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nave been done in the very simplicity and ignorance of malevolence. In almost every instance in which they basely or petulantly condemned an author, they were writing the bitterest of all condemnations on themselves. Papers steeped in misrepresentation and injustice, illustrating all the varieties of bad temper, rich in language drawn from the pot-house and the fish-market, and teeming with personalities of the grossest and most unjustifiable kind, papers which have been the ideal models of every profligate newspaper hack in our own country, ¡ were, no doubt, considered by these writers as fine specimens of familiar composition. Such familiarity we can obtain without resorting to books or bad company. But these men were masters of another style of thought and expression, essentially different from that we have indicated, a style full of all saintly sentiment, and profuse in phrases of kindliness, piety, and gentle feeling. A comparison of the "Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life" with the most shameful vulgarities of the "Noctes," will give the best idea that can be obtained of the nature of this difference.

The writings of Sydney Smith are free from all vulgarities of the kind we have noted, because he is in reality an honest, true-hearted man. He can afford to be familiar. He is not all Billingsgate on one side of his mind, and all Arcadia on the other. The great peculiarity of his works, apart from the qualities of character they display, is their singular blending of the beautiful with the ludicrous; and this is the source of his refinement. He is keen and personal, almost fierce and merciless, in his attacks on public abuses; he has no check on his humor from authority or conventional forms; and yet he very rarely violates good taste. There is much

good nature in nim, too, in spite of his severity. His quick perception of what is laughable modifies his sensibility to what is detestable. He cannot be grave for ten minutes, though on the gravest of subjects. His indignation and invective are almost ever followed by some jesting allusion or grotesque conceit. He draws down upon the object of his censure both scorn and laughter; and makes even abuse palatable, by clothing it in phrases or images which charm by their beauty or wit. When he writes on government and laws, he seems to detect deformity and deceit by an inner sense of harmony and proportion. He cannot lash the most criminal violations of humanity and rectitude, he cannot cut and thrust at the most monstrous pretensions of power, without considering the enormity a folly to be jeered at, as well as a crime to be denounced. So it is with his benevolent and religious feelings. His philanthropy expresses itself as often in jokes, in sly touches of humor, in broad gushes of fun and caricature, as in pathos and sympathy. And yet, the sentiment of beauty, amid all the humor. denunciation and extravagance, is constantly preserved. and prevents him from falling into buffoonery or harsh vituperation. It would be difficult to point out the source of his power of fascination in this respect; but it strikes us, on the first reading, as being different from anything else we have ever seen.

The collection of Sydney Smith's works which is now before us is principally made up of papers contributed to the Edinburgh Review, of which he was one of the founders, and the first editor. This celebrated journal, the great enemy of the garreteers, was projected in a garret. Few literary enterprises have had a more humble commencement. Smith says, in his preface, that

Jeffrey, Murray, and himself, "one day, happe.sed to meet in the eighth or ninth story or flat in Buccleugh Place, the elevated residence of the then Mr. Jeffrey. I proposed that we should set up a Review; this was acceded to with acclamation. I was appointed editor, and remained long enough in Edinburgh to edit the first number of the Edinburgh Review. The motto I proposed for the Review was,

'Tenui musam meditamur avenâ:'

'We cultivate literature upon a little oatmeal.'

But this was too near the truth to be admitted, and so we took our present grave motto from Publius Syrus, of whom none of us had, I am sure, ever read a single line."

His contributions to the Review are scattered over its pages from 1802 to 1828. They are on a variety of topics, Ireland, Catholic Claims, the Church, Sermons, Bishops, Prisons, Botany Bay, Poor Laws, Education, Missions, Methodists, Game Laws, Travels, America, and Miscellaneous Literature. All these subjects he has treated in his own way, from his own point of view, and each is illustrative of his character. Everything he touches he makes agreeable. No one should skip any articles from a fear of the dulness suggested by the name. Politics and political economy are the themes which he discusses perhaps with the most ability, the most severity, and the most brilliancy. We would call particular attention to the short reviews published in the earlier numbers of the Edinburgh, particularly to those on political sermons. The sharp, terse diction, the lively temperament, the quick perception, the brisk, tingling wit, the rich humor, at times so demure and sly, and at others so

broad and unreined, - these qualities strike us as much in the productions of Smith's youth, as in those of his maturity. The charge of infidelity brought against the Review, for which Lord Jeffrey was made responsible, was owing, probably, more to Smith's ridicule of clerical fanat icism, fopperies, affectations, and servilities, than to any other cause. Though a clergyman of the established church, no man was less hampered by a veneration for its ministers. During the period in which he wrote, preferment depended so much more on politics than piety, and the church was disgraced by so many clergymen willing to barter their souls for bishoprics, that we think his conduct was not only free from the charge of infidelity, but that it was justified by the circumstances. A curate, or a bishop, who lends his name to the defence of abuses, corruption, and intolerance, of all those errors and crimes which Christianity abhors, and does this from selfish considerations, to please a dominant power in the state, is worthy of the lash both of satire and invective; and, if the punishment be inflicted by a member of the same church which is disgraced by the culprit, there is a clear gain to its honor. Such a course takes from infidels their strongest practical argument, the only argument that has any effect upon large bodies of people. Every triumph of irreligion has been gained by dextrously confounding the priests of the Gospel with the doctrines and precepts of the Gospel; and when the former have been false to their faith, the requisitions of their faith have been weapons with which scoffers have attacked both church and clergy. Though the articles to which we have referred may displease many worthy men, we can find nothing, either in them, or in other portions of these volumes, to justify the foolish and nalignant

charge of infidelity, originally brought against them by placemen and political jobbers whose knavery he had exposed, and afterwards repeated by better men, who were ignorant of what they stigmatized.

The following extract shows with what shrewdness, honesty, courage and independence, he wrote about doctors of divinity and the affairs of the church. He says, (in 1802,) that the great object of modern sermons is to hazard nothing; their characteristic is decent debility.

"Pulpit discourses have insensibly dwindled from speaking to reading; a practice of itself sufficient to stifle every germ of eloquence. It is only by the fresh feelings of the heart, that mankind can be very powerfully affected. What can be more ludicrous than an orator delivering stale indignation, and fervor of a week old; turning over whole pages of violent passions, written out in German text; reading the tropes and apostrophes into which he is hurried by the ardor of his mind; and so affected by a preconcerted line and page, that he is unable to proceed further? The prejudices of the English nation have proceeded a good deal from their hatred to the French; and because that country is the native soil of elegance, animation and grace, a certain patriotic stolidity and loyal awkwardness have become the characteristics of this; so that an adventurous preacher is afraid of violating the ancient tranquillity of the pulpit, and the audience are commonly apt to consider the mar who tires them less than usual as a trifler or a charlatan."

In an article on Dr. Rennel, he ridicules some fooleries in the forgotten writings, of that clergyman, and puts the reverend gentleman into the class, numerous at that time, of "bad heads bawling for the restoration of exploded errors and past infatuation." The doctor had called the age, among other terms of reproach, a foppish age: and Smith asks, if there is not a class of fops as vain and shallow as any of their fraternity in Bond-street,