Wakefield he has found entry into every castle and every hamlet in Europe. Not one of us, however busy or hard, but once or twice in our lives has passed an evening with him, and undergone the charm of his delightful music.' perceived that he had already changed my guinea, and had got a bottle of Madeira and a glass before him. I put the cork into the bottle, desired he would be calm, and began to talk to him of the means by which he might be extricated. He then told The Vicar of Wakefield, though me that he had a novel ready finished in 1763, was not pub- for the press, which he produced lished till 1766. It had no to me. I looked into it and sooner appeared than it secured saw its merit, told the landlady the warmest friends among every that I should soon return, and description of readers: with the having gone to a bookseller, old by the purity of its moral sold it for £60. I brought lessons, and with the young by Goldsmith the money, and he the interest of the story. Its discharged his rent, not without great charm is its close adher-rating his landlady in a high ence to nature: nature in its tone for having used him so ill.' commendable, not in its vicious, point of view. The Primrose family is a great creation of genius: such a picture of warmhearted simplicity, mingled with the little foibles and weaknesses common to the best specimens of humanity, that we know nothing like it in the whole range of fiction.' An interesting anecdote with reference to this novel is told by Boswell in his Life of Johnson. 'I received one morning,' says Johnson, a message from poor Goldsmith, that he was in great distress, and as it was not in his power to come to me, begging that I would come to him as soon as possible. I sent him a guinea, and promised to come to him directly. I accordingly went as soon as I was dressed, and found that his landlady had arrested him for his rent, at which he was in a violent passion. I GIBBON. Gibbon, the learned author of the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, commenced writing his history in a house in London about the year 1772. He finished it at Lausanne in Switzerland, in an CHAPTER VIII. GREAT TRIUMPHS OF GREAT SCHOLARS AND The first point of wisdom is to discern that which is false; the second, to know that which is true.'-LACTANTIUS. LORD BACON — LORD NAPIER -SIR ISAAC NEWTON - EDMUND STONE- fuge of adversity; they are delectable at home, and not burdensome abroad; they gladden us at night and on our journeys, and in the country. Nobody knows the strength of his mind, and the force of steady and regular application, till he has tried. This is certain: he that sets out upon weak legs will not only go farther, but go stronger too, than one who with a vigorous constitution and firm limbs only sits still.' WE shall begin this students' | are the ornament of prosperity, chapter with two quotations, and the solacement and the reone from the celebrated French writer Pascal, the other from our no less noted countryman, John Locke. The first is to the effect that Man is evidently made for thinking: this is the only excellence that he can boast. To think aright is the sum of human duty; and the true art of thinking is to begin with ourselves, our author, and our end. And yet what is it that engrosses the thoughts of the world? Not any of these objects; but pleasure, wealth, honour, and esteem, in fine, the making ourselves kings without reflecting what it is to be a king, or to be a man.' The other runs: Studies nourish youth, delight old age, LORD BACON. In addition to the fame of Bacon as a lawyer, his merits as the father of experimental philosophy have been universally acknowledged. The power and |