lines; and as my 'Pleasures of Hope' got on, my pupils fell off." At last the work was finished and published, and the celebrity which it reached was sufficient to compensate the author for all his past anxieties. In fact, it took the public mind by storm; and while commendation in all its forms was exhausted in lauding it, the universal wonder was, that such a poem should have been produced by a youth not more than twenty-one years old. Several of the most distinguished of the Edinburgh literati had already been prepared to estimate its merits from quotations which they had heard from the manuscript. But with those who were not thus forewarned, the first sight of the work was irresistible. Among these was the learned and accomplished Dr. Gregory, who, in stepping into the shop of Mr. Mundell, the publisher, saw the volume, fresh from the press, lying on the counter. "Ah! what have we here ?" he said, taking it up; "'The Pleasures of Hope!'" He looked between the uncut leaves, and was so struck with the beauty of a single passage that he could not desist until he had read half the work. "This is poetry," he enthusiastically exclaimed; and added, " Where is the author to be found ? I will call upon him immediately." The promise of the professor was quickly fulfilled, and from that period he became one of Campbell's warmest friends and admirers.
Having thus established for himself a high reputation by his first attempt, and being still in the opening of life, Thomas Campbell was impatient to see the world, and resolved, for this purpose, to take a trip into some foreign country. The proceeds of his work had furnished him with the means, and therefore he had only to select the route of his pilgrimage. His choice settled upon Germany, already become famous in Scotland by its rising literature, and the works of Wieland, Schiller, and Goethe. He crossed over to Hamburg, where his fame had already preceded him, so that he received an enthusiastic welcome from the British residents of that mercantile city. He soon found, however, that he had stumbled unexpectedly upon the outposts of a great and momentous war, so that he was obliged to direct his course according to its movements. But such was the rapidity of the French armies, that even an unencumbered traveller could scarcely avoid them; and on his arriving at Ratisbon, war was raging round its suburbs, and, finally, the French within its gates. Thus Campbell found himself in a situation that falls to the lot of few poets; he was likely to be the witness, as well as the eulogist and recorder, of great military achievements. "It was a sudden transition," he thus writes to a friend, "from the beauties of an interesting journey to the horrors of war and confusion that prevailed at Ratisbon. The richest fields of Europe desolated by contending troops; peasants driven from their homes, to starve and beg in the streets; horses dying of hunger and men dying of their wounds, were the dreadful novelties at this time." From the ramparts close to the Scotch monastery, he also witnessed the conflict that gave to the French the possession of Ratisbon, and thus describes the spectacle in a letter to his brother: "Never shall time efface from my memory the recollection of that hour of astonishment and expended breath, when I stood, with the good monks of St. James, to overlook a charge of Klenau's cavalry upon the French under Grenier. We saw the fire given and returned, and heard distinctly the sound of the French pas-de-charge collecting the lines to attack in close column. After three hours, awaiting the issue of a severe action, a park of artillery was opened just beneath the walls of the monastery, and several drivers that were stationed there to
