dently predicated of his, namely, that it was literally and emphatically the test of truth.

'Sydney Smith's Life: he who opens this book under the expectation of reading in it curious adventures, important transactions, or public events, had better close the volume, for none of these things will he find therein.'

So stands the first sentence of Lady Holland's preface, and such an announcement at starting must be admitted to be the reverse of a temptation or a lure.

'Nothing,' she proceeds, 'can be more thoroughly private and eventless than the narrative I am about to give; yet I feel myself, and I have reason to believe there are many who will feel with me, that this Life is not, therefore, uninteresting or unimportant; for, though circumstances over which my father had no control forbade his taking that active share in the affairs of his country for which his talents and bis character so eminently fitted him, yet neither circumstances nor power could suppress these talents, or subdue and enfeeble that character; and I believe I may assert, without danger of contradiction, that by them, and the use he has made of them, he has earned for himself a place amongst the great men of his time and country.

'Such being the case, however, his talents, and the employment of them, are alone before the world. This is but half the picture, and I believe few who have known so much do not wish to know more.

'The mode of life, the heart, the habits, the thoughts and feelings, the conversation, the home, the occupations of such a man,-all, in short, which can give life and reality to the picture,―are as yet wanting; and it is to endeavour to supply this want that I have ventured to undertake this task.'

The task was a labour of love, and, like almost all

such labours, it has been efficiently as well as conscientiously performed. This monument erected by filial piety to our revered and lamented friend's memory, will at once compel unhesitating and universal assent to what might otherwise be thought an exaggerated estimate of his genius and his worth. It was a theory of Lavater that we insensibly contract a certain degree of physical resemblance, especially as regards expression, to those with whom we live much in domestic intimacy. Be this as it may, there can be little doubt that a master mind exercises a powerful influence on the feelings, understandings, and modes of thought of those who are brought into hourly contact with it through a series of years. When the 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 co-operating 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, may be mainly attributable to incorrect and illusory notions of the scope and capabilities 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 elaquence 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.

He was born at Woodford, Essex, in 1771, the second of four brothers. 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 Lansdowne asked me about my grandfather, I told her he disappeared about the time of the Assizes, and we asked no questions.'

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This, we need hardly say, was a jocular fabrication; for his descent 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.

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 were 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.

One incident of his schooldays is commemorated in the first Letter to Archdeacon Singleton: 'I was at school and college with the Archbishop of Canterbury (Howley); fifty-three years ago he knocked me down with the chessboard for checkmating him, and now he is attempting to take away my patronage. I believe these are the only two acts of violence he ever committed in his life.'