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A spray could not tremble in the breeze, a leaf could not rustle to the ground, a diamond drop could not patter in the stream, a fragrance could not exhale from the humble violet, nor a daisy unfold its crimson tints to the morning, but it has been noticed by these impassioned and delicate observers, and wrought up into some beautiful morality.

A Rainy Sunday in an Inn.-From ' Bracebridge Hall

It was a rainy Sunday in the gloomy month of November. I had been detained in the course of a journey by a slight indisposition, from which I was recovering; but I was still feverish, and was obliged to keep within doors all day, in an inn of the small town of Derby. A wet Sunday in a country inn! whoever has had the luck to experience one, can alone judge of my situation. The rain pattered against the casements, the bells tolled for church with a melancholy sound. Í went to the windows in quest of something to amuse the eye, but it seemed as if I had been placed completely out of the reach of all amusement. The windows of my bedroom looked out among tiled roofs and stacks of chimneys, while those of my sitting-room commanded a full view of the stable-yard. I know of nothing more calculated to make a man sick of this world than a stable-yard on a rainy day. The place was littered with wet straw, that had been kicked about by travellers and stable-boys. In one corner was a stagnant pool of water surrounding an island of muck; there were several half-drowned fowls crowded together under a cart, among which was a miserable crest-fallen cock, drenched out of all life and spirit, his drooping tail matted, as it were, into a single feather, along which the water trickled from his back; near the cart was a half-dozing cow chewing the cud, and standing patiently to be rained on, with wreaths of vapour rising from her reeking hide; a wall-eyed horse, tired of the loneliness of the stable, was poking his spectral head out of a window, with the rain dripping on it from the eaves; an unhappy cur, chained to a dog-house hard by, uttering something every now and then between a bark and a yelp; a drab of a kitchen wench tramped backwards and forwards through the yard in pattens, looking as sulky as the weather itself: everything, in short, was comfortless and forlorn, excepting a crew of hard-drinking ducks, assembled like boon-companions round a puddle, and making a riotous noise over their liquor.

I sauntered to the window, and stood gazing at the people picking their way to church, with petticoats hoisted mid-leg high, and dripping umbrellas. The bells ceased to toll, and the streets became silent. I then amused myself with watching the daughters of a tradesman opposite, who, being confined to the house for fear of wetting their Sunday finery, played off their charms at the front windows, to fascinate the chance tenants of the inn. They at length were summoned away by a vigilant vinegar-faced mother, and I had nothing further from without to amuse me.

The day continued lowering and gloomy; the slovenly, ragged, spongy clouds drifted heavily along; there was no variety even in the rain; it was one dull, continued, monotonous patter, patter, patter, excepting that now and then I was enlivened by the idea of a brisk shower, from the rattling of the drops upon a passing umbrella. It was quite refreshing-if I may be allowed a hackneyed phrase of the day-when in the course of the morning a horn blew, and a stage-coach whirled through the street with outside passengers stuck all over it, cowering under cotton umbrellas, and seethed together, and reeking with the steams of wet box-coats and upper benjamins. The sound brought out from their lurking-places a crew of vagabond boys and vagabond dogs, and the carroty-headed hostler and that nondescript animal yclept Boots, and all the other vagabond race that infest the purlieus of an inn; but the bustle was transient; the coach again whirled on

its way; and boy and dog, and hostler and Boots, all slunk back again to their holes; the street again became silent, and the rain continued to rain on.

The evening gradually wore away. The travellers read the papers two or three times over. Some drew round the fire, and told long stories about their horses, about their adventures, their overturns, and breakingsdown. They discussed the credits of different merchants and different inns, and the two wags told several choice anecdotes of pretty chamber-maids and kind landladies. All this passed as they were quietly taking what they called their nightcaps-that is to say, strong glasses of brandy and water or sugar, or some other mixture of the kind; after which they one after another rang for Boots and the chamber-maid, and walked off to bed in old shoes cut down into marvellously uncomfortable slippers. There was only one man left-a short-legged, longbodied, plethoric fellow, with a very large, sandy head. He sat by himself with a glass of port-wine negus and a spoon, sipping and stirring, and meditating and sipping, until nothing was left but the spoon. He gradually fell asleep bolt upright in his chair, with the empty glass standing before him; and the candle seemed to fall asleep too, for the wick grew long and black, and cabbaged at the end, and dimmed the little light that remained in the chamber. The gloom that now prevailed was contagious. Around hung the shapeless and almost spectral box-coats of departed travellers, long since buried in deep sleep. I only heard the ticking of the clock, with the deep-drawn breathings of the sleeping toper, and the drippings of the rain-drop, drop, drop-from the eaves of the house.

JAMES KIRKE PAULDING.

Associated with Washington Irving in the Salmagundi papers was JAMES KIRKE PAULDING (1778-1860), a voluminous writer. In 1819, Mr Paulding commenced a second series of Salmagundi essays, but without much success. His novels of The Dutchman's Fireside (1831) and Westward Ho! (1832) are said to contain faithful historical pictures of the early settlers of New York and Kentucky: of the former, six editions were published within a year. Among the other works of Mr Paulding are The Diverting History of John Bull and Brother Jonathan (1813); Letters from the South (1817); The Backwoodsman, a poem (1818); A Sketch of Old England (1822); Koningsmarke (1823); The New Mirror for Travellers (1828); Chronicles of the City of Gotham (1830); a Life of Washington (1835); and various other slight novels and satirical sketches. A Life of Paulding by his son was published in 1867, and about the same time his Select Works, in four volumes, were issued by a New York publishing house.

REV. SYDNEY SMITH.

One of the most witty, popular, and influential writers of the age was the REV. SYDNEY SMITH, born at Woodford in Essex, in 1771. He was one of the three sons of a somewhat eccentric and improvident English gentleman, who out of the wreck of his fortune was able to give his family a good education, and place them in positions favourable for their advancement. The eldest, Robert-best known by the name given by his school-fellows at Eton, of Bobus-was distinguished as a classical scholar, and adopted the profession of the law. Sydney, the second son, was educated at Winchester and Oxford, and

One feature in the scheme, important to Smith, as to all the others, was, that the writers were to receive for their contributions ten guineas a sheet, or sixteen printed pages. In 1804, Mr Smith sought the wider field of London. He officiated for some time as preacher of the Foundling Hospital at £50 per annum, and obtained another preachership in Berkeley Square. His sermons were highly popular; and a course of lectures on Moral Philosophy, which he delivered in 1804, 1805, and 1806, at the Royal Institution-and which were published after his death

entered the church. Courtenay, the youngest the stronger hands of Lord Jeffrey and Lord son, went to India, and acquired great wealth, Brougham, and reached the highest point of as well as reputation as a judge and oriental popularity and success.' scholar. The opinion or hypothesis that men of genius more generally inherit their intellectual eminence from the side of the mother than that of the father, is illustrated by the history of this remarkable family, for the mother of the young Smiths, the daughter of a French emigrant, was a woman of strong sense, energy of character, and constitutional vivacity or gaiety. Sydney having gained a fellowship at New College, Oxford, worth about £100 per annum, was cast upon his own resources. He obtained a curacy in a small village in the midst of Salisbury Plain. The squire of the parish, Mr Beach, two years afterwards, engaged him as tutor to his eldest son, and it was arranged that tutor and pupil should proceed to the university of Weimar, in Saxony. They set out; but 'before we could get there,' said Smith, Germany became the seat of war, and in stress of politics we put into Edinburgh, where I remained five years.' He officiated in the Episcopal chapel there. After two years' residence in Edinburgh, he returned to England to marry a Miss Pybus, daughter of a deceased banker. The lady had a brother, one of the Lords of the Admiralty, under Pitt, but he was highly incensed at the marriage of his sister with a decided Whig without fortune, and the prospects of the young pair were far from brilliant. The lady, however, had a small fortune of her own, and she realised £500 by the sale of a fine necklace which her mother had given her. The Salisbury squire added £1000 for Sydney's care of his son, and thus the more sordid of the ills of poverty were averted. Literature also furnished an additional source. The Edinburgh Review was started in 1802, and Sydney Smith was the original projector of the scheme.

'The principles of the French Revolution,' he says, 'were then fully afloat, and it is impossible to conceive a more violent and agitated state of society. Among the first persons with whom I became acquainted were Lord Jeffrey, Lord Murray-late Lord Advocate for Scotland-and Lord Brougham; all of them maintaining opinions upon political subjects a little too liberal for the dynasty of Dundas, then exercising supreme power over the northern division of the island. One day we happened to meet in the eighth or ninth story or flat in Buccleuch 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 avena 99 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 ;* and so began what has since turned out to be a very important and able journal. When I left Edinburgh, it fell into

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Judex damnatur cum nocens absolvitur-The judge is condemned when the guilty are absolved. The young adventurers, it was said, had hung out the bloody flag on their title-page!

still more widely extended his reputation. In Holland House and in other distinguished circles, his extraordinary conversational powers had already made him famous. His contributions to the Edinburgh Review also added to his popularity, though their liberality of tone and spirit rendered him obnoxious to the party in power. During the short period of the Whig administration in 1806-7, he obtained the living of Foston-le-Clay, in Yorkshire, and here he wrote a highly amusing and powerful political tract, entitled Letters on the Subject of the Catholics, to my Brother Abraham, who lives in the Country, by Peter Plymley. The success of the Letters was immense they have gone through twenty-one editions. Since the days of Swift, no such masterly political irony, combined with irresistible argument, had been witnessed. 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 for the Protestant interest; and though they reflect the late Mr Spencer Perceval]; they emanate from his zeal highest honour upon the delicate irritability of his faith, must certainly be considered as more ambiguous proofs of the sanity and vigour of his understanding. By this time, however, the best informed clergy in the neighbourhood 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 image 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 selfdefence:

Fears of Invasion Ridiculed.

As for the spirit of the peasantry in making a gallant defence behind hedgerows, and through plate-racks and hen-coops, highly as I think of their bravery, I do not know any nation in Europe 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 hinder 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 orthodox 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 Kew 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 burn his capitulating hand; and little Mr Sturges Bourne give forty years' purchase for Moulsham Hall 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 enchanted with the ordinary English behaviour of these invaluable persons, that I earnestly pray no opportunity may be given them for Roman valour, and for those very un-Roman pensions which they would all, of course, take especial care to claim in consequence.

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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 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 favour: 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 vigorous 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 :

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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.

The

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. rights of the Dean and Chapter he defended with warmth and spirit, and his tone was at times unfriendly to his old Whig associates. The Letters contain some admirable portrait-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 charm 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 and the natural man; to track the silent march of human 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 in 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 spirit 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 strive hard; strengthen your soul to the search of truth, and follow that spectre of excellence 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 incompatible with great actions, submit wisely and cheerfully to your lot; let no mean spirit of revenge tempt you to throw off your loyalty to your country, and to prefer a vicious 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 grammar-boy. The early Scotchman scratches himself in the morning mists of the north, and has his 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 newspapers 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, merely 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 first 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. From that moment the bad effects of the monopoly Even Sodor and Man will be better than nothing. are destroyed; no more fatal deference to the directors; no despotic incarceration, no barbarous inattention to the anatomy and physiology of the human body; no We commitment to locomotive prisons with warrant. 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 parliament, never to be put down when the great interests of mankind were concerned; leaning to the government when it was right, leaning to the people when they were right; feeling that, if the Spirit of God had called him to that high office, he was called for no mean purpose, but rather that, seeing clearly, and acting boldly, and intending purely, he might confer lasting benefits on mankind.

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