tioning the fact that Sydney Smith did suffer from shyness, although neither comparative poverty nor unequal rank ever shook the perfect independence of his bearing in society.

He was fond of drawing a ludicrous and (we suspect) overcharged picture of his distresses as a diner-out, when, as he said, he could not afford a hackney coach. Balzac's hero, in a similar predicament, carefully picks his way under the terrible apprehension that an unlucky splash may deprive him of his soirée, and leave the field open to a wealthier rival. Sydney Smith, according to his own account, used to carry a pair of dress shoes in his pocket, and change them in the hall. The servants,' he added, stared at me at first, but I made them laugh, and they got used to me.' On hearing of the offence taken by his more fastidious friend Jeffrey at the appearance of a straw (emblematic of the more humble vehicle) on the carpet at Lady Morgan's, he exclaimed, a straw, a solitary straw! why I have been at literary parties where the floor looked like a stubblefield.'

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If the fathers of a hundred ruined families could be put to the question or brought to confession, ninety at least of them would own that their primary embarrassments (like those of the Primrose family) arose from the wish to keep up appearances. Vanity would be found to be a more fruitful source of misery than vice. Rochefoucauld strongly inculcates the expediency of learning how to grow old. The art of growing (or of being and seeming) poor is more rarely studied, and more painful to pursue. It was Sydney Smith's con

stant care to practise and inculcate it.

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'He never,' we are assured by his daughter, affected to be what he was not; he never concealed the thought, labour, and struggle it often was to him to obtain the simple comforts of life for those he loved: as to its luxuries, he exercised the most rigid self-denial. His favourite motto on such matters was,- Avoid shame, but do not seek glory-nothing so expensive as glory;' and this he applied to every detail of his establishment. Nothing could be plainer than his table; yet his society often attracted the wealthy to share his single dish.'

It is a secret worth knowing in a luxurious metropolis, that nothing is so attractive to the wealthy as a plain dinner and a small party. The noble proprietor of half a dozen princely residences will thank you with an effusion of gratitude for asking him to such a dinner, an occurrence perhaps unique in his long life of aristocratic banqueting. Better a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.' Better a dinner off a joint where good conversation is, than turtle and venison, entrées and entremets, with dulness, pretension, and pomposity. Of all the stereotyped delusions of the newspapers, we know few more provoking than their daily announcements that some of the stupidest people in town have entertained' a succession of distinguished guests. It was one of Sydney's own half-serious reflections, that the observances enjoined by the Church were tolerably well kept upon the whole, since the rich kept the feasts and the poor the fasts. But he left out of the account the intellectual fasts to

which the richest of the rich submit by way of selfimposed penance for their superfluities.

Still, although a good deal of rational enjoyment may be extracted from a scanty income, it does not follow that we should remain poor longer than we can help. One of the most creditable passages Junius ever wrote was his advice to Woodfall: • Let all your views

in life be directed to a solid, however moderate, independence; without it no man can be happy, nor even honest.' What can be more touching than the scene in the Life of Sheridan,' where

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'The orator, dramatist, statesman, who ran

Through each mode of the lyre and was master of all,'

bursts into tears when reproached for some imputed political backsliding, exclaiming, that it was all very well for his noble friends, with their tens, twenties, or fifty thousands a year, to taunt a man who could never give change for half a crown out of his own money in his life. We have heard Sydney Smith revert to this incident, and avow his cordial concurrence in the axiom of a fellow-passenger in a stage coach,- Poverty, sir, is no disgrace to a man, but it's d-mn-t-n inconvenient.' In his letters he fairly owns that every guinea he was enabled to add to his growing fortune was a gratification to him.

His preaching had been much admired, both at Edinburgh and London; and one of his projects, about 1805, for earning money, was to take the lease of a chapel then occupied by a set of Dissenters called the New Jerusalem, and run the chance of increasing his

pew-rents by his popularity. Four years before, he had unfolded his views of what pupil oratory was, and what it might become without losing any of its indispensable solemnity. The English, generally remarkable for doing very good things in a very bad manner, seem to have reserved the maturity and plenitude of their awkwardness for the pulpit. Is it wonder, then, that every semi-delirious sectary who pours forth his animated nonsense with the genuine look and voice of passion, should gesticulate away the congregation of the most profound and learned divine of the Established Church, and in two Sundays preach him bare to the very sexton? Why this holoplexia on sacred occasions alone? Why call in the aid of paralysis to piety? Is it a rule of oratory to balance the style against the subject, and to handle the most sublime truths in the dullest language and the driest manner? Is sin to be taken from men as Eve was from Adam, by casting them into a deep slumber?'

It was his wish to enter the field against the semidelirious sectary; but for this purpose he required a licence from the rector of the parish in which the chapel lay, and this was politely but peremptorily declined. Sydney was much annoyed: his family shared his indignation, and his affectionate biographer implies that he was cruelly wronged. I appeal to you again,' he wrote, addressing the rector, whose name is suppressed, ' whether anything can be so enormous and unjust as that that privilege should be denied to the ministers of the Church of England, which every man who has folly and presumption enough to differ from it can imme

diately enjoy.' He who is his own advocate has a fool for a client, is a sound though homely adage. Its literal application to Sydney Smith, in his most incautious moments, would be preposterous; but it is instructive to mark how a man of his intellectual culture could be blinded by eagerness in the pursuit of a favourite object to the palpable unsoundness of his argument. The essential end and object of a church establishment are to prevent this very description of competition which he claims as the inalienable privilege of its ministers. With what sincerity, or with what dignity,' asks Paley, can a preacher dispense truths of Christianity, whose thoughts are perpetually solicited to the reflection how he may increase his subscription? His eloquence, if he possess any, resembles rather the exhibition of a player who is computing the profits of his theatre.'1

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'The drama's laws the drama's patrons give,

And those who live to please, must please to live.'

The late lamented Charles Buller, improving on a suggestion of Swift's, proposed to organise a body of dignitaries and ministers of the Church of England, to be called The Church Moveable,' or The Clergy Unattached; so that whenever the sectaries were gaining ground in any given district, a bishop's or a dean's party might be sent down to encounter them, as we despatch a captain's or subaltern's party to suppress a riot. But Wagner. I have often heard say, a player might instruct a

priest.

• Faust. Yes, when the priest is a player, as may likely enough come to pass occasionally.'-Goethe's Faust.