of acres which he was cultivating by his bailiffs "in various counties of England." We trust he will take these remonstrances in good part; for he may rest assured that to sneer, though ever so slightly, on Catholic subjects, is not the way to conciliate sensible Protestants; and that it is not exactly well-bred to let out, however apparently incidentally, that we possess 784 silver spoons, forks, dishes, and so forth.

SYDNEY SMITH'S LIFE.

Memoirs of the Rev. Sydney Smith. By his Daughter, Lady Holland with a Selection from his Letters, edited by Mrs. Austin. Longmans.

WE poor Catholics have a class of "friends" who "advocate our claims" in the spirit of a somewhat new reading of the old adage, Fiat experimentum in corpore vili. We are a feeble and effete though noisy race of men, who, like a worthless house-dog, are to be silenced with a bone, when we shall become the most amiable of spaniels. While our enemies alternately exult over the extinction of Popery, and call for fresh fetters to chain it down, these worthy "friends" of ours are good enough to account us as simpletons, and harmless accordingly. They take the "statesmanlike" "unbigoted" view of us and our affairs, estimate the strength of our religious convictions by the weakness of their own political opinions, and settle the matter by deciding that we are a very worthy, honest, good-natured, easy-going generation, who love the Council of Trent and the Pope about as much as the Puseyites love the Presbyterian Kirk, or Lord Shaftesbury venerates the memory of Archbishop Laud. "Pay the fellows their demand" is the plain English of their arguments in favour of the Catholic claims," and they'll be your humble servants for ever after."

The reverend and extremely witty Sydney Smith was long the coryphæus of this band of liberal Protestant politicians. His notion of a young Catholic nobleman or gentleman was that of a priest-ridden country booby, who had only to be admitted into Parliament to become instantly a frequenter of the London "hells," and a roué who would devote himself to the destruction of his own constitution, and leave the British constitution to enjoy its pure Protestant health undisturbed. We who live in these graver and more earnest days can hardly

recal the effect which this kind of advocacy really had on the popular mind of the last generation. We have no notion of being tolerated at the expense of our reputation for brains and honesty. We feel considerably irritated at the tone in which Sydney Smith vouchsafed to befriend us in his Peter Plymley's Letters and sundry articles in the Edinburgh. But, nevertheless, those productions undoubtedly did us good service; and, on the principle "let those laugh that win," we can well afford to laugh heartily, not only at the discomfiture of our adversaries, but at the jokes of Peter Plymley and other like "defenders of the faith." As for ourselves, we confess that there are few books that we enjoy half so much as those of the reverend joker, whose life has just been given to the world by his daughter, Lady Holland. When he argues perfectly seriously, either for or against a subject, we find him decidedly dull. His utter disbelief in any thing truly great, heroic, or supernatural in man, the intensity of his political partisanship, and the unpoetic and unimaginative character of his whole mind, unite to make him a very superficial thinker on many questions. But for wit absolutely delicious; for a union of causticity with good-humour, of hearty benevolence with a keen sense of the follies and infirmities of mankind, Sydney Smith has not left his equal behind him in the republic of miscellaneous literature.

His daughter's memoir will tend to raise the popular estimate of his personal character. His career was quite unchequered. Faber fortunæ suæ, as he delighted to call himself, he claimed no ancestral honours; his father was an eccentric and amusing man; his mother a beautiful woman, of French extraction; and himself and his brothers remarkable for their intellectual gifts: a party of noisy boys, "neglecting games, seizing every hour of leisure for study, and often lying on the floor stretched over their books, discussing with loud voice and most vehement gesticulation every point that arose, often subjects above their years, and arguing upon them with a warmth and fierceness as if life and death hung upon the struggle." Sydney was sent to Winchester School; became Fellow of New College, Oxford; and afterwards served a curacy on Salisbury Plain. Next he was engaged as travelling tutor to the son of the squire of the parish; but as the war at that time rendered continental travelling impossible, "in stress of politics, he put into Edinburgh," where he remained five years (in the course of which he married), and became acquainted with Jeffrey, Horner, Playfair, and other celebrities, in conjunction with whom he originated the Edinburgh Review, for which he proposed for a motto, "Tenui musam medi

tamur avená-We cultivate literature on a little oatmeal;-but this was too near the truth to be admitted."

"It requires," he used to say, "a surgical operation to get a joke well into the Scotch understanding. Their only idea of wit, or rather, that inferior variety of this electric talent which prevails occasionally in the North, and which under the name of wur, is so infinitely distressing to people of good taste, is laughing immoderately at stated intervals. They are so imbued with metaphysics, that they even make love metaphysically. I overheard a young lady of my acquaintance, at a dance in Edinburgh, exclaim, in a sudden pause of the music, 'What you say, my lord, is very true of love in the aibstract, but-' here the fiddlers began fiddling furiously, and the rest was lost."

He afterwards came to London, where he delivered his famous lectures on moral philosophy; not, as he says, because he knew any thing about the subject, but because he wanted 2001. In time he was presented to the living of Foston, near York, where he dabbled in bricks and mortar, and built a parsonage; later in life he was preferred to a stall at Bristol, and a living near Taunton; in his latter years he exchanged his Bristol preferment for a canonry at St Paul's.

Sydney Smith's politics were those of the Whigs of the day. He was an uncompromising and stanch advocate of the Catholic claims, of the rights of prisoners, of the abolition of slavery, and of reform in general; and by his articles, pamphlets, and squibs, contributed in a most efficient way to the ultimate success of all these measures. His strongly-pronounced political opinions, without doubt, were the occasion of his not gaining the highest prizes of the Establishment, and even of his being left for several years to struggle with poverty; and for this his daughter claims for him an amount of high-mindedness which is certainly not requisite to account for his conduct. We have often seen men sacrifice their prospects for a mere whim; Sydney Smith sacrificed his prospects of the bench (if his wit would ever have wafted him thither) to his fame as a political reviewer, and to that necessity of speaking out, which is as important as fresh air to men of his temperament.

As a clergyman of the Establishment, Sydney Smith quite fulfils the ideal of that school which equally laughs to scorn the pretensions of mission which the Puseyite sets forth, and the claims of the Evangelical to an internal call; itself founding its sole claim on grounds of decency, order, kindness, philanthropy, and general utility. Of this type we are bound to say that Smith was a most respectable specimen. Never was there a parson who made his parishioners more comfortable; never did any one give them more shrewd and sensible advice,

or dose them to more purpose with blankets, bread, and physic. Never was there a more genial type of the rural moral policeman; but we should think never was there a man calling himself a clergyman more utterly oblivious of all supernatural motives of conduct than Sydney Smith. For instance, in vol. i. we have six pages of Advice to Parishioners, witty, sensible, striking; dissuasives from theft, from sitting in wet clothes, incivility, swearing, poaching, drunkenness, profligacy, in which the temporal motives for the conduct inculcated are stated in the tersest and most irresistible manner; but in which there is not an allusion to any higher motive than temporal well-being. His own ethics went on the same principles. His receipt for making every day happy is this: "When you rise in the morning form a resolution to make the day a happy one to a fellow-creature ;" beautiful certainly to all the possible extent of natural beauty, but without an atom of supernatural religion. There is also something pleasant in seeing that the popular wit was not one who "hung up his fiddle when he got home." He is never more genial or funny than when in his little parsonage; and the Edinburgh reviewer contrived to be as much loved by his domestics as he was admired by his readers.

...

"He used to dig vigorously an hour or two each day in his garden, as he said, to avoid sudden death;' for he was even then inclined to embonpoint, and perhaps, as a young man, may have been considered somewhat clumsy in figure. He spent much time in reading and composition; his activity was unceasing; I hardly remember seeing him unoccupied, but when engaged in conversation. .. He began, too, on a small scale to exercise his skill in medicine, doing much good amongst his poor neighbours; though there were often ludicrous circumstances connected with his early medical career. Another time he found all his pigs intoxicated; and, as he declared, grunting God save the king about the sty,' from having eaten some fermented grains which he had ordered for them. Once he administered castor-oil to the red cow, in quantities sufficient to have killed a regiment of Christians; but the red cow laughed alike at his skill and his oil, and went on her way rejoicing... Immediately on coming to Foston, as early as the year 1809, he set on foot gardens for the poor; and subsequently Dutch gardens for spade-cultivation. Then the cheapest

diet for the poor, and cooking for the poor, formed the subjects of his inquiry; and many a hungry labourer was brought in and stuffed with rice, or broth, or porridge, to test their relative effects on the appetite."

Here we have him recounting his building operations, and setting up an establishment and an equipage:

"I then took to horse to provide bricks and timber; was advised to make my own bricks of my own clay; of course, when the

kiln was open, all bad; mounted my horse again, and in twentyfour hours had bought thousands of bricks and tons of timber. Was advised by neighbouring gentlemen to employ oxen; bought fourTug and Lug, Hawl and Crawl; but Tug and Lug took to fainting, and required buckets of sal-volatile, and Hawl and Crawl to lie down in the mud. . . . A man-servant was too expensive; so I caught up a little garden-girl, made like a mile-stone, christened her Bunch, put a napkin in her hand, and made her my butler. The girls taught her to read, Mrs. Sydney to wait, and I undertook her morals: Bunch became the best butler in the county. . . . At last it was suggested that a carriage was much wanted in the establishment. After diligent search, I discovered in the back settlements of a York coachmaker an ancient green chariot, supposed to have been the earliest invention of the kind. I brought it home in triumph to my admiring family. Being somewhat dilapidated, the village tailor lined it, the village blacksmith repaired it; nay (but for Mrs. Sydney's earnest entreaties), I believe the village painter would have exercised his genius upon the exterior; it escaped this danger, however, and the result was wonderful. Each year added to its charms it grew younger and younger: a new wheel, a new spring I christened it the Immortal; it was known all over the neighbourhood; the village boys cheered it, and the village dogs barked at it; but Faber meæ fortune was my motto, and we had no false shame."

"One day," says Lady Holland, "when we were on a visit at Bishopthorpe, soon after he had preached a visitation sermon, in which, amongst other things, he had recommended the clergy not to devote too much time to shooting and hunting, the Archbishop, who rode beautifully in his youth, and knew full well my father's deficiencies in this respect, said, smiling, and evidently much amused, 'I hear, Mr. Smith, you do not approve of much riding for the clergy.'_ Why, my lord,' said my father, bowing with assumed gravity, perhaps there is not much objection, provided they do not ride too well, and stick out their toes professionally.' Mr. M., a Catholic gentleman present, looked out of the window of the room in which they were sitting. Ah, I see, you think you will get out,' said my father laughing; but you are quite mistaken this is the wing where the Archbishop shuts up the Catholics; the other wing is full of Dissenters.' Coming down one morning at Foston, I found Bunch pacing up and down the passage before her master's door in a state of great perturbation. What is the matter, Bunch?'—' Oh, ma'am, I can't get no peace of mind till I've got master shaved, and he's so late this morning: he's not come down yet.' This getting master shaved, consisted in making ready for him, with a large painter's brush, a thick lather in a huge wooden bowl, as big as Mambrino's helmet, which she always considered as the most important avocation of the morning."

The said Bunch was a phenomenon among maids-of-allwork, and in her way quite worthy of her master: