my friend Mackintosh, there is another child of Time lost,' as the year departs.

What a loss you had in not knowing Mackintosh! how was it? .. Yes, his manner was cold; his shake of the hand came under the genus mortmain;' but his heart was overflowing with benevolence. I like that simile I made on him in my letter, of 'a great ship cutting its cable;'-it is fine, and it well described Mackintosh. His chief foible was indiscriminate praise. I amused myself the other day,' said he, laughing, in writing a termination of a speech for him; would you like to hear it? I will read it to you:

It is imposible to conclude these observations without expressing the obligations I am under to a person in a much more humble scene of life,-I mean, Sir, the hackney.coachman by whom I have been driven to this meeting. To pass safely through the the streets of a crowded metropolis must require, on the part of the driver, no common assemblage of qualities. He must have caution without timidity, activity without precipitation, and courage without rashness; he must have a clear perception of his object, and a dexterous use of his means. I can safely say of the individual in question, that, for a moderate reward, he has displayed unwearied skill; and to him I shall never forget that I owe unfractured integrity of limb, exemption from pain, and perhaps prolongation of existence.

Nor can I pass over the encouraging cheerfulness with which I was received by the waiter, nor the useful blaze of light communicated by the link-boys, as I descended from the carriage. It was with no common pleasure that I remarked in these men, not the mercenary bustle of venal service, but the genuine effusions of untutored benevolence; not the rapacity of subordinate agency, but the alacrity of humble friendship. What may not be said of a country where all the little accidents of life bring forth the hidden qualities of the heart,-where her vehicles are driven, her streets illumined, and her bells answered, by men teeming with all the refinements of civilized life?

I cannot conclude, Sir, without thanking you for the very clear and distinct manner in which you have announced the proposition on which we are to vote. It is but common justice to add, that public assemblies rarely witness articulation so perfect, language so select, and a manner so eminently remarkable for everything that is kind, impartial, and just.'”

"On returning to the drawing-room, he usually asked for a little music. If I were to begin life again, I would devote much time to music. All musical people seem to me happy; it is the most engrossing pursuit; almost the only innocent and unpunished passion.

Never give way to melancholy: nothing encroaches more; I fight against it vigorously. One great remedy is, to take short views of life. Are you happy now? Are you likely to remain so till this evening? or next week? or next month? or next year? Then why destroy present happiness by a distant misery, which may never come at all,

* Yet I see, in his note-book,-'I wish I were of a more sanguine temerament; I always anticipate the worst.'

or you may never live to see it? for every substantial grief has twenty shadows, and most of them shadows of your own making.' Speaking of -: 'It was a beautiful old-age; how fine those

lines of Waller are

'The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay'd,

Let in new lights through chinks that time has made!'"'

Yes;

was merry, not wise. You know, a man of small understanding is merry where he can, not where he should. LightLing must, I think, be the wit of heaven.'

Mr. P.

said to him, I always write best with an amanuensis.' 'Oh! but are you quite sure he puts down what you dictate, my dear P. ?' Speaking of a Revolutionist: No man, I fear, can effect great benefits for his country without some sacrifice of the minor virtues.'

I often think what a different man I might have been if, like my friend Lord Holland, and others, I had passed my life with all that is most worth seeing and hearing in Europe, instead of being confined through the greater part of it to the society of the parish-clerk. I always feel it is combating with unequal weapons; but I have made a tolerable fight of it, nevertheless. I am rather an admirer of O'Connell he, it cannot be denied, has done a great deal for Ireland, and, on the whole, I believe he meant well; but hell,' as Johnson says, is paved with good intentions.'

:

From the volume of letters we have gathered the following:

"I take the liberty to send you two brace of grouse,-curious, because killed by a Scotch metaphysician; in other and better language, they are mere ideas, shot by other ideas, out of a pure intellectual notion, called a gun.

I found a great number of philosophers in Edinburgh, in a high state of obscurity and metaphysics."

"If I could envy any man for successful ill-nature, I should envy Lord Byron for his skill in satirical nomenclature."

"Nothing can be more disgusting than an Oratorio. How absurd, to see five hundred people fiddling like madmen about the Israelites in the Red Sea! Lord Morpeth pretends to say he was pleased, but I see a great change in him since the music-meeting. Pray tell Luttrell he did wrong not to come to the music. death; it would have pleased him. He is a melodious person, and much given to sacred music. In his fits of absence I have heard him hum the Hundredth Psalm! (Old Version)."

"P.

It tired me to

's single turnips turned out extremely well; he is about to publish a tract On the Effect of Solitude on Vegetables.'' "It struck me last night, as I was lying in bed, that Mackintosh, if he were to write on pepper, would thus describe it :

Pepper may philosophically be described as a dusty and highlypulverized seed of an oriental fruit; an article rather of condiment than diet, which, dispersed lightly over the surface of food with no other rule than the caprice of the consumer, communicates pleasure,

rather than affords nutrition; and, by adding a tropical flavour to the gross and succulent viands of the North, approximates the different regions of the earth, explains the objects of commerce, and justifies the industry of man."

"I met John Russell at Exeter. The people along the road were very much disappointed by his smallness. I told them he was much larger before the Bill was thrown out, but was reduced by excessive anxiety about the people. This brought tears into their eyes!"

66

The Ambassador lent us his box yesterday, and I heard Rubini and Grisi, Lablache and Tamburini. The opera, by Bellini, 'I Puritani,' was dreadfully tiresome, and unintelligible in its plan. I hope it is the last opera I shall ever go to."

"One evil in old-age is, that as your time is come, you think every little illness is the beginning of the end. When a man expects to be arrested, every knock at the door is an alarm."

"I am pretty well, except gout, asthma, and pains in all the bones, and all the flesh, of my body What a very singular disease gout is! It seems as if the stomach fell down into the feet. The smallest deviation from right diet is immediately punished by limping and lameness, and the innocent ankle and blameless instep are tortured for the vices of the nobler organs. The stomach having found this easy way of getting rid of inconveniences, becomes cruelly despotic, and punishes for the least offences. A plum, a glass of champagne, excess in joy, excess in grief,-any crime, however small, is sufficient for redness, swelling, spasms, and large shoes."

"Time goes on well. I do all I can to love the country, and endeavour to believe those poetical lies which I read in Rogers and others, on the subject; which said deviations from truth were, by Rogers, all written in St. James's-place."

"I am studying the death of Louis XVI. Did he die heroically? or did he struggle on the scaffold? Was that struggle (for I believe there was one) for permission to speak? or from indignation at not being suffered to act for himself at the last moment, and to place himself under the axe? Make this out for me, if you please, and speak of it to me when I come to London. I don't believe the Abbé Edgeworth's Son of St. Louis, montez au ciel! It seems necessary that great people should die with some sonorous and quotable saying. Mr. Pitt said something not intelligible in his last moments: G. Rose made it out to be, Save my country, Heaven!' The nurse, on being interrogated, said that he asked for barley-water."

"I am a decided duodecimalist. is losing his head. When he brings forward his Suckling Act, he will be considered as quite mad. No woman to be allowed to suckle her own child without medical certificates. Three classes-viz. free sucklers, half sucklers, and spoon-meat mothers. Mothers whose supply is uncertain, to suckle upon affidavit! How is it possible that an Act of Parliament can supply the place of nature and natural affection? Have you any nonsense equal to this in Northumberland ?"

My dear Sir,

"TO CHARLES DICKENS, Esq.

Charles-street, Berkeley-square, June 11th, 1839.

Nobody more, and more justly, talked of than yourself.

The Miss Berrys, now at Richmond, live only to become acquainted with you, and have commissioned me to request you to dine with them Friday, the 29th, or Monday, July 1st, to meet a Canon of St. Paul's, the Rector of Combe Florey, and the Vicar of Halberton, -all equally well known to you; to say nothing of other and better people. The Miss Berrys and Lady Charlotte Lindsay have not the smallest objection to be put into a Number, but, on the contrary, would be proud of the distinction; and Lady Charlotte, in particular, you may marry to Newman Noggs. Pray come; it is as much as my place is worth to send them a refusal."

We have extracted these various passages, as they show the phases of a mind remarkable in all its aspects. They will only amuse the thoughtless; but, to those who read to study the truths contained in them; who can comprehend the wisdom, the deep-hearted goodness, the honest, open, manly spirit pervading the whole, they have a lesson in the conduct of life more precious than the teaching of many a grave, didactic moral treatise. If we consider his patient endurance of neglect; his regard for the advancement of merit; his scorn of all meanness; his unflinching courage in exposing wrong and oppression; his kindness to the poor; his love of children his quaint, wise modes of imparting instruction, or of conveying admonition; his total freedom from party malice or political or sectarian spite,* these extracts excite our admiration, awake us to emulousness, and make us thankful that, amidst the clash of the political and religious mêlé of the past fifty years, one man existed who, though possessing powers of raillery, and wit, and eloquence superior to Voltaire and to Swift, yet never, even in defence of Liberty, of the Church, of Humanity, or of Social Order, permitted his pen to be empoisoned by passion, by injustice, or by ill-nature. His

;

Even to political opponents Sydney Smith was kind, not alone in words but in deeds. In the 567 letters before us, we discover but one passage in the slightest degree unkind. Writing to Jeffrey, from Foston, in the year 1820, he observes, referring to the late Professor Wilson's appointment to the chair of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh:"I am sorry to see the appointment of Wilson. If Walter Scott can succeed in nominating a successor to Reid and Stewart, there is an end of the University of Edinburgh: your Professors then become competitors in the universal race of baseness and obsequiousness to power.""Memoir." Vol. II. p. 205. For an account of Wilson's appointment, and Sir Walter's interest, see IRISH QUARTERLY REVIEW, Vol. III. No. X. p. 402.

life was modelled upon Milton's great exemplar of Active Virtue not fugitive or cloistered; never slinking from the race, from the sweat, or from the dust of the arena, and so he gained the "immortal garland," and in his triumph was the triumph of his country:-when such men die they leave behind them, not recollections for their friends, but eternal memories for the human race-teaching, by example, long after their own generation shall have passed away.

The reader will have observed that, to the very close of his life, Sydney Smith felt proud of his connexion with The Edinburgh Review. He refers to it frequently; he is interested in its success; he collects from it, and republishes his chief contributions, and recalls the buoyant days when he first suggested as the motto for the cover, "Tenui musam meditamur avena," and chuckles at its rejection as being too near the truth. To those who are unacquainted with the position of literary and political affairs about the year 1802, this self-gratulation may appear extreme; but, in truth, to the establishment and the able conduct of this periodical, we owe, in great part, the healthy state of our nation's literature; the enlightened tone of our literary criticisms; the redress of many a political grievance; and the stability of many a political safeguard of the crown from the people, of the people from themselves, of the Church from both.

When The Edinburgh Review was first projected, in Jeffrey's "elevated residence," in the eighth or ninth story of the house in Buccleugh-place, the national literature had fallen from the noble standard of lofty excellence to which it had been raised by Addison and by his cotemporaries. In poetry, Wordsworth, Byron, Moore, and Scott had not then arisen to save the public taste from the infliction of the rhyming prose of Hayley, of Darwin, and of Sotheby. In biography, Mrs. Barbauld and Anna Seward were tolerated. In criticism, the whole field was occupied by the trading, and often malicious, notices of books in The Monthly Review. In politics, there was faction, but no liberty of opinion: to talk of reform was to be a revolutionist: Castlereagh and Orangeism ruled in Ireland, and Dundas was "the tyrant of Scotland;" yet, with all these things, and to redress them, six men, the eldest thirty-two years old, the youngest but twenty-three, feared not to grapple.*

When the Review was projected, in 1802, John Allen was 32, Sydney Smith 31, Jeffrey 29, Brown 24, Horner 24, Henry Brougham 23.