closeness of their approximation. If, then, we are willing to form a circular theory, the basis of which is intended to be three, five, seven, or any other number, arbitrarily assumed, we have but to take some one leading group; and, casting about for some other leading group which can join on to this first one, and a third on to the second, we must necessarily fall in with some other leading group which will join on to the first, and thus a circle will be formed. We have said necessarily, because, according to the common theory of probabilities, the number of objects being infinite, and the number of groups, and the relations of groups, also infinite, we must necessarily, without the aid of any very fertile imagination, fall in with some leading property which will conduct us to the spot whence we started. This capability of arrangement in circles is not exclusively a law of Nature, as the advocates of the circular theories would lead us to suppose. Works of Art may be arranged in a similar manner. The merchant may arrange his goods, or the librarian his books, in circles, according to the most approved principles. Commencing with folios bound in morocco, and passing through all the gradations of binding, size, and colour, he might be easily conducted, by these and other relations, to the unbound folio, stitched in red cloth, which would lead him, by a nice transition, back again to his original starting-place; and if any difficulty attached to this arrangement, it might easily be remedied by the invention of groups normal or aberrant. We are apt to imagine, on falling in by accident with any of the recent works proposing circular theories, that we have mistaken treatises on Geometry or Mechanics for volumes of Natural History. Considering internal organization and laws of coexistence, as subjects irrelevant to Natural History, they substitute (what a distinguished circular theorist of the present day rightly terms) the "wheels within wheels" of a fertile imagination. They may not be unaptly compared to the : Ptolemaic system of Astronomy; and like it, could only be tolerated in the infancy of science. "With cycle on epicycle,-orb on orb," they almost call from us the just, though somewhat startling, observation of Alphonso X. king of Castile. The combinations of properties among natural objects are so numerous that many beings must necessarily have the same parts, and there must always be a great number presenting very slight differences. On comparing those resembling each other, it is easy to form series, which will appear to descend gradually from a primitive type. These considerations have accordingly given rise to the formation of a scale of being, and to circular theories; the object of the former being to exhibit the whole in one series, commencing with the most complicated, and ending with the most simple organization,—and that of the latter to form two series, which, like two semicircles, described with the same radius, shall exactly fit and correspond at their extremities. In each, the mind is led from one link to another by insensible shades, almost without perceiving any interval. On considering each organ separately, and following it through all the species of one class, we observe that its progression, within certain limits, is preserved with a singular regularity. The organ, or some vestige of it, is to be found even in species where it is no longer of any apparent use, except to prove that Nature strictly adheres to the law of doing nothing by sudden transitions. Yet, the organs do not all follow the same order of gradation. One part is found absolutely perfect in a certain animal, while another part is in its most simple form. Again, on examining a different animal, the relative complication of the two organs is absolutely reversed. If, therefore, we were to class different species according to each organ taken separately, we should be under the necessity of forming as many series as we should have regulating organs. Thus, to make a general scale of complication, it would be essential to calculate the precise effect resulting from each combination, which is far from being practicable. As long as the great central springs remain the same, and while we confine ourselves to the same combinations of the principal organs, these gentle shades of an insensible gradation are found to prevail. All the animals of each of the primary divisions seem formed on a common plan, which serves as the basis of all their minute external modifications. But the moment that we direct our attention from one principal group to another, wherein different leading combinations take place, the scene directly changes. There is no longer any resemblance, and an interval, or marked transition, is obvious to every one. Thus, it is impossible to find in the whole Animal Kingdom any two beings which sufficiently resemble each other to serve as a link between the vertebrated and invertebrated animals. The Creator never outsteps the bounds which he has prescribed to himself in the laws of the conditions of existence. Ever adhering to the small number of combinations that are possible, Nature seems to delight in varying the arrangement and structure of the accessory parts. There appears in them no necessity for a particular form or arrangement, while it frequently happens, that particular forms and dispositions are created without any apparent views of utility. It seems only sufficient for their existence that they should be possible, that is to say, that they do not disturb or destroy the harmony of the whole. These varieties augment in number, in proportion as we turn our attention from the leading and essential organs to those which are less important; and when we finally arrive at the external surface of the body, where the laws of external Nature require that the least essential organs, and those least liable to injury, should be placed, we find the number of varieties absolutely infinite. The labours of naturalists have not yet succeeded in tracing all their differences, and newly-discovered species are continually rising, as it were, into existence. Yet not even is a bone varied in its surfaces, in its curvatures, or in its eminences, without subjecting the other bones to corresponding variations. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH. Oliver Goldsmith was born on the 10th [29th] of November 1728, at the hamlet of Pallas, county of Longford, in Ireland. He sprung from a respectable, but by no means a thrifty stock. Some families seem to inherit kindliness and incompetency, and to hand down virtue and poverty from generation to generation. Such was the case with the Goldsmiths. "They were always," according to their own accounts, “a strange family; they rarely acted like other people; their hearts were in the right place, but their heads seemed to be doing anything but what they ought."-"They were remarkable," says another statement, "for their worth, but of no cleverness in the ways of the world." Oliver Goldsmith will be found faithfully to inherit the virtues and weaknesses of his race. THERE are few writers for whom the reader feels such personal kindness as for Oliver Goldsmith, for few have so eminently possessed the magic gift of identifying themselves with their writings. We read his character in every page, and grow into familiar intimacy with him as we read. The artless benevolence that beams throughout his works; the whimsical yet amiable views of human life and human nature; the unforced humour, blended so happily with good feeling and good sense, and singularly dashed at times with a pleasing melancholy; even the very nature of his mellow, and flowing, and softly-tinted style, all seem to bespeak his moral as well as his intellectual qualities, and make us love the man at the same time that we admire the author. While the productions of writers of loftier pretension and more sounding names are suffered to moulder on our shelves, those of Goldsmith are cherished and laid in our bosoms. We do not quote them with ostentation, but they min-eral years on a small country curacy and the asgle with our minds, sweeten our tempers, and harmonize our thoughts; they put us in good humour with ourselves and with the world, and in so doing they make us happier and better men. An acquaintance with the private biography of Goldsmith lets us into the secret of his gifted pages. We there discover them to be little more than transcripts of his own heart and picturings of his fortunes. There he shows himself the same kind, artless, good-humoured, excursive, sensible, whimsical, intelligent being that he appears in his writings. Scarcely an adventure or character is given in his works that may not be traced to his own parti-coloured story. Many of his most ludicrous scenes and ridiculous incidents have been drawn from his own blunders and mischances, and he seems really to have been buffeted into almost every maxim imparted by him for the instruction of his reader.* Some of the above remarks were introductory to a biography of Goldsmith which the author edited in Paris in 1825. That biography was not given as original, and was, in fact, a mere modification of an His father, the Rev. Charles Goldsmith, with hereditary improvidence, married when very young and very poor, and starved along for sev sistance of his wife's friends. He inhabited an old, half-rustic mansion, that stood on a rising ground on a rough, lonely part of the country, overlooking a low tract occasionally flooded by the river Inny. In this house Goldsmith was born, and it was a birthplace worthy of a poet: for, by all accounts, it was haunted ground. A tradition handed down among the neighbouring peasantry states that, in after years, the house, remaining for some time untenanted, went to decay, the roof fell in, and it became so lonely and forlorn as to be a resort for the "good people" or fairies, who in Ireland are supposed to interesting Scottish memoir published in 1821. In the present article the author has undertaken, as a labour of love," to collect from various sources materials for a tribute to the memory of one whose been a source of enjoyment to him throughout life. writings were the delight of his childhood, and have He has principally been indebted for his facts, however, to a recent copious work of Mr. James Prior, who has collected and collated the most minute particulars of Goldsmith's history with unwearied research and scrupulous fidelity, and given them in a voluminous form to the world. |