Here we must bring to a conclusion our necessarily detached and desultory criticisms on the works of Goldsmith. As a _prose_ writer, it would be in vain for any too partial biographer or critic to elevate him to the rank of those who guide or confirm opinion, and teach us to reason and to judge. But how many a familiar truth has he clothed in clear and graceful diction! How often, too, the isolated observation, thrown out as if by happy chance, stimulates the mind to reflection! What a master he is of _form_—of the pleasing art which moulds the style! But his two principal _poems_ are the works which raise him to the rank of _the immortals_. We can easily understand that many ardent admirers of our contemporaneous poetry—replete as it is with the philosophic speculations of the age, its subtle and ambitious thinking—may be disposed to look down with an air of condescension, and a sort of gentle disdain, upon the poetry of Goldsmith. But time passes on, and brings new modes of philosophising; the subtleties of one age do not always charm the next; and it may happen that much which is now held in highest repute, as the most _poetical_ of poetry, shall have grown dim and obsolete, whilst mothers shall be still teaching to their children, and old men still repeating to themselves, the descriptions of _The Traveller_ and of _The Deserted Village_. TO BURNS’S “HIGHLAND MARY.” I. O loved by him whom Scotland loves, Long loved, and honoured duly By all who love the bard who sang So sweetly and so truly! In cultured dales his song prevails, Thrills o’er the eagle’s aëry,— Ah! who that strain has caught, nor sighed For Burns’s “Highland Mary?” II. I wandered on from hill to hill, I feared nor wind nor weather; For Burns beside me trode the moor, Beside me pressed the heather. I read his verse—his life—alas! O’er that dark shades extended:— With thee at last, and him in thee, My thoughts their wanderings ended. III. His golden hours of youth were thine— Those hours whose flight is fleetest; Of all his songs to thee he gave The freshest and the sweetest. Ere ripe the fruit, one branch he brake, All rich with bloom and blossom; And shook its dews, its incense shook, Above thy brow and bosom. IV.