head of a family, besides bearing the indelible stamp of intellectual superiority, is of a genial, affectionate, and communicative disposition, the other members commonly contract a habit of looking at objects from the same point of view or through the same medium, adopt similar models of excellence, and square their conduct by analogous standards of propriety. It is upon this principle that we account for what, under the circumstances, may be termed the fortunate agreement of tone, taste, and turn of mind between Sydney Smith and his biographer. No one but an admiring, sympathising, and cordially cooperating daughter, or helpmate, could or would have supplied the most suggestive, illustrative, and consequently most valuable portions of the work; those, for example, descriptive of the Parsonage of Foston, his house, his furniture, his equipages, his establishment, and his way of life there. The earnestness and singleness of purpose with which these passages are written, actually impart some of the paternal force and colouring to the language, thereby compensating for the occasional negligence of the composition and a want of polish in the style.

Mrs. Austin, who has edited the second volume. containing a selection from the Letters, was also well qualified by a friendship of many years, by reciprocated esteem, and by intellectual accomplishments, to form a just and adequate conception of her undertaking. She has executed it, as might have been anticipated, with irreproachable discretion and discrimination; and altogether, although it may sound strange that the delineation of a character so essentially masculine as Sydney Smith's should have been reserved for female pens, we believe that any disappointment which may be felt after a patient perusal of these volumes, will be mainly attributable to incorrect and illusory notions of the scope and capa

bilities of such a biography. The life of a writer, or artist, is in his works. Their original charm and influence cannot be reproduced by any vividness of description or eloquence of narrative: the excitement of surprise or novelty is unattainable; and the utmost that can reasonably be expected from a Memoir like the one before us, is that it shall revive agreeable reminiscences, awaken elevating associations, stimulate honourable ambition, supply fresh beacons for our guidance, and enable us, for the edification of the living, to arrive at a just estimate of the merits and demerits of the dead.

The leading incidents of Sydney Smith's career are soon told, and a brief summary of these will form a natural and necessary introduction to the remarks which we propose to make upon them.

So long as mankind shall continue to attach importance to ancestral distinctions, it will be an idle. affectation to depreciate them; and many enlightened men, famous for their superiority to popular weaknesses and vulgar errors, have endeavoured to defend the pride of birth on philosophical grounds. "A lively desire of knowing and recording our ancestors,' says Gibbon, "so generally prevails, that it must depend on some common principle in the minds of men." In the same spirit of candour, Bishop Watson has observed, - -"Without entering into a disquisition concerning the rise of this general prejudice, I freely own that I am a slave to it myself." Sydney Smith had none of it. He once laughingly declared, in reference to the somewhat laboured attempt of the author of "Waverley" to establish a pedigree," when Lady Lasked me about iny grandfather, I told her he disappeared about the time of the Assizes, and we asked no questions." This, we need hardly say, was a jocular fabrication; for his descent, without being noble, was respectable on the side of each

parent, and Lady Holland, unappalled by Sir David Brewster's authority, still retains hopes of being able to claim Sir Isaac Newton for an ancestor. Her account of her paternal grandfather, Mr. Robert Smith, is that "he was very clever, odd by nature, but still more odd by design; and that (having first married a beautiful girl, from whom he parted at the church door) he spent all the early part of his life partly in wandering over the world for many years, and partly in diminishing his fortune, by buying, altering, spoiling, and then selling about nineteen different places in England." The beautiful girl was Miss Ollier, or d'Olier, the youngest daughter of a Languedoc emigrant for conscience' sake. She was the mother of the four Smiths, Robert (Bobus), Cecil, Courtenay, and Sydney, and we are requested to believe that all the finest qualities of their minds were derived from her. Their filial piety, however, has not induced them to follow the example of the celebrated French brothers, who caused to be inscribed over their mother's grave in Père la Chaise: "A la mère des trois Dupins."

The talents of the Smiths for controversy must have been singularly precocious, for the tradition goes that, before they were old enough for school, they might be seen "neglecting games, and often lying on the floor, stretched over their books, and discussing with loud voice and vehement gesticulation, every point that arose." Robert and Cecil were sent to Eton, Courtenay and Sydney to Winchester, where Sydney rose in due time to be captain of the school. Such was his own and his brother's proficiency that their schoolfellows signed a round-robin refusing to compete for the college prizes, if the Smiths, who always gained them, were allowed to enter the lists. He used to say, "I believe whilst a boy at school, I made above ten thousand Latin verses, and no man

in his senses would dream in after-life of ever making another. So much for life and time wasted." There is another current remark attributed to him,— that a false quantity at the commencement of the career of a young man intended for public life was rarely got over; and when a lady asked him what a false quantity was, he explained it to be in a man the same as a faux pas in a woman.

On leaving Winchester, he was placed for six months at Mont Villiers, in Normandy, to perfect his knowledge of French, and he then went to New College, Oxford, where nothing remarkable is recorded of him, except that he obtained, by virtue of his Winchester honours, first a scholarship, and then a fellowship yielding about 100l. a year. No sooner was this limited provision secured, than his father abandoned him to his own resources, which were insufficient, he thought, to justify him in studying for the profession of his choice-the Bar. being within an ace of going out as supercargo to China, he reluctantly made up his mind to enter the Church.

So, after

This determination is doubtless to be regretted for his own sake. Besides possessing the talents which are commonly deemed sufficient to insure forensic success, such as acuteness, readiness, boldness, an intuitive knowledge of the springs of action, dialectic skill, and command of language, he was preeminently endowed with the no less indispensable requisites of patience and perseverance. He would have bided his time. He would neither have been disheartened by neglect, nor have sunk under the sickness of hope deferred, nor have been turned aside by political, social, or literary aspirations, nor have dropped out of the

*

* When the late Mr. Chitty was consulted by an anxious father about the qualifications for the bar, he asked, "Can your son eat sawdust without butter?"

race because he was disgusted with the jockeyship, or annoyed by the heat, dust, and clamour of the course. He might have turned out a Scarlett at Nisi Prius, and an Ellenborough on the Bench. He would also have been spared the sarcasms, galling though illfounded, so repeatedly levelled at him for trifling with his sacred vocation; for which, in sober seriousness, he entertained the profoundest reverence. But if he had devoted all his energies to the Law—proverbially a jealous mistress he must have given up to a profession what was meant for mankind, and the world would have lost incalculably by the change.

When it is asked why he did not do what would be done by most aspiring young men similarly situated in our day,-why he did not trust to his pen for supplying the required funds in aid of the income from his fellowship, the obvious answer is, that sixty years since, reviews and magazines stood on a widely different footing. Their rate of pay to contributors was scanty in the extreme. They were mostly got up for the booksellers by the regular denizens of Grub Street, and a Fellow of New College could hardly have been accused of undue fastidiousness, if he had dismissed at once, assuming it to have occurred to him, the notion of being enrolled in such a troop. Amongst other good effects universally admitted to have resulted from the establishment of this Journal, must be ranked the triumphant vindication of the dignity of our craft. So signal has been our success in this respect, that people find it difficult to imagine a period when it was a moot point in the minor morals, whether a gentleman could receive pecuniary remuneration for an article. Swift quarrelled with Harley for offering to pay him in hard cash for his literary aid in the "Examiner." Lord Jeffrey was visited with misgivings which were not overcome without a struggle. In May, 1803, he writes: