. i.), hated Norfolk, the native
country of his father, and delighted in Kent, the native country of his
mother. "He did not care for Norfolk ale, Norfolk turnips, Norfolk
dumplings and Norfolk turkeys. Its flat, sandy aguish scenery was not to
his taste." He dearly liked what he calls most happily, "the rich, blue
prospects of Kent."

{153} Goldsmith doubtless had more than one experience in his mind when
he wrote of:--

Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain.

Lissoy, near Ballymahon, Ireland, served to provide many concrete
features of the picture, but that the author drew upon his experiences of
Houghton is believed by his principal biographer, John Forster, by
Professor Masson and others, and on no other assumption than that of an
English village can the lines be explained:--

A time there was, ere England's griefs began,
When every rood of ground maintained its man.

{185} Originally written to serve as an Introduction to an edition of
Mr. George Meredith's _Tragic Comedians_, of which book Lassalle is the
hero. That edition was published by Messrs. Ward Lock & Bowden, who
afterwards transferred all rights in it to Messrs. Archibald Constable &
Co., by whose courtesy the paper is included here.

{186} Lassalle's _Tagebuch_, edited by Paul Lindau, 1891.

{187} _Henrich Heine's sammtliche Werke_, vol. xxii., pp. 84-99.

{188} The most concise account of the affair is contained in the story
of Sophie Solutzeff, entitled, _Eine Liebes-episode aus dem Leben
Ferdinand Lassalle's_. This booklet, which is published in German,
French, and Russian, professes to be an account of Lassalle's love for a
young Russian lady, Sophie Solutzeff, some two years before he met Helene
von Donniges. He is represented as being himself in a frenzy of passion;
the lady, however, rejecting as a lover the man she had been prepared to
worship as a teacher. There can be little doubt that the whole story is
a fabrication, in which the Countess von Hatzfeldt had a considerable
part. The Countess was rightly judged by popular opinion to have played
a discreditable role in the love passages between Lassalle and Helene;
and Helene's own account of the matter in her _Reminiscences_ was an
additional blow at the pseudo-friend who might have helped the lovers so
much. What more natural than that the Countess should be anxious to
break the force of Helene's indictment, by endorsing the popular, and
indeed accurate