whom Smollett has so prominently portrayed in his Roderick Random. His real name was Hugh Hewson, and for more than forty years he kept a hairdresser's shop in the parish of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. His shop was hung round with Latin quotations, and he would frequently point out to his customers and acquaintances the several scenes in Roderick Random pertaining to himself, which had their foundation, not in Smollett's inventive fancy, but in truth and reality. The meeting in the barber's shop at Newcastle, the subsequent mistake at the inn, their arrival together in London, and the assistance they received from Strap's friend, were all facts. Hewson left behind him an interlined copy of Roderick Random, showing how far we are indebted to the genius of the doctor, and to what extent the incidents are founded in reality. Hewson was many years employed as the keeper of "Villiers-walk," as the lime-tree walk in the rear of the watergate is called. He died in the year 1809, at the advanced age of eighty-five.

FRANKLIN AS A BOOKSELLER.

One fine morning when Franklin was busy preparing his newspaper for the press, a lounger stepped into the store, and spent an hour or more looking over the books, &c., and finally taking one in his hand, asked the shop-boy the price.

"One dollar," was the answer.

"One dollar," said the lounger, "can't you take less than that?"

"No, indeed; one dollar is the price."

Another hour had nearly passed, when the lounger said"Is Mr. Franklin at home?

"Yes, he is in the printing-office."

"I want to see him," said the lounger.

The shop-boy immediately informed Mr. Franklin that a gentleman was in the store, waiting to see him. Franklin was soon behind the counter, when the lounger, with book in hand, addressed him thus:

"Mr. Franklin, what is the lowest you can take for that book?"

"One dollar and a quarter," was the ready answer.

"One dollar and a quarter! Why, your young man asked me only a dollar.”

"True," said Franklin, "and I could have better afforded to have taken a dollar then, than to have been taken out of the office."

The lounger seemed surprised, and wishing to end the parley of his own making, said

"Come, Mr. Franklin, tell me what is the lowest you can take for it?"

"One dollar and a half.”

“A dollar and a half! Why, you offered it yourself for a dollar and a quarter."

"Yes," said Franklin, "and I had better have taken that price then, than a dollar and a half now."

The lounger paid down the price, and went about his business-if he had any-and Franklin returned into the printing-office.

DR. FRANKLIN'S ONLY SON.

Of Franklin's only son, William, little is generally known. Unlike his father, whose chief claim to veneration is for the valuable services he rendered his country in her greatest need, the son was, from first to last, a devoted loyalist. Before the Revolutionary War he held several civil and military offices of importance. At the commencement of the war he held the office of Governor of New Jersey, which appointment he received in 1763. When the difficulties between the mother country and the colonies were coming to a crisis, he threw his whole influence in favour of loyalty, and endeavoured to prevent the Legislative Assembly of New Jersey from sanctioning the proceedings of the General Congress of Philadelphia. These efforts, however, did but little to stay the tide of popular sentiment in favour of resistance to tyranny, and soon involved him in difficulty. He was deposed from office by the Whigs to give place to William Livingston, and sent a prisoner to Connecticut, where he remained about two years in East Windsor, in the house of Captain Ebenezer Grant, near where the Theological Seminary now stands. In 1778 he was exchanged, and soon after went to England. There he spent the remainder of his life, receiving a pension from the British Government for the losses he had sustained by his fidelity. He died in 1813, at the age of eighty-two.

As might be expected, his opposition to the cause of liberty, so dear to the heart of his father, produced an estrangement between them. For years they had no intercourse. When, in 1784, the son wrote to his father, in his reply Dr. Franklin says: "Nothing has ever hurt me so much, and affected me with such keen sensations, as to find myself deserted in my old age by my only son; and not only deserted, but to find him taking up arms against me in a cause wherein my good fame, fortune and life were all at stake." In his will, also, he alludes to the part his son had acted. After making him some bequests, he adds: "The part he acted against me in the late war, which is of public notoriety, will account for my leaving him no more of an estate he endeavoured to deprive me of." The patriotism of the father stands forth the brighter when contrasted with the desertion of the son.

GOLDSMITH'S "BEE."

The Bee, a periodical, like the Citizen of the World, (says Mr. Pycroft), is the mine from which many a gem is drawn by modern writers and worn without acknowledgment, only a little disguised and varied in its setting. Let us give two or three instances. A very witty caricature lately appeared, representing one man quite drunk talking politics, with much patriotic fervour, to another man peeping through the bars of a gaol. "Mercy!" says the gaol-bird, "how horrible to think our liberty is in danger !"-"Aye-but what I am most of all consarned for," replies the drunkard, with an oath, "is our blessed Religion !" The point of this caricature is borrowed from the Citizen of the World. Some have claimed, for Talleyrand, others for Rochefoucauld, the worldly-wise maxim that "the use of language is to conceal our thoughts." In the Bee, No. 3, Saturday, October 20, 1759, "On the Use of Language," are these words—the argument being that to confess poverty is a slow way to obtain riches :-"He who best knows how to conceal his necessity and desires is the most likely person to find redress; and the true use of speech is not so much to express our wants as to conceal them." In the Life of William Wilberforce that excellent man's well-meaning biographers were imposed on by an anecdote of a picture of the true Reformer of the World, the Redeemer on the Cross, being pointed out to Wilberforce as a warning of what he might

expect in his worthy design of reforming the morals of the higher circles. The original is in the Bee:- "The old man takes his son by the hand, and drawing back a curtain at the end of the room, discovered a crucifix exquisitely painted. 'My son,' said he, 'you desire to change the religion of your country,-behold the fate of a Reformer!""

GOLDSMITH'S "DESERTED VILLAGE."

Macaulay, in the memoir of Goldsmith, which he wrote for the eighth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, thus demolishes the poet's artificial picture of "Sweet Auburn":

"A poet may easily be pardoned for reasoning ill; but he cannot be pardoned for describing ill, for observing the world in which he lives so carelessly that his portraits bear no resemblance to the originals, for exhibiting as copies from real life monstrous combinations of things which never were and never could be found together. What would be thought of a painter who should mix August and January in one landscape, who should introduce a frozen river into a harvest scene? Would it be a sufficient defence of such a picture to say that every part was exquisitely coloured, that the green hedges, the apple-trees loaded with fruit, the waggons reeling under the yellow sheaves, and the sunburned reapers wiping their foreheads were very fine, and that the ice and the boy sliding were also very fine? To such a picture, "The Deserted Village' bears a great resemblance. It is made up of incongruous parts. The village in its happy days is a true English village. The village in its decay is an Irish village. The felicity and the misery which Goldsmith has brought close together belong to two different countries, and to two different stages in the progress of society. He has assuredly never seen in his native island such a rural paradise, such a seat of plenty, content, and tranquillity as his "Auburn." He had assuredly never seen in England all the inhabitants of such a paradise turned out of their homes in one day, and forced to emigrate in a body to America. The hamlet he had probably seen in Kent, the ejectment he had probably seen in Munster, but by joining the two he has produced something which never was and never will be seen in any part of the world."

GOLDSMITH'S "VICAR OF WAKEFIELD."

There is no end to the delight afforded by the Vicar of Wakefield. Moore read it to his wife Bessy, and notes:"What a gem it is! we both enjoyed it so much more than Joseph Andrews." Again: "Finished the Vicar of Wakefield to Bessy; we both cried over it."

"We return" (says Sir Walter Scott) "to it again and again, and bless the memory of an author who contrives so well to reconcile us to human nature. Whether we choose the pathetic and distressing incidents of the fire, the scenes at the jail, or the lighter and humorous parts of the story, we find the best and truest sentiments enforced in the most beautiful language; and perhaps few characters of purer dignity have been described than that of the excellent pastor, rising above sorrow and oppression, and labouring for the conversion of those felons, into whose company he had been thrust by his villanous creditor."

Goethe declared, in his eighty-first year, that the Vicar of Wakefield was his delight at the age of twenty; that it had, in a manner, formed part of his education, influencing his taste and feelings throughout life; and that he had recently read it again, from beginning to end, with renewed delight, and with a grateful sense of the early benefit derived from it.

GOLDSMITH'S "NATURAL HISTORY."

Cradock, in his Memoirs, relates-" When Goldsmith was near completing his Natural History, he sent to Dr. Percy and me, to state that he wished not to return to town, from Windsor, I think, for a fortnight, if we would only complete a proof that lay upon his table in the Temple. It was concerning birds, and many books lay open that he occasionally consulted for his own materials. We met by appointment; and Dr. Percy, smiling, said, 'Do you know anything about birds?' 'Not an atom,' was my reply: 'do you?' 'Not I,' says he, 'scarce know a goose from a swan: however, let us try what we can do.' We set to work, and our task was not very difficult. Sometime after the work appeared we compared notes, but could not either of us recognise our own share."