real name is Auburn, and it gave birth to one Noll Goldsmith, whom Mr. Boswell was in the habit of despising very heartily."

Thackeray was right to qualify what he calls. the "commination of the Guide-Book." Athlone, the most convenient point for a visit to Goldsmith's "Deserted Village," is, on the whole, of all the many provincial towns I visited in a tour which embraced the greater part of Ireland, decidedly the most pleasing and picturesque, the most pleasing, even apart from its associations with Goldsmith. Starting from the one bridge of the town, which spans the broad Shannon and links the two parts of Athlone together, the main street of the place straggles gently upward, and soon merges into the charming country road which stretches out to Auburn. Thus far the citizens of the midland town have done little to cultivate the gentle art of laying traps for the literary pilgrim. "There are two hotels in Athlone," said an Irishman to me when I was miles away from the place, "and whichever one you go to, you will wish you had gone to the other." That main street in which those two lucky-bag hotels are situated, and the old castle, are much the same in objective appearance as they were during the two years which the boy Oliver Gold

perhaps Paddy Byrne was something of a pedant; and no doubt pigs ran over the 'nicely sanded floor' of the inn; and no doubt the village statesmen occasionally indulged in a free fight. But do you think that was the Lishoy that Goldsmith thought of in his dreary lodgings in Fleet Street courts? No. It was the Lishoy where the vagrant lad had first seen the 'primrose peep beneath the thorn;' where he had listened to the mysterious call of the bittern by the unfrequented river; it was a Lishoy still ringing with the glad laughter of young people in the twilight hours; it was a Lishoy forever beautiful, and tender, and far away. The grown-up Goldsmith had not to go to any Kentish village for a model; the familiar scenes of his youth, regarded with all the wistfulness and longing of an exile, became glorified enough."

If the cogent reasoning set forth above does not convince the pilgrim of the authenticity of Lishoy as a shrine worthy of his devotions, let him turn to "The Deserted Village" for final confirmation. Let him ponder, for example, those pathetic lines which read as though written in tears and heart's blood

"In all my wanderings round this world of care,
In all my griefs — and God has given my share-

I still had hopes, my latest hours to crown,
Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down;
To husband out life's taper at the close,
And keep the flame from wasting by repose :
I still had hopes, for pride attends us still,
Amidst the swains to show my book-learned skill,
Around my fire an evening group to draw,
And tell of all I felt, and all I saw ;

And, as a hare whom hounds and horns pursue,
Pants to the place from whence at first he flew,
I still had hopes, my long vexations past,

Here to return - and die at home at last."

Lishoy, or " Auburn," as it is much oftener called, is about seven miles from Athlone. The drive thither, on a mellow end-of-the-summer day, lingers in my memory as a quietly moving panorama of subdued pastoral pictures. Athlone is no sooner lost behind bosky trees and gently swelling hills than, to the left, away down there at the edge of emerald fields, Killinure Lough holds up its mirror to catch the mingling glories of a cerulean sky shot with fleecy clouds. Slowly this picture fades away and gives place to another of the village of Glassen, than which I was to see no more picturesque hamlet in all my travels through Ireland. Approached at either end through an avenue of spreading trees, the one street of the village is lined with neat little cottages, now roofed with thatch, and anon

with warm red tiles. Although abutting sharp upon the road, each house has its climbing rose or trailing vine, and it was the exception rather than the rule to note a window-sill without its box of flowers. A mile or so further, and the

road dips down between rows of pines and beeches, the pronounced lines of the one accentuating the flowing outlines of the other. And so the jaunting-car bowls merrily on, pausing at last before the ruins of the Goldsmith house. Now the pilgrim seems to tread familiar ground. The journey has taken him through scenes which

recall no associations, but at the sight of these falling walls, unseen before, the lips murmur almost unconsciously:

"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."

And no sooner does the mind assent to the accuracy of Goldsmith's description of the outward setting of the house than memory offers her aid to the imagination in an effort to call up again some of the scenes which passed within its walls:

"His house was known to all the vagrant train —
He chid their wanderings, but relieved their pain ;
The long-remembered beggar was his guest,
Whose beard, descending, swept his aged breast;
The ruined spendthrift, now no longer proud,
Claimed kindred there, and had his claims allowed;
The broken soldier, kindly bade to stay,
Sat by his fire, and talked the night away,

Wept o'er his wounds, or, tales of sorrow done,

Shouldered his crutch, and showed how fields were won.
Pleased with his guests, the good man learned to glow,

And quite forgot their vices in their woe;

Careless their merits or their faults to scan,

His pity gave ere charity began."

This house must have been a spacious one for a Protestant village parson in Ireland. It stands