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nessed. In ridiculing the idea prevalent among many timid though excellent persons at the time, that a conspiracy had been formed against the Protestant religion, headed by the pope, Mr. Smith places the subject in a light highly ludicrous and amusing:

The Pope has not Landed.

The pope has not landed-nor are there any curates sent out after him-nor has he been hid at St. Albans by the Dowager Lady Spencer-nor dined privately at Holland House-nor been seen near Dropmore. If these fears exist-which I do not believe they exist only in the mind of the Chancellor of the Exchequer [the late Mr. Spencer Perceval]: they emanate from his zeal for the Profetit interest; and though they reflect the highest honour upon the delicate irritability of his faith, must certainly be considered as more ambiguous proots of the san ty and vigour of his understanding. By this time, however, the best informed clergy in the neighborhood of the metropolis are convinced that the rumour is without foundation: and though the pope is probably hovering about our coast in a fishing-smack, it is most likely he will fall a prey to the vigilance of the cruisers; and it is certain he has not yet polluted the Protestantism of our soil. Exactly in the same manner the story of the wooden gods seized at Charing Cross, by an order from the Foreign Office, turns out to be without the shadow of a foundation: instead of the angels and archangels mentioned by the informer, nothing was discovered but a wooden mage of Lord Mulgrave going down to Chatham as a head-piece for the Spanker gun-vessel; it was an exact resemblance of his lordship in his military uniform; and therefore as little like a god as can well be imagined."

The effects of the threatened French invasion are painted in similar colours. Mr. Smith is arguing that, notwithstanding the fears entertained in England on this subject, the British rulers neglected the obvious means of self-defence:

Fears of Invasion Ridiculed.

As for the spirit of the peasantry in making a gallant defence behind hedgerows, and through plate-ra ks aud hen-coops, highly as think of their bravery. I do not know any nation in Eurore so likely to be struck with panic as the English; and this from their total unacquaintance with the science of war. Old wheat and beans blazing for twenty miles round; cart mares shot; sows of Lord Somerville's breed running wild over the country; the minister of the parish wounded sorely in his hider parts; Mrs Plymley in fits, all these scenes of war an Austrian or a Russian has seen three or four times over; but it is now three centuries since an English pig has fallen in a fair battle upon English ground, or a farm-house been rifled, or a clergyman's wife been subjected to any other proposals of love than the connubial endearments of her sleek and othodox mate. The old edition of Plutarch's 'Lives,' which lies in the corner of your parlour-window, has contributed to work you up to the most romantic expectations of our Roman behaviour. You are persuaded that Lord Amherst will defend Eew Bridge like Cocles; that some maid of honour will break away from her captivity and swim over the Thames; that the Duke of York will barn his capitulating hand; and little Mr. Sturges Bourne give forty years' purchase for Moulsham Hal while the French are encamped upon it. I hope we shall witness all this, if the French do come; but in the meantime I am so enchaated with the ordinary English behaviour of these invaluab'e persons, that I earnestry pray no opportunity may be given them for Romaa valour. and for those very un-Roman pensions which they would all, of course, take especial care to claim in consequence. In Yorkshire, Mr. Smith became a farmer, as well as zealous parish minister, and having in his youth applied himself to the occasional study of medicine, he was useful among his rural neighbours. To make the most of his situation in life was always his policy, and no man, with a tithe of his talents, was ever more of a contented

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practical philosopher. Patronage came slowly. About 1825 the Duke of Devonshire presented him with the living of Londesborough, to hold till the duke's nephew came of age; and in 1828 Lord Lyndhurst, disregarding mere party considerations, gave him a prebend's stall at Bristol. Moralists tell you,' he said, 'of the evils of wealth and station, and the happiness of poverty. I have been very poor the greatest part of my life, and have borne it as well, I believe, as most people, but I can safely say that I have been happier every guinea I have gained.' Lord Lyndhurst conferred another favor: he enabled Mr. Smith to exchange Foston for Combe Florey, near Taunton, and the rector and his family removed from Yorkshire to Somersetshire. In 1831 the advent of the Whigs to power procured for Mr. Smith a prebendal stall at St. Paul's in exchange for the inferior one he held at Bristol. The political agitation during the unsettled state of the Reform Bill elicited from his vigourous pen some letters intended for circulation amongst the poor, and some short but decidedly liberal speeches. In one of these, delivered at Taunton in 1831, he introduced the famous episode of Mrs. Partington, which is one of the happiest specimens of his peculiar humour:

Story of Mrs. Partington.

I do not mean to be disrespectful, but the attempt of the Lords to stop the progress of reform reminds me very forcibly of the great storm of Sidmouth, and of the conduct of the excellent Mrs. Partington on that occasion. In the winter of 1824 there set in a great flood upon that town-the tide rose to an incredible height-the waves rushed in upon the houses-and everything was threatened with destruction. In the midst of this sublime storm, Dame Partington, who lived upon the beach, was seen at the door of her house with mop and pattens, trundling her mop, and squeezing out the sea-water, and vigorously pushing away the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic was roused. Mrs. Partington's spirit was up; but I need not tell you that the contest was unequal. The Atlantic Ocean beat Mrs. Partington. She was excellent at a slop or a puddle, but she should not have meddled with a tempest.

Illustrations of this kind are highly characteristic of their author. They display the fertility of his fancy and the richness of his humour, at the same time that they drive home his argument with irresistible effect. Sydney Smith, like Swift, seems never to have taken up his pen from the mere love of composition, but to enforce practical views and opinions on which he felt strongly. His wit and banter are equally direct and cogent. Though a professed joker and convivial wit-'a diner-out of the first lustre,' as he has himself characterised Mr. Canning-there is not one of his humorous or witty sallies that does not seem to flow naturally, and without effort, as if struck out or remembered at the moment it is used. In his latter years, Sydney Smith waged war with the Ecclesiastical Commissioners in a series of Letters addressed to Archdeacon Singleton. He considered that the Commission had been invested with too much power, and that the interests of the inferior clergy had not been sufficiently regarded. The rights of the Dean and Chapter he

defended with warmth and spirit, and his tone was at times unfriendly o his old Whig associates. The Letters contain some admirable porrait-painting, bordering on caricature, and a variety of rich illustration. In 1839, the death of his youngest brother, Courtenay, in India, put him in possession of a considerable fortune in my grand climacteric,' he said, 'I became unexpectedly a rich man.' This wealth enabled him to invest money in Pennsylvanian bonds; and when Pennsylvania and other States sought to repudiate the debt due to England, the witty canon of St. Paul's took the field, and by a petition and letters on the subject, roused all Europe against the repudiating States. His last work was a short treatise on the use of the Ballot at elections, and this shewed no diminution in his powers of ridicule or reasoning. His useful and distinguished life was closed on the 22d of February, 1845. Sydney Smith was a fine representative of the intellectual Englishman-manly, fearless and independent. His talents were always exercised on practical subjects; to correct what he deemed abuses, to enforce religious toleration to expose cant and hypocrisy, and to inculcate timely reformation. No politician was ever more disinterested or effective. He had the wit and energy of Swift without his coarseness or cynicism, and if inferior to Swift in the high attribute of original inventive genius, he had a peculiar and inimitable breadth of humour and drollery of illustration that served as potent auxiliaries to his clear and logical argument. Shortly after Mr. Smith's death, a paper was published entitled A Fragment on the Irish Roman Catholic Church, which he had left in an incomplete state. A Memoir of his life, with a selection from his Letters, was given to the world in 1855, by his daughter, Lady Holland.

Wit the Flavour of the Mind.

When wit is combined with sense and information; when it is softened by benevolence and restrained by principle; when it is in the hands of a man who can use it and despise it-who can be witty and something more than witty-who loves honour, justice, decency, good-nature, morality, and religion ten thousand times better than wit-wit is then a beautiful and delightful part of our nature. Genuine and innocent wit like this is surely the flavour of the mind. Man could direct his ways by plain reason, and support his life by tasteless food: but God has given us wit, and flavour, and brightness, and laughter, and perfumes, to enliven the days of man's pilgrimage, and to charin his pained steps over the burning marl.

Difficulty of Governing a Nation.

It would seem that the science of government is an unappropriated region in the universe of knowledge. Those sciences with which the passions can never interfere, are considered to be attainable only by study and by reflection; while there are not many young men who doubt of their ability to make a constitution, or to govern a kingdom; at the same time there cannot, perhaps, be a more decided proof of a superficial understanding than the depreciation of those difficulties which are inseparable from the science of government. To know well the local ..nd the natural man; to track the silent march of buman affairs; to seize, with happy intuition, on those great laws which regulate the prosperity of empires: to reconcile principles to circumstances. and be no wiser than the times will permit; to anticipate the effects of every speculation upon the entangled relations and awkward complexity of real

life; and to follow out the theorems of the senate to the daily comforts of the cottage. is a task which they will fear most who know it best-a task in which the great and the good have often failed, and which it is not only wise, but pious and just ir common men to avoid.

Means of Acquiring Distinction.

It is natural to every man to wish for distinction; and the praise of those who can confer honour by their praise, in spite of all false philosophy, is sweet to every human heart; but as eminence can be but the lot of a few, patience of obscurity is a duty which we owe not more to our own happiness than to the quiet of the world at large. Give a loose, if you are young and ambitious, to that spicit which throbs within you; measure yourself with your equals; and learn, from frequent competition, the place which nature has allotted to you; make of it no mean battle, but sirive hard; st engthen your soul to the search of truth, and follow that spectre of excelJence which beckons you on beyond the walls of the world to something better than man has yet done. It may be you shall burst out into light and glory at the last; but if frequent failure convince you of that mediocrity of nature which is incompatiblo with great actions, submit wisely and cheerful y to your lot; let no mean spirit of re venge tempt you to throw off your loyalty to your country, and to prefer a vicions celebrity to obscurity crowned with piety and virtue. If you can throw new light upon moral truth, or by any exertions multiply the comforts or confirm the happiness of mankind, this fame guides you to the true ends of your nature; but in the name of God, as you tremble at retributive justice, and in the name of mankind, if mankind be dear to you, seek not that easy and accursed fame which is gathered in the work of revolutions; and deem it better to be for ever unknown, than to found a momentary name upon the basis of anarchy and irreligion.

Locking in on Railways.

Railway travelling is a delightful improvement of human life. Man is become a bird; he can fly longer and quicker than a solan goose. The mamma rushes sixty miles in two hours to the aching finger of her conjugating and declining grammarboy. The early Scotchman scratches himself in the morning mists of the north, and has is porridge in Piccadilly before the setting sun. The Puseyite priest, after a rush of a hundred miles, appears with his little volume of nonsense at the breakfast of his bookseller. Everything is near, everything is immediate-time, distance, and delay are abolished. But, though charming and fascinating as all this is, we must not shut our eyes to the price we shall pay for it. There will be every three or four years some dreadful massacre-whole trains will be hurled down a precipice, and two hundred or three hundred persons will be killed on the spot. There will be every now and then a great combustion of human bodies, as there has been at Paris; then all the Lewspapers up in arms-a thousand regulations, forgotten as soon as the directors dare-loud screams of the velocity whistle-monopoly locks and bolts as before.

The locking plea of directors is philanthropy; and I admit that to guard men from the commission of moral evil is as philanthropical as to prevent physical suffering. There is, I allow. a strong propensity in mankind to travel on railways without paying; and to lock mankind in till they have completed their share of the contract is benevolent, because it guards the species from degrading and immoral conduct; but to burn or crush a whole train, nierely to prevent a few immoral insides from not paying, is. I hope, a little more than Ripon or Gladstone will permit,

We have been, up to this point, very careless of our railway regulations. The fir-t person of rank who is killed will put everything in order, and produce a code of the most careful rules. I hope it will not be one of the bench of bishops; but should it be so destined, let the burnt bishop-the unwilling Latimer-remember that, however painful gradual concoction by fire may be, his death will produce unspeakable benefits to the public. Even Sodor and Man will be better than nothing. From that moment the bad effects of the monopoly are destroyed; no more fatal deference to directors; no despotic incarceration, no barbarons inattention to the anatomy and physiology of the human body; no commitment to locomotive prisons with warrant. We shall then find it possible voyager libre sans mourir,

A Model Bishop.

A grave elderly man, full of Greek, with sound views of the middle voice and preterperfect tense, gentle and kind to his poor clergy, of powerful and commanding eloquence: in parkaient, never to be put down when the great interests of man sind were concerned; leaning to the government when it was right, leaning, to the p ople when they were right; eiing that, in the Spirit of God had caled him to that high office, he was called for no man purpose, but rather that, seeing clearly, and acting boldly, and intending purely, he might confer lasting benefits on mankind.

All Curates hope to draw Great Prizes.

I am surprised it does not strike the mountaineers how very much the great emoluments of the church are flung open to the lowest ranks of the community. Butchers, bakers, publicans, scholmasters, are perpetually seeing their children elevated 10 the unfre. Let a respectable baker drive through the city from the west end of the town, and let him cast an eye on the battlements of Northumberland House; has his little maffin-faced son the smallest chance of getting in among the Percies, enjoying a share of their luxury and splendour, and of chasing the deer with hound and horn upon the Chevoit Hs? But let him drive his alumn-steep. d loaves a little further, til he reaches St. Paul's Churchyard, and all his thoughts are changed when he sees that beautiful fabric; it is not impossible that his little penny-roll may be introduced into that splendid oven. Young Crumpet is sent to school-takes to his booksspends the best years of his life, as af eminent Eng ishmen do in making Latin veis, 8-knows that the crum in crumpet is long, and the pet short-goes to the university-gets a prize for an Essay on the Dispersion of the Jews-takes orders-becomes a bishop's chaplain-has a young nobleman for his pupil-publishes a useless classic, and a serious call to the unconverted-and then goes through the Elysian transitions of prebendary, dean, prelate, and the long train of purple, protit, and power.

FRANCIS JEFFREY.

FRANCIS JEFFREY, who exercised greater influence on the periodical literature and criticism of this century than any of his contemporaries, was a native of Edinburgh, born on the 23d of October 1778. His father was a depute-clerk in the Court of Sessions. After education at the High School of Edinburgh, two sessions at the university of Glasgow, and one session-from October to June 1791-92-at Queen's College, Oxford, Mr. Jeffrey studied Scots law, and passed as an advocate in 1794. For many years his income did not exceed £100 per annum, but his admirable economy and independent spirit kept him free from debt, and he was indefatigable in the cultivation of his intellectual powers. He was already a Whig in politics. His literary ambition and political sentiment found scope in the Edinburgh Review,' the first number of which appeared in October 1802. We have quoted Sydney Smith's account of the origin of this work; the following is a statement on the subject made by Jeffrey to Mr. Robert Chambers in 1846:

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I cannot say exactly where the project of the 'Edinburgh Review' was first talked of among the projectors. But the first serious consultations about it--and which led to our application to a publisher -were held in a small house, where I then lived, in Buccleuch Place (I forget the number). They were attended by S. Smith, F. Horner, Dr. Thomas Brown, Lord Murray (John Archibald Murray,

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