginning of the story, was arrested at Antwerp, where he had given up effects to a much greater amount than was due to his creditors. In a tale full of playful tenderness and wisdom, expressed in a poet's prose, Goldsmith rolled over his simple-hearted Vicar and his happy home a growing storm of adversity, so showed the Christian hero under trial, and then, as after the blackness of a summer tempest, left a blaze of sunshine, with clear heavens and a fresher earth.

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AN IRISH DANCE (From a Sketch by Charlotte Edgeworth, 1803. Engraved for Maria Edgeworth's Memoirs of her Father.)

§ III. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

WHEN the Nineteenth Century has been illustrated by reference to some of its Longer Works in Verse and Prose, this Library of English Literature is at its appointed end.

The work of the Nineteenth Century in England has been to carry forward the high hope to which the Eighteenth Century attained, and from failure of an impatient struggle for immediate perfection, to draw knowledge of the one slow way by which alone the best hopes for the race of man are to be realised. Men who are uneducated, or ill-educated, and often ostentatiously ill-educated at a great expense, must be imperfect citizens, whatever the state of which they form a part. We have attained in England the conditions that enable us to show practically to what end the powers of civil polity were given ; the actual issue of the revolutionary struggle at the and close of the last century has been, for us, the resolve to work at making citizens, and leave the citizens to make the state. It may take another thousand years, or more, to complete the civilisation of England, but let us hope that we have now fairly struck into the upward path. The Eighteenth Century, begun with self-satisfaction, ended with an awakened sense of the vast difference between human society as it is and as it may in time become, and left us in dying its last message upon the lips of Thomas Campbell. Campbell's "Pleasures of Hope thrilled with the desire of the nations in the last year of the century, and came from the heart of a young poet. Campbell then was only in his twenty-second

year.

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Thomas Campbell, born in July, 1777, in the High Street of Glasgow, was the son of an Alexander Campbell (sixty-seven years old at the time of the poet's birth), who had prospered as a Glasgow merchant in the Virginia trade until the war a Glaswith the American Colonies brought his business 277

to an end. Two years before the birth of Thomas Campbell, the youngest of his eleven children, Alexander Campbell had retired from business with the wreck of his fortune, economy he secured the education of his family. and by strict The youngest boy went, when eight years old, to the Glasgow Grammar School, and passed thence, in October, 1791, into the University of Glasgow. In his fourth year at college, Thomas Campbell aided himself by teaching, for the ruin of his father's fortune was almost completed by the failure of a Chancery suit. Campbell had written verse in his student days, and in his last session at Glasgow, 1795-6, gained two prizes for verse translation from the Greek. But his heart was with the new hope of his time. In the spring of 1794 he had visited Edinburgh to be present at the trial of Joseph Gerrald and others, charged with sedition, and came back, warm in sympathy for_men whom he considered victims of oppression. From the time of his leaving Glasgow until the spring of 1797, Campbell was tutor in the family of General Napier in Argyleshire. Then he returned to Glasgow, and for want of money he could not speed. His anxiety helped to bring on a fever. When he recovered from that he went to Edinburgh, and was introduced to Dr. Robert Anderson, editor of a reprint of British Poets. Anderson obtained for the poor youth some hackDr. work of the pen, by which he earned so that he began teaching again, and by help of a little friendly Edinburgh professor obtained pupils. That was his position when, only twenty-one years old, the young poet began to neglect his business as a tutor, wandered much about Arthur's Seat, and wove his enthusiastic sense of the future of man into his first and best poem, the "Pleasures of Hope." When it was all written, Dr.

Anderson urged its merit on a publisher, who was persuaded to give sixty pounds for the copyright. And so

THE PLEASURES OF HOPE

appeared in the congenial spring-time of the latter part of April, 1799, when Campbell was not yet twenty-two years old.

It is in two parts. The first part opens with suggestions of the rainbow on a summer evening, that lifts men's eyes up to the glory of the distant hills.

At summer eve, when Heaven's ethereal bow
Spans with bright arch the glittering hills below,
Why to yon mountain turns the inusing eye,
Whose sunbright summit mingles with the sky?
Why do those cliffs of shadowy tint appear
More sweet than all the landscape smiling near?-
"Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,
And robes the mountain in its azure hue.

Hope is the heavenly light that guides the glance. upward and forward. Hope stayed behind when Peace and Mercy fled from the companionship of man. Hope cheers the seaman on his watch.

Angel of life! thy glittering wings explore
Earth's loneliest bounds, and Ocean's wildest shore.
Lo! to the wintry winds the pilot yields
His bark careering o'er unfathom'd fields;

Now on Atlantic waves he rides afar,
Where Andes, giant of the western star,
With meteor-standard to the winds unfurl'd,

Looks from his throne of clouds o'er half the world!

THE GIANT OF THE WESTERN STAR. From the Illustration to "The Pleasures of Hope" (1800).

Hope raises her visions in the distant seaman's soul, visions of home, and wife, and child.

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Hope! when I mourn, with sympathising mind,
The wrongs of fate, the woes of human kind,
The blissful omens bid my spirit see
The boundless fields of rapture yet to be;
I watch the wheels of Nature's mazy plan,
And learn the future by the past of man.

Come, bright Improvement, on the car of Time,
And rule the spacious world from clime to clime;
Thy handmaid arts shall every wild explore,
Trace every wave, and culture every shore.
On Erie's banks, where tigers steal along,
And the dread Indian chants a dismal song,
Where human fiends on midnight errands walk,
And bathe in brains the murderous tomahawk,
There shall the flocks on thymy pasture stray,
And shepherds dance at Summer's opening day;
Each wandering genius of the lonely glen
Shall start to view the glittering haunts of men,
And silent watch, on woodland heights around,
The village curfew as it tolls profound.
In Libyan groves, where damnéd rites are done,
That bathe the rocks in blood, and veil the sun,
Truth shall arrest the murderous arm profane,
Wild Obi flies-the veil is rent in twain.

Where barbarous hordes on Scythian mountains roam Truth, Mercy, Freedom, yet shall find a home; Where'er degraded Nature bleeds and pines,

From Guinea's coast to Sibir's dreary mines,

Truth shall pervade th' unfathom'd darkness there,

And light the dreadful features of despair.-
Hark! the stern captive spurns his heavy load,
And asks the image back that Heaven bestow'd!
Fierce in his eye the fire of valour burns,
And, as the slave departs, the man returns.

Oh! sacred Truth! thy triumph ceased awhile,
And Hope, thy sister, ceased with thee to smile,
When leagued Oppression poured to Northern wars
Her whisker'd pandoors and her fierce hussars,
Waved her dread standard to the breeze of morn,
Pealed her loud drum, and twanged her trumpet horn;
Tumultuous horror brooded o'er her van,
Presaging wrath to Poland-and to man!

Warsaw's last champion from her height survey'd, Wide o'er the fields, a waste of ruin laid,"Oh, Heaven!" he cried, "my bleeding country save! Is there no hand on bigh to shield the brave? Yet, though destruction sweep those lovely plains,

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Rise, fellow-men! our country yet remains!
By that dread name, we wave the sword on high!
And swear for her to live!-with her to die!"
He said, and on the rampart-heights array'd
His trusty warriors, few, but undismay'd;
Firm-paced and slow, a horrid front they form,
Still as the breeze, but dreadful as the storm;
Low murmuring sounds along their banners fly,
Revenge, or death,-the watch-word and reply;
Then peal'd the notes, omnipotent to charm,
And the loud tocsin toll'd their last alarm!-
In vain, alas! in vain, ye gallant few!
From rank to rank your volley'd thunder flew :—
Oh, bloodiest picture in the book of Time,
Sarmatia fell, unwept, without a crime;
Found not a generous friend, a pitying foe,
Strength in her arms, nor mercy in her woe!
Dropp'd from her nerveless grasp the shatter'd spear,
Closed her bright eye, and curb'd her high career;—
Hope, for a season, bade the world farewell,
And Freedom shrieked- -as Kosciusko fell!

The sun went down, nor ceased the carnage there,
Tumultuous Murder shook the midnight air—
On Prague's proud arch the fires of ruin glow,
His blood-dyed waters murmuring far below;
The storm prevails, the rampart yields a way,
Bursts the wild cry of horror and dismay!
Hark, as the smouldering piles with thunder fall,
A thousand shrieks for hopeless mercy call!
Earth shook-red meteors flash'd along the sky,
And conscious Nature shudder'd at the cry!

Oh! righteous Heaven; ere Freedom found a grave,
Why slept the sword, omnipotent to save?
Where was thine arm, O Vengeance! where thy rod,
That smote the foes of Zion and of God;
That crush'd proud Ammon, when his iron car
Was yoked in wrath, and thundered from afar ?
Where was the storm that slumber'd till the host
Of blood-stain'd Pharaoh left their trembling coast;
Then bade the deep in wild commotion flow,
And heaved an ocean on their march below?
Departed spirits of the mighty dead!

Ye that at Marathon and Leuctra bled!

Friends of the world! restore your swords to man,
Fight in his sacred cause, and lead the van!

Yet for Sarmatia's tears of blood atone,
And make her arm puissant as your own!
Oh! once again to Freedom's cause return
The Patriot Tell-the Bruce of Bannockburn!
Yes! thy proud lords, unpitied land! shall see
That man hath yet a soul-and dare be free!
A little while, along thy saddening plains,
The starless night of Desolation reigns;
Truth shall restore the light by Nature given,
And, like Prometheus, bring the fire of Heaven!
Prone to the dust Oppression shall be hurl❜d,
Her name, her nature, wither'd from the world!
Ye that the rising more invidious mark,
And hate the light-because your deeds are dark;
Ye that expanding truth invidious view,
And think, or wish, the song of Hope untrue;
Perhaps your little hands presume to span
The march of Genius and the powers of man;
Perhaps ye watch, at Pride's unhallow'd shrine,
Her victims, newly slain, and thus divine:-
"Here shall thy triumph, Genius, cease, and here
Truth, Science, Virtue, close your short career."

Tyrants in vain ye trace the wizard ring;
In vain ye limit Mind's unweariel spring:
What can ye lull the wingéd winds asleep,
Arrest the rolling world, or chain the deep?
No!-the wild wave contemns your sceptred hand;
It roll'd not back when Canute gave command!
Man! can thy doom no brighter soul allow ?
Still must thou live a blot on Nature's brow?
Shall war's polluted banner ne'er be furl'd?
Shall crimes and tyrants cease but with the world?
What are thy triumphs, sacred Truth, belied?
Why then hath Plato lived-or Sidney died?

355

In such thoughts as these lay the magic power of the poem that struck answering chords in the hearts of thousands, who yet felt the enthusiasm of the great hope stirred by the outbreak of French revolution. In the second part of his associates Hope with Love, and that free play of poem, he the Imagination that breaks present bounds to shape a future here, and not here only.

Unfading Hope! when life's last embers burn,
When soul to soul, and dust to dust return!
Heaven to thy charge resigns the awful hour!
Oh, then, thy kingdom comes, Immortal Power!
What though each spark of earth-born rapture fly
The quivering lip, pale cheek, and closing eye!
Bright to the soul thy seraph hands convey
The morning dream of life's eternal day—
Then, then, the triumph and the trance begin,
And all the phoenix spirit burns within!

Oh! deep-enchanting prelude to repose,
The dawn of bliss, the twilight of our woes!
Yet half I hear the panting spirit sigh,

It is a dread and awful thing to die!

This thought leads to the close of the
Hope, daughter of Faith that no doubts can
poem
tinguish.

There live, alas! of heaven-directed mien,
Of cultured soul, and sapient eye serene,
Who hail thee, Man, the pilgrim of a day,
Spouse of the worm, and brother of the clay
Frail as the leaf in Autumn's yellow bower,
Dust in the wind, or dew upon the flower;
A friendless slave, a child without a sire,
Whose mortal life and momentary fire,
Light to the grave his chance-created form,
As ocean-wrecks illuminate the storm,

And, when the gun's tremendous flash is o'er,

To night and silence sink for evermore!

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But the last notes of Campbell's poem look beyond the grave.

Cease, every joy, to glimmer on my mind,
But leave-oh, leave the light of Hope behind!

What though my wingéd hours of bliss have been,

Like angel-visits, few and far between,

Her musing mood shall every pang appease,

And charm-when pleasures lose the power to please.
Yes; let each rapture, dear to Nature, flee:
Close not the light of Fortune's stormy sea-
Mirth, Music, Friendship, Love's propitious smile,
Chase every care and charm a little while,

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