APPENDIX (D) TO VOLUME I.

" In winter, when their canals are frozen, every house is forsaken, and all people
" are on the ice; sleds drawn by horses, and skaiting, are at that time the reigning
" amusements. They have boats here that slide on the ice, and are driven by the
" winds. When they spread all their sails they go more than a mile and a half
" a minute, and their motion is so rapid the eye can scarcely accompany them.
" Their ordinary manner of travelling is very cheap and very convenient: they
" sail in covered boats drawn by horses ; and in these you are sure to moot people
" of all nations. Here the Dutch slumber, the French chatter, and the English
" play at cards. Any man who likes company may have them to his taste. For
" my part I generally detached myself from all society, and was wholly taken up
" in observing the face of the country. Nothing can equal its beauty; wherever
" I turn my eye, fine houses, elegant gardens, statues, grottos, vistas, presented
" themselves ; but when you enter their towns you are charmed beyond description.
" JSTo misery is to be seen here ; every one is usefully employed.

" Scotland and this country bear the highest contrast. There hills and rocks
" intercept every prospect: here 'tis all a continued plain. There you might see
" a well-dressed duchess issuing •from a dirty close ; and here a dirty Dutchman
" inhabiting a palace. The Scotch may be compared to a tulip planted in dung;
" but I never see a Dutchman in his own house but I think of a magnificent
" Egyptian temple dedicated to an ox. Physic is by no means taught here so well
" as in Edinburgh : and in all Leyden there are but ftmr British students, owing
" to all necessaries being so extremely dear and the professors so very lazy (the
" chemical professor excepted) that we don't much care to come hither. I am not
" certain how long my'stay here may be; however I expect to have the happiness of
•' • seeing you at Kilmbre, if I can, next March.

" Direct to me, if I am lutturared with a letter from you, to Madame Diallion's
" at Leyden.
r " Thou best of men, may Heaven guard and preserve you, and those you lovo.

" OLIVER GOLDSMITH."

D. (PACHG 222.)

THE PLAY QF GISIPPUS.

In brief justification of the opinion I have expressed of this tragedy,
and of the interest I feel in its'writer's memory, I subjoin one short
scene. *ThPperiod of the action is the reign of Augustus CseBar, and
the subject is; the friendship borne by the philosophic Greek, Gisippus,
to the ambitious Roman, Fulvius, tp secure, whose happiness he sur-
renders his own. Haying made unequalled sacrifices for. his friend—•
having passejd from honoured love and worldly esteem into solitude
and beggary—he finds himself at last, his friend apparently heedless or
forgetful of his sufferings, a slave. 'The lessons of the Academy and
the Porch (so often taught in unison in the latter Athenian day) on this
desert their old follower, and the character takes colouring from that
middle-ages-romance which furnished "Boccacio with the subject onere is a complete beauty,