'July 4, 1843. 'My dear Lord Mahon,-I am only half-recovered from a violent attack of gout in the knee, and I could not bear the confinement of dinner, without getting up and walking between the courses, or thrusting my foot on somebody else's chair, like the Archbishop of Dublin. For these reasons, I have been forced for some time, and am still forced, to decline dinner engagements. I should, in a sounder state, have had great pleasure in accepting the very agreeable party you are kind enough to propose to me; but I shall avail myself, in the next campaign, of your kindness. I consider myself as well acquainted with Lady Mahon and yourself, and shall hope to see you here, as well as elsewhere. Pray present my benediction to your charming wife, who I am sure would bring any plant in the garden into full flower by looking at it, and smiling upon it. Try the experiment from mere curiosity. The following is a sample of his more thoughtful epistles. It is addressed to his old friend Lord Murray : 'Green Street, June 4, 1843. 'My dear Murray,-I should be glad to hear something of your life and adventures, and more particularly so, as I learn you have no intention of leaving Edinburgh for London this season. My 'Mrs. Sydney and I have been remarkably well, and are so at present; why, I cannot tell. I am getting very old in years, but do not feel that I have become so in constitution. My locomotive powers at seventy-three are abridged, but my animal spirits do not desert me. I am become rich. youngest brother died suddenly, leaving behind him 100,000. and no will. A third of this, therefore, fell to my share, and puts me at my ease for my few remaining years. After buying into the Consols and the Reduced, I read Seneca "On the Contempt of Wealth!" What intolerable nonsense! I heard your éloge from Lord Lansdowne when I dined with him, and I need not say how heartily I concurred in it. Next to me sat Lord Worsley, whose enclosed letter affected me, and very much pleased me. I answered it with sincere warmth. Pray return me the paper. Did you read my American Petition, and did you approve it? 'Why don't they talk over the virtues and excellences of Lansdowne? There is no man who performs the duties of life better, or fills a higher station in a more becoming manner. He is full of knowledge, and eager for its acquisition. His remarkable politeness is the result of good nature, regulated by good sense. He looks for talents and qualities among all ranks of men, and adds them to his stock of society, as a botanist does his plants; and while other aristocrats are yawning among Stars and Garters, Lansdowne is refreshing his soul with the fancy and genius which he has found in odd places, and gathered to the marbles and pictures of his palace. Then he is an honest politician, a wise statesman, and has a philosophic mind; he is very agreeable in conversation, and is a man of an unblemished life. I shall take care of him in my Memoirs ! 'Remember me very kindly to the maximus minimus (Lord Jeffrey), and to the Scotch Church. I have urged my friend the Bishop of Durham to prepare kettles of soup for the seceders, who will probably be wandering in troops over our Northern Counties. 'Ever your sincere friend, Without carrying the taste so far as Tieck, whose Shakspeare readings and soirées at Dresden boasted about four women to one man, Sydney Smith had a marked predilection for female society. The letters selected for publication were principally addressed to ladies; the Countess Grey, the late Lady Holland, Mrs. Meynell of Temple Newsham, Mrs. Grote, and Miss Georgiana Harcourt (now Mrs. Malcolm), being amongst the most favoured of his fair correspondents. The letters which passed between him and the Dowager Countess of Morley are capital. She had more of his peculiar humour, buoyancy of spirit, fertile fancy, and unaffected cordiality than any other of his contemporaries, male or female; and the charm of her merriment was ineffably enhanced by feminine refinement and grace. Her death is the greatest loss sustained by English society since it lost him. In the following playful competition of humour, their similarity and their congeniality in their sportive moods are obvious: [No date.] 'Dear Lady Morley,-Pray understand me rightly: I do not give the Bluecoat theory as an established fact, but as a highly probable conjecture; look at the circumstances. At a very early age young Quakers disappear; at a very early age the Coat-boys are seen; at the age of seventeen or eighteen young Quakers are again seen; at the same age the Coat-boys disappear: who has ever heard of a Coat-man? The thing is utterly unknown in natural history. Upon what other evidence does the migration of the grub into the aurelia rest? After a certain number of days the grub is no more seen, and the aurelia flutters over his relics. That such a prominent fact should have escaped our naturalists is truly astonishing; I had long suspected it, but was afraid to come out with a speculation so bold, and now mention it as protected and sanctioned by you. 'Dissection would throw great light upon the question; and if our friend would receive two boys into his house about the time of their changing their coats, great service would be rendered to the cause. 'Our friend Lord Grey, not remarkable for his attention to natural history, was a good deal struck with the novelty and ingenuity of the hypothesis. I have ascertained that the young Bluecoat infants are fed with drab-coloured pap, which looks very suspicious. More hereafter on this interesting subject. Where real science is to be promoted, I will make no apology to your Ladyship for this intrusion. 'Yours truly, 'SYDNEY SMITH.' [No date.] 'Had I received your letter,' she replies, 'two days since, I should have said your arguments and theory were perfectly convincing, and that the most obstinate sceptic must have yielded to them; but I have come across a person in that interval who gives me information which puts us all at sea again. That the Bluecoat boy should be the larva of the Quaker in Great Britain is possible, and even probable, but we must take a wider view of the question; and here, I confess, I am bewildered by doubts and difficulties. The Bluecoat is an indigenous animal-not so the Quaker; and now be so good as to give your whole mind to the facts I have to communicate. I have seen and talked much with Sir R. Ker Porter on this interesting subject. He has travelled over the whole habitable globe, and has penetrated with a scientific and scrutinising eye into regions hitherto unexplored by civilised man; and yet he has never seen a Quaker baby. He has lived for years in Philadelphia (the national nest of Quakers); he has roamed up and down Broadways and lengthways in every nook and corner of Pennsylvania; and yet he never saw a Quaker baby; and what is new and most striking, never did he see a Quaker lady in a situation which gave hope that a Quaker baby might be seen here after. This is a stunning fact, and involving the question in such impenetrable mystery as will, I fear, defy even your sagacity, acuteness, and industry to elucidate. But let us not be checked and cast down; truth is the end and object of our research. Let us not bate one jot of heart and hope, but still bear up, and steer our course right onward. 'Yours most truly, 'F. MORLEY.' It would be difficult to find a more pleasing specimen of his letters to ladies than the following to Lady Dufferin (née Sheridan): 'Combe Florey [no date.] 'I am just beginning to get well from that fit of gout, at the beginning of which you were charitable enough to pay me a visit, and I said-the same Providence which inflicts gout, creates Dufferins! We must take the good and the evils of life. 'I am charmed, I confess, with the beauty of this country. I hope some day you will be charmed with it too. It banished, however, every Arcadian notion to see Poodle Byng walk in at the gate to-day. I seemed to be transported instantly to Piccadilly, and the innocence went out of me. 'I hope the process of furnishing goes on well. Attend, I pray you, to the proper selection of an easy-chair, where you may cast yourself down in the weariness and distresses of life, with the absolute certainty that every joint of the human frame will receive all the comfort which can be derived from easy position and soft materials: then the glass, on which your eyes are so often fixed, knowing that you have the great duty imposed on the Sheridans, of looking well. You may depend upon it, happiness depends mainly on these little things. 'I hope you remain in perfect favour with Rogers, and that you are not omitted in any of the dress breakfast parties. |