OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [BOO* m.

1759. secret of the genius, of tolerant, gentle-hearted Goldsmith.

JBUi. 'What he was to the end of his London life, when miserable
outcasts had cause with the great and learned to lament
him, this paper shows him to have been at its beginning.
The kind-hearted man would wander through the streets at
night, to console and reassure the misery he could not
otherwise give help to. While he thought of the rich and
happy who were at rest; while he looked up even to the
wretched roof that gave shelter to himself; he could not
bear to think of those to whom the streets were the
only home. " Strangers, wanderers, and orphans," too
humble in their circumstances to expect redress, too com-
pletely and utterly wretched for pity;—" poor shivering
girls " who had seen happiqr days, and been flattered into
beauty and into sin, now lying peradventure at the very
doors of their betrayers;—<" poor houseless creatures" to
whom the world, responsible for their guilt, gives reproaches
but will not give relief. These were teachers in life's
truths, who spoke with a sterner and wiser voice than that
of mere personal suffering. " The slightest misfortunes of
" the great, the most imaginary uneasiness of the rich, are
" aggravated with all the power of eloquence, and held up
" to engage our attention and sympathetic sorrow. The
" poor weep unheeded, persecuted by every subordinate
"species of tyranny; and .every law which gives others
" security, becomes an enemy to them. "Why was this heart
" of mine formed with so much sensibility, or why was not
"my fortune adapted to its impulse?" In thoughts like
these, and in confirmed resolution to make the poor his
clients and write down those tyrannies of law, the night
wanderings of the thoughtful writer not unprofitably ended.
It was a resolution very manifest in his next literary
labour.cxvii of the