oppressive heat. "Heat, Ma'am !" he said; "it was so dreadful here that I found there was nothing left for it but to take off my flesh and sit in my bones.' "Take off

your flesh and sit in your bones, Sir! Oh, Mr. Smith! how could you do that?" she exclaimed with the utmost gravity. Nothing more easy, Ma'am; come and see next time." But she considered it such an unorthodox proceeding that she ordered her carriage.

There could scarcely be a more open-minded man than Sidney Smith. "You will," he says, "find a Scotchman always say what is undermost: I, on the contrary, say everything that comes uppermost. Such a man was sure to be loved by his poor parishioners, especially when he united to his open disposition great kindness and benevolence. He not only cast aside all cold formality in his intercourse with them, but carried his freedom from conventional restraint even into the pulpit.

"A clergyman,' he says, 'clings to his velvet cushion with either hand, keeps his eye riveted upon his book, and pinions his body and soul into the same attitude of limb and thought, for fear of being called theatrical. The most intrepid veteran of us all does no more than wipe his face with his cambric sudarium; if, by mischance his hand slip from its orthodox gripe of the velvet, he draws it back as from liquid brimstone. Is it wonder, then, that every semi-delirious sectary who pours forth his animated nonsense with the genuine look and voice of passion should gesticulate away the congregation of the most profound and learned divine of the Established Church, and in two Sundays preach him bare to the very sexton! Why are we natural everywhere but in the pulpit? No man expresses warm and animated feelings anywhere else, with his mouth alone, but with his whole body; he articulates with every limb, and talks from head to foot with a thousand voices. Is sin to be taken from man as Eve was from Adam by casting them into a deep slumber? Or from what possible perversion of common sense are we all to look like field preachers in Zembla, holy lumps of ice, numbed into quiescence, and tognation and mumbling. When I began to thump the cushion of my pulpit, on first coming to Foston, as is my wont when I preach, the accumulated dust of a hundred and fifty years made such a cloud that for some minutes I lost sight of my congregation."

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He was as intolerant of long as of dull discourses. Why," he would exclaim, "will not people remember the Flood? If they had lived before it with the patriarchs they might have talked any stuff they pleased; but do let

them remember how little time they have under this new order of things."

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In 1828 Lord Lyndhurst, then Lord Chancellor, appointed Sidney Smith to a vacant stall in Bristol Cathedral. It required no little courage on the part of the Chancellor to brave the opinions and opposition of his own party, and to make one of the ablest and most uncompromising of his political opponents, a dignitary of the church. The very first duty which he was called upon to perform in his new capacity was to preach the usual noPopery sermon on the 5th of November. A less courageous man might have been satisfied with abstaining from all allusion to the Catholics. But Sidney Smith reversed the proceedings altogether, and poured into the ears of his astonished auditors a powerful discourse in favour of the Catholics upon the very Festival of Intolerance. Writing to Mr. Littleton (Lord Hatherton) two days after the sermon had been preached, he says: At Bristol, on the 5th of November, I gave the Mayor and Corporation (the most Protestant Mayor and Corporation in England,) such a dose of toleration as shall last them for many a year. A deputation of the pro-Popery papers waited on me to print, but I declined." "He preached," says one who was present," finely and bravely on this occasion, in direct opposition to the principles and prejudices of the persons in authority present, and ended by that beautiful apologue from Jeremy Taylor, illustrating charity and toleration, when Abraham, rising in wrath to put the wayfaring man forth from his tent for refusing to worship the Lord his God, the voice of the Lord was heard in the tent, saying, 'Abraham! Abraham! have I borne with this man for threescore years and ten, and canst thou not bear with him for an hour?'

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On the very day on which he had preached he wrote to Lord Holland: To-day I have preached an honest sermon, (5th of November,) before the Mayor and Corporation, in the Cathedral-the most Protestant Corporation. in England! They stared at me with all their eyes. Several of them could not keep the turtle on their stomachs."

Shortly after his appointment as a Canon of Bristol, Mr. Smith was enabled, through the kindness of his friend, Lord Lyndhurst, to exchange Foston for the beautifully situated living of Combe Florey, near Taunton, in Somer

setshire. He repaired the parsonage, and resided alternately in this place and in London till his death.

In September 1831, Earl Grey made Mr. Smith a Canon of St. Paul's Cathedral. He tells Mrs. Meynell," I am just stepping into the carriage to be installed by the Bishop ...It is, I believe, a very good thing, and puts me at my ease for life. I asked for nothing-never did anything shabby to procure preferment. These are pleasing recollections. Lord Grey declared that he had resolved to make him a bishop. When he was appointed Prime Minister he exclaimed," Now I shall be able to do something for Sidney Smith." No man had ever earned the office so well from his party. His life was blameless; he was perfectly orthodox according to Anglican ideas of orthodox doctrine, and zealous in the discharge of his ministerial duties. In 1818 he wrote to Jeffrey: "I must however beg the favour of you to be explicit on one point. Do you mean to take care that the Review shall not profess or encourage infidel principles? Unless this is the case I must absolutely give up all thought of connecting myself with it." Certain booksellers to whom he was personally unknown were in the habit of making him presents of books. Among these, on one occasion, there happened to be a work in which infidelity was advocated. In thanking the booksellers for their presents in a letter, dated July 30th, 1827, he tells them they must have "overlooked the purpose and tendency of that work, or they would not have sent it to him ;" and he takes occasion to remonstrate with them on their intended publication of Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, which he saw amongst their advertisements. "I hate," he says, "the insolence, persecution, and intolerance which so often pass under the name of religion, and (as you know) I have fought against them; but I have an unaffected horror of irreligion and impiety; and every principle of suspicion and fear would be excited in me by a man who professed himself an infidel."

He could not accept of an Irish See, because he had cried out all his life against the monstrous injustice of that establishment, and earnestly exhorted Lord Grey to remodel it entirely; and only two English bishoprics fell vacant whilst this nobleman was Prime Minister. One of these was pre-engaged in some way, the nature of which we are not told, and the other was conferred by the king himself

upon Lord Grey's brother, as a mark of his esteem for the minister. As Mr. Smith expressed the matter to a friend at this time, "The upper parsons live vindictively, and evince their aversion to a Whig ministry by an improved health. The Bishop of has the rancour to revive after three paralytic strokes, and the Dean of - to be vigorous at eighty-two. And yet these are men who are called Christians!"

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During Lord Melbourne's administration, the Whigs had abundant opportunities of rewarding the man who had done more to make them ministers than any single individual in England. Lord Melbourne, indeed, regretted that he had not made him a bishop; but this repentance came too late, for it was after he had ceased to be minister. During his administration, Sidney wrote concerning him to Lady Holland: "Lord Melbourne always thinks that man best qualified for any office, of whom he has seen and known the least. Liberals of the eleventh hour abound! and there are some of the first hour, of whose works in the toil and heat of the day I have no recollection." Lord Melbourne was, himself, a case in point, for Sidney truly says that he does not remember to have seen his face while the profession of liberal principles was unprofitable_and dangerous. Pretended heterodoxy," he writes to Lord John Russell (April 3rd., 1837) is the plea with which the Bishops endeavoured to keep off the bench every man of spirit and independence, and to terrify you into the appointment of feeble men who will be sure to desert you (as all your bishops have lately and shamefully done) in a moment of peril...I defy to quote a single passage of my writings contrary to the doctrines of the Church of England...I defy him to mention a single action of my life which he can call immoral...I am distinguished as a preacher, and sedulous as a parochial clergyman. His real charge is, that I am a high-spirited, honest, uncompromising man, whom all the bench of bishops could not turn, and who would set them all at defiance on great and vital questions...But I am thoroughly sincere in saying I would not take any bishopric whatever, and to this I pledge my honour and character as a gentleman." His eminent abilities were another very great obstacle to his promotion. "In England," he says, when a man is a fool we only trust him with the immortal concerns of human beings." Had his promotion depended on any

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one individual he would have got it, but as Lord Thurlow once said, "Who ever expected justice from a society? It has neither a soul to be saved nor a body to be kicked." We have no doubt however, that he was a happier man than if he had been made a bishop, and this he repeatedly declared himself during the latter years of his life.

In 1843, by the death of his fellow-canon, Mr. Tate, the very valuable living of Edmonton fell vacant, and by the rules of the chapter it lay with Mr. Smith either to take it himself, or present it to a friend. The late canon, Tate, was the man who had joined him in a minority of two in favour of Catholic Emancipation, against the combined bigotry of the parsons in Yorkshire, during a Tory Administration. Tate's son had officiated for some time as his father's curate, and the utmost hope of himself and of his family, which was almost totally dependent on him, was that he might be continued in his present situation by the new vicar. This hope was, however, so slender that the family were "in daily expectation of being turned out of house and curacy." Young Tate had about as much expectation of being made vicar of Edmonton with house, lands, and eight hundred a year, as he had of being elevated to the throne of Oude. Sydney, however, determined to appoint the son of his brave old colleague to the vicarage if he should find him fit for the office. For this purpose he went to Edmonton, and found that the family consisted of three delicate daughters, an aunt, the old lady and her son the curate, who he thought could be converted into a tolerable vicar. He tells the scene that followed in a letter to his wife, which no man with a particle of sensibility can read without moist eyes.

"I began," he says, "by inquiring the character of their servanti then turned the conversation upon their affairs, and expressed a hope the chapter might ultimately do something for them. I then said it is my duty to state to you (they were all assembled) that I have given away the living of Edmonton; and have written to our Chapter clerk this morning, to mention the person to whom I have given it; and I must also tell you that I am sure he will appoint his curate.' (A general silence and dejection.) It is a very odd coincidence,' I added, that the gentleman I have selected is a namesake of this family; his name is Tate. Have you any rela tions of that name?' 'No we have not.' And by a more singular coincidence, his name is Thomas Tate; in short,' I added, there is no use in mincing the matter, you are vicar of Edmonton.'