In other places the schoolmaster is called, not Paddy Burns, but Thomas Byrne, evidently the same person. He had been educated for school-teaching, but had gone into the army, and, serving in Spain during the reign of Queen Anne, became quarter-master of the regiment. On the return of peace he took up his original calling. He is represented to be well qualified to teach; little more than writing, reading, and arithmetic were wanted, but he could translate extemporaneously Virgil's Eclogues into Irish verse, in considerable elegance. But his grand accomplishment was the narration of his adventures, which was commonly exercised in the ale-house; at the same time that, when not in a particular humor for teaching, he would edify his boys in the school with one of his stories. Among his most eager listeners was Oliver, who was so much excited by what he heard, that his friends used to ascribe his own love of rambling to this cause. The schoolmaster was, in fact, the very man to raise the imagination in the young poet. He was eccentric in his habits, of a romantic turn, wrote poetry, was well versed in the fairy superstitions of the country, and, what is not less common in Ireland, believed implicitly in their truth. A poor woman, named Catharine Geraghty, was supposed to be "Yon widowed, solitary thing, That feebly bends beside the plashy spring: She, wretched matron, pressed in age for bread, To strip the brook with mantling cresses spread." The brook and ditches near where her cabin stood still furnish cresses, and several of her descendants reside in the neighborhood. The school-house is still pointed out, but it is unfortunate for its identity that no school-house was built then, school being taught in the master's cottage. There is more evidence in nature of the poet's recalling the place of his boyhood as he wrote his poem. The waters and marshy lands, in more than one direction, gave him acquaintance with the singular bird which he has introduced with such effect as an image of desolation. "Along thy glades, a solitary guest, The hollow-sounding bittern guards its nest." Little charm as Lissoy has at the present moment independent of association with Oliver Goldsmith, with him and genius it possesses one that grows upon you the more you trace the scenes made prominent in his poem, and we leave it with regret.