are so called because some well-known building-stones belonging to the series are made up of minute pea-like particles; but a similar structure is met with in both older and new rocks. Such terms as Cornbrash, Oxford and Kimmeridge clay, Portland and Purbeck stones, betray at once their local and provincial origin, but sound oddly enough when converted into Oxfordien, Kimmeridgien, Portlandien, and Purbeckien. Lower Green Sands' and Upper Green Sands' need neither be sandy nor green; it suffices for the geologist that they are deposits of a certain age. 'White chalk' may be yellow, or green, or black, and is actually of these colours in some places, but, notwithstanding these stains upon its character, is still called 'white' by courtesy. Eocene' seemed a happy thought when first employed, but the dawn of new things had before very long to be referred to an earlier time of the geological day. Pliocene' was scarcely christened before a newer pliocene' and a 'pleistocene' sprang up. Geologists who repudiate the Noachian deluge continue to write about 'diluvium.' In fact, each term, whether constant to its original meaning or contradictory of it, becomes an independent word or sign, the literal signification of which is rapidly set aside, and a new conventional sense given to it. It serves its purpose in the mean time, and what more can we desire? All growing sciences are prolific in discussions about nomenclature, and generate debates that wax warm through the very earnestness of the disputing philosophers. Geologists are reputed to be especially disputatious, and to make war on each other with a verbal ferocity alarming to their unlearned hearers and readers. It is said that a brave old soldier, a visitor for the first time at a geological meeting, left the room during the heat of disputation rather than be present at a scene that must lead to a challenge. The art of war,' writes the usually unintelligible Oken, is the highest, most exalted art-the principle of Peace;' and certainly the end of geological wars is hearty good fellowship and co-operation. The old Scandinavian gods amused themselves all day in their Valhalla hacking each other to small pieces, but, when the time of feasting came, sat down together entire and harmonious, all their wounds healed and forgotten. Our modern Thors, the hammer-wielders of science, enjoy similar rough sport with like pleasant ending. Men whose work, both of head and hand, is done mainly under the broad sky and along the craggy sides of mountains, heedless of weather and toil, are not likely to use mincing forms of speech, or mollify their sentiments when engaged in discussions, though all the time mildness and mercy are at the foundations of their thoughts. Better men and truer, whether in field or council, there are not living than the two famous geologists, the nature of whose difference we have endeavoured to expound. They have worked long and well in co-operation, heart and hand united; and though the fortune of scientific war has led in the end to the crossing of their pens, the names of Sedgwick and Murchison will go down to posterity side by side, and bracketed together in the glorious list of benefactors of mankind through the advancement of science. ART. V.-1. The Life and Times of Oliver Goldsmith. By John Forster, of the Inner Temple, Barrister-at-Law. Second edition. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1854. 2. The Works of Oliver Goldsmith. Edited by Peter Cunningham. 4 vols. 8vo. London, 1854. MR. R. CUNNINGHAM, whose scrupulous exactness is generally known, has furnished the first complete and accurate reprint of the miscellaneous writings of Oliver Goldsmith. Numerous errors which had crept into previous editions are corrected, omitted passages are restored, and entire pieces have been added.* By a fortunate coincidence Mr. Forster at the same moment has reproduced, with great additions, his wellknown Life of Goldsmith,' in which he has collected, from an infinity of sources, every particular which could illustrate the career of his hero, and by his acute and genial comments has assigned to the mass of disjointed facts their true significance. Much as has been written upon the man, and often as his works have been republished, we have now a better opportunity for forming a thorough acquaintance with both than has been afforded us before. There was an anomaly in Goldsmith's character which has existed in no other celebrated personage in an equal degree. An Irishman by birth, he had most of the virtues and not a few of the failings which distinguish many of his nation-their love of low festivities, their blundering, their gullibility, their boastfulness, their vanity, their improvidence, and, above all, their hospitality and benevolence. But with this Hibernian disposition he was an author after the purest and soberest models-chaste in his style and language, and calm and rational in his opinions. Those who lived with him found it hard to believe that one so The new edition of the works of Goldsmith forms part of a series of the British Classics, which is undoubtedly the best selected and edited, the cheapest, and the handsomest t'nati as ever ssue from the press. weak weak in his conduct and conversation could display much power in his writings, and, as we learn from Dr. Johnson, it was with difficulty that his friends could give him a hearing.' Posterity, on the other hand, who reverse the process and judge him from his books, have been reluctant to acknowledge that the man who wrote like an angel could have talked like poor Poll;' and there has been a tendency of late years to accuse his contemporaries of combining to exaggerate his absurdities. But whatever be the explanation of the contradiction, there is abundant evidence that it was real. His works remain to speak for themselves; and the account of his foibles comes to us from such a variety of quarters, that to deny the likeness would be to undermine the foundations of biography itself. Even if traits originally ludicrous were made broader in the repetition, the general temptation to indulge in a caricature of his weaknesses is itself a proof that the qualities existed in excess. This distinct recognition by Mr. Forster of the blended nature of Goldsmith, of the Irish temperament which he derived from his parents, his training, and his early associates, and of the taste in composition which he derived from the study of books, has dissipated the doubts and difficulties which recent discussions were beginning to raise about one of the most strongly marked and transparent characters that ever existed in the world. On the appearance in 1837 of Mr. Prior's Life of Goldsmith, we related in detail the earlier, and at that time the least known, part of his career.* The son of a poor clergyman, he was sent at 17 to Dublin University, and for cheapness was compelled to enter as a sizar. If poverty is the stimulus to industry, industry is equally the solace of poverty. Study furnishes the mind with occupation, and removes the necessity for costlier and less worthy entertainment; but idleness aggravates penury, and is the parent of low diversions, lassitude, and debt. Such, from the indications which remain to us, appears to have been the college existence of Goldsmith. Any chance of his being drawn into the studies of the place was destroyed by the brutality of a tutor, who ridiculed his awkwardness and his ignorance, and who once knocked him down for giving a humble dance at his rooms to celebrate the small but solitary honour of having gained an exhibition worth thirty shillings. After nearly four years passed at Dublin without pleasure, profit, or distinction, he took his degree of bachelor of arts the 27th of February 1749. His father died while he was at college, and his mother lived in reduced circumstances at a cottage in Ballymahon. * Quarterly Review,' vol. lvii. p. 273. He was urged urged by his family to take orders, but, wanting two years of the canonical age, he spent the interval at his new home. When he at last presented himself before the Bishop of Elphin he was refused ordination. According to a tradition which rests upon indifferent authority, and which is contradicted by other accounts, he was rejected for appearing in scarlet breeches. The story was probably a jocose invention suggested by his love of gaudy clothes, and the only intelligible explanation of the transaction, as Mr. Forster remarks, is that his knowledge was found deficient. Instead of preparing for his examination he had employed his two years in country rambles, in playing whist and the flute, and in telling stories and singing songs at a club which met at the Ballymahon public-house. His own predilections had never been in favour of the clerical profession, and he made no further efforts to enter the church. Mr. Contarine, a clergyman who had married the sister of Oliver's father, now procured him the situation of tutor in the house of a Mr. Flinn. Here he remained a twelvemonth, when he taxed one of the family with cheating at cards and lost his office. He went back to Ballymahon with thirty pounds and a horse, started afresh in a few days, and re-appeared at the end of six weeks with a worse horse and no money. His mother being very angry, he wrote a letter to pacify her, in which he professed to have gone to Cork, to have paid his passage in a ship which was bound to America, and to have been left behind by an unscrupulous captain who 'never inquired after me, but set sail with as much indifference as if I had been on board.' A train of adventures followed, the whole of which bear evident marks of invention, and show how early he began to display the talents which produced the Vicar of Wakefield.' The Church and emigration had failed. It was resolved to try law. With fifty pounds, furnished by Mr. Contarine, he set out for London to keep his terms, gambled away his little fund with an acquaintance at Dublin, and was once more thrown back penniless upon his friends. The law was given up; but after a short interval they were hopeful enough to think that medicine might be attended with better luck. The money was again supplied by Mr. Contarine, and this time the reckless Oliver contrived to reach his destination, though it was no less distant than Edinburgh. He arrived there in the autumn of 1752, when he was 24 years of age. It may be inferred from the previous and subsequent proceedings of Oliver, that he was neither very diligent nor very prudent at Edinburgh, but little is known with certainty. He remained there till the spring of 1754, when, led more by his love of roving than by his devotion to science, he resolved to visit the continental continental schools. I shall carry,' he wrote to Mr. Contarine in announcing that he had drawn upon him for twenty pounds, 'just 331. to France, with good store of clothes, shirts, &c., and that with economy will serve.' Economy he never practised. Whatever pittance he possessed was usually squandered, and when he lived frugally it was because he had exhausted his means. A letter from Leyden to Mr. Contarine, which describes the mishaps that attended his voyage to Holland, whither he went instead of to France, is tinged, like the apologetical epistle to his mother, with palpable romance; and Mr. Forster suggests, we have no doubt truly, that it may perhaps have been dictated by the same motive-a desire to explain away heedless expenditure which might soon compel him to tax anew the purse and patience of his friends. His generous uncle, however, seems shortly afterwards to have sunk into childishness, and his other relatives in Ireland were deaf to his appeals. At Leyden he managed to exist by borrowing and giving lessons in English. He frequented the gaming-table, and once brought away a considerable sum, which was lost almost as soon as won. When he took his departure in February 1755, he was obliged to a fellow-student for the loan which was to carry him on his way. Immediately afterwards he passed the shop of a florist, saw some costly tulip-roots, which were things prized by Mr. Contarine, and, solely intent upon gratifying his uncle, bought them at once with the borrowed money. It is these benevolent but ill-regulated impulses which have endeared the memory of Goldsmith to the world. In him the extravagance which ministers to gratitude and relieves wretchedness was still stronger than the improvidence which grew from self-indulgence. He left Leyden next day,' says Mr. Forster, 'with a guinea in his pocket, one shirt to his back, and a flute in his hand,' He took the course which he afterwards described in 'The Traveller,' and trudged on foot through parts of Flanders, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. In later days he used to tell his friends of the distresses he underwent-of his sleeping in barns, of his dependence at one time upon the charity of convents, and of his turning itinerant flute-player* at another to get bed * He was an indifferent performer, and, if we were to credit the story related by Sir John Hawkins, he was ignorant of his notes. Roubiliac, so runs the tale, pretending to be charmed with one of Oliver's airs, begged to have it repeated that he might take it down. The sculptor jotted some random dots upon the paper, and showed it to Goldsmith, who, after looking it over with seeming attention, pronounced it to be correct, adding, that if he had not seen him do it he never could have believed his friend capable of writing music after him.' In contradiction to this, the author of an address to the Philological Society of London,' published in May, 1787, and quoted by Mr. Forster, asserts that a gentle man |