there are four millions of persons engaged in agriculture, and that the value of the products of their industry exceeds that of manufactures, commerce, mining, forests, and fisheries, all united, we cannot resist the conclusion, that the farmer is the main pillar of our country's strength. His broad shoulders support the political edifice, his labor constitutes the solid wealth, and his vote directs the destiny, whether for weal or wo, of the greatest and most glorious nation the world ever saw! Not only in peace does he cause every field to wave with golden harvests, and give a new impulse to every branch of business, but when dangers thicken around us, when the mighty fabric of our national government trembles to its foundation, he ever rallies beneath the starry banner of our country wheresoever it floats! Take from a nation the tillers of the soil, the peerage of Labor, and you cut the sinews of its strength and sap the foundation of its prosperity!

"Princes and lords may flourish or may fade,

A breath can make them as a breath has made;
But our bold yeomanry, their country's pride,
When once destroyed, can never be supplied."

Roaring Brook.

ABOUT Sixteen miles north of New Haven, and in the town of Cheshire, a stream falls precipitately down the steep mountains that extend back from West Rock. The gorge through which it descends is of wild and remarkable beauty, and is much visited during the summer months by Tourists, Geologists, Anglers, and Pic-Nic Parties.

Leaping from the granite mountain,
Down the hemlock gorge resounding,
Flows the joyous streamlet, bounding
From its lone and shaded fountain.
Now in wild, unfettered leap
From the arched and mossy steep;
Now in white and foaming wreath
Clinging to the rock beneath;

Through the sunlight and the shadow,
Reaches it the fragrant meadow.

To the depths the waters falling,
On the rounded pebbles shiver;
And the tossed and stormy river
Answers to the echoes calling.
In the deep, dark linns below,
In the eddies, circling slow,

In the whirlpool's dizzy rout,
Lurks the black and wary trout,
Oft by angler's art deluded
From his resting-place secluded.

Sheltered here by rocks o'erhanging,
Merry school-girls shout with laughter,
And the echoes chasing after,

Through the far-off rifts are clanging.
Hither come at noon-tide prime,
Such as frame the sylvan rhyme;

Such as seek for Science's light;
Maiden fair, and am'rous knight;
In the sunlight and the shadow,

By the stream that seeks the meadow.

PHILUDOR.

TOWNSEND PRIZE ESSAYS.

Irving and Goldsmith.

BY W. S. COLTON, LOCKPORT, N. Y.

A PLEASANT author is much like an agreeable friend. If there is not before you a real and tangible form, possessing life, capable of action, and endued with the quick intelligence of a present and controlling mind, whose deep and constant sympathy is exhibited in a visible countenance, and manifested in numberless outward and personal acts, yet, its place is supplied by what, I think, is, at least for a time, scarcely less than an equivalent. If you are not listening to an audible voice, speaking in tones of friendship, and charming your ear with gentle, persuasive sound, there is still a silent language addressed to you from each printed page on which your eye may be fastened, whose mute appeal finds its way, with irresistible power, to the heart, and seldom fails to call forth a willing and prompt response. With such a companion, one may trim his solitary lamp, and, seating himself by the genial light of an evening fire, feel that, even in the retirement of his own secluded room, he is not all or almost alone. As he turns over leaf after leaf, and reads, now some humorous and pointed story, now some passage of rare and exquisite beauty, or of surpassing eloquence, and now a mournful or pathetic tale, a profound interest springs up slowly but surely within him. He clasps the book with a firmer and warmer grasp;- -a fervor gradually kindles in his mind; his face even discovers his inward satisfaction, and he is hardly conscious, in the intense enjoyment he receives, of the pres

ence of any objects around him, or, I may almost say, of his own existence.

use.

There are thus some authors for whose works we have an ardent and lasting attachment; we admit them at once to a most intimate place in our affections. They are adroit assailants, and they gain an easy victory, for they are so winning in their approach, so skillful in their attack, that we have neither the inclination nor the ability to forbid their entrance. We greet them always as bosom acquaintances; we know their inmost thoughts. Hence they are ever welcomed with a smile;—they are perused thrice and again with renewed and increasing pleasure, and are kept ready and waiting for frequent and familiar Other books may have greater celebrity. They may have been written by men of unrivaled genius; they may be possessed, intrinsically, of superior merit, both as to style and subject-matter, but they enter not into our feelings;-they strike no chord in unison with themselves; they do not fall in, noiselessly as it were, with the current of our preexisting thoughts and ideas, but rather disturb them, and produce only a harsh and violent recoil. We have nothing in common with them; no free exchange, no reciprocity of mutual sentiment and desire, no intimate and harmonious blending of kindred fancy and imagination, and therefore, as they fail of effecting a lodgment in the inner place of the sympathizing heart, they are treated only with cold neglect, and are laid away to sleep in dusty forgetfulness in the closet, or on the shelf. Or if the author be distinguished by so much brilliancy, by a manner so original, and by thought so new and striking, that we must perforce admire him, it is admiration alone, nothing deeper, that we feel. His splendor, to our minds, is like the chilling glare of an iceberg; we are dazzled by its brightness, but there is no warmth in it; the intellect is enlightened, but the heart is left unvisited by any cheering glow, unthawed by any vital heat. We seem to be walking on the tops of frozen mountains, and the view from them, doubtless, is often times wonderfully sublime; but the air is frosty about us, and we are not careful to linger long on their snow-covered summits. The reverse is true with respect to the opposite class of writers of which I have spoken. Here we are in a more congenial atmosphere. Every thing is in harmony with our own thoughts; there is nothing foreign or adverse to our private taste or predilection. We enjoy whatever of wit, or quaintness, or pleasantry, they may have, with a heartiness that makes it at once our own. There is no lack of good will in the reader's mind for such authors. So much of quiet humor, so much of sweet and unobtrusive gayety we discover in them, that all prejudice is completely disarmed, and one reads their works with a zest, and with an appreciation of their spirit, that continues unabated to the very close. They are always, therefore, the favorites of our leisure hours, and it is to them that we chiefly resort for such amusement and relief from more pressing employments as we never cease to need. Nor do we seek from them pleasure, only in its more mirthful and airy forms; but in times of despondency, when the cares of life crowd upon us in dark and unusual throngs, and a sudden gloom

clouds, for a season, our mental horizon, we find in them not unfrequently an unexpected and grateful deliverance from the urgency of our more immediate griefs. They exert over us a soothing, restraining influence, and they

Thus they become dear to our hearts, linking us by cherished memories to the past, associated with many of our deepest emotions, molding, in some good degree, our characters by their secret, but powerful presence, alleviating the sorrows of our lives, helping us on in our rugged and arduous way, and weaving ever before us, for the future, the web of a brighter and purer joy.

The writings of Irving and Goldsmith are fully sufficient in illustration of these remarks. Their names even are enough to suggest to the mind the distinction now adverted to. They do not claim to be ranked among the greatest of authors, nor do we assert it for them. Neither the Poet, nor the graceful writer of the Sketch Book, are so regarded, either by readers generally, or by their most devoted admirers. The former makes no pretensions to a place with Milton, or Tasso, or Dante, and the latter can never be compared, in massiveness and power of language, to Johnson, or in elevated richness and exuberance of thought, to Burke. They are not to be estimated from such a point of view as this. They are rather to be looked at in a light of their own, and to be valued each according to his peculiar and individual merit; obviously in no other way. Indeed, this is, in all cases, the only true and proper method of criticism. It is quite a frequent practice with a certain class of critics and reviewers, to form, from some author of preeminent excellence, an arbitrary measure of their own, and then to try all others by it. But such a Procrustean rule is by no means favorable for an impartial judgment, and is entirely inadmissible in the formation of any just and discriminating decision. While, therefore, it is admitted that the works of Irving and Goldsmith do not entitle their authors to a rank among the very brightest constellations in Modern Literature, it is yet claimed that they shine with a native beauty and lustre, a tempered brightness, a mild glory, which is not at all the less attractive for being compared with their superiors in magnitude, perhaps, and in greater effulgence. It is not necessary, however, that we attempt to assign them their position in the literary world, for that has already been done. They have long since been located, and no one is called upon to ascertain or to defend their niche in the wide temple of Fame. They have outlived envy; they have survived every assault;-criticism itself, with respect to them, has no longer any voice. They are equally accredited among the classic authors in the language, for Goldsmith, though belonging to the past age, since he died before the beginning of the present century, is not more

decisively accepted as a writer of the best and purest English, than Irving, who is still living, our own cotemporary and fellow-citizen. In this respect they are alike, and both are sure of the love and admiration of posterity. The world, which, after all, is generally a faithful critic and an honest judge, has given its final verdict, and appointed them their appropriate and merited reward.

In

It will be, of course, impossible, within the narrow limits assigned to an essay like this, to venture upon an extended examination and comparison of these two authors, or even to comment, with much minuteness, on only the most important features in their writings. ranging over so rich and varied a field as this, scarcely more than a general survey can well be expected. Particular beauties of thought or of diction cannot be dwelt upon at our own pleasure. There is a perfume in the air;-a wilderness of flowering shrubs exhales its fragrance around, and we may think ourselves quite fortunate, if, lingering awhile amid these "thousand sweets," and dallying with their odors, we at last shall bear away with us some little honey for purposes of future use. I shall content myself, therefore, with only glancing rapidly at a few of the peculiar points of similarity and difference between Goldsmith and Irving, with a hasty notice of their most prominent excellencies or defects.

I need not speak of Goldsmith's personal history, with which all must be familiar. His Irish descent, his singular manners, his freaks in early youth, his student life at Dublin College, his ill-planned attempt to run away from his anxious friends to America, his pedestrian journey through Europe, earning his food and lodgings by his flute, or by displays of his learning and scholarship in disputation, and singing and piping through France on his way homeward, his literary labors in London, writing in a garret and barely making a living even then, his acquaintance with Dr. Johnson and his famous Club, his rising fame and subsequent eminence in the world of Letters, are all matters so well known, as scarcely to call for an allusion. Passing over, then, the events of his private life, we come to the man of the public, to the felicitous writer of prose, and the equally successful one of poetry. And the first thing that strikes us here, in viewing him as an author, is the astonishing versatility of his genius. The Poet, the Historian, the Dramatist, the Essayist, the writer of Natural History, and the Novelist, are together combined in one, and it is somewhat hard to say in which character he excels. In this, as compared with Irving, he is by far his superior. He takes a more comprehensive sweep; he has more of universality. One month he writes an Essay, the next, he sends to his publisher a Comedy, on the third, he comes out with a History of England," or a History of Greece," on the fourth, with a work on "Animated Nature," on the fifth, he issues his poem, "The Deserted Village," and makes his appearance at the end of the year with the "Vicar of Wakefield." But Irving is confined to the region of prose, and to two of the three departments in that. He has no poetic fire, save as it exhibits itself in a more homely garb than verse ;-as it glows perhaps, in some highly-wrought

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