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but I can answer for it that it makes (if the worst come to the worst) most incomparable old maids.

In a season of distress, she is the truest comforter; but in the teasing accidents and minor perplexities which do not call out the will to meet them, she sometimes maketh matters worse by an excess of participation. If she does not always divide your trouble, upon the pleasanter occasions of life, she is sure always to treble your satisfaction. She is excellent to be at play with, or upon a visit; but best when she goes a journey with you.

We made an excursion together a few summers since into Hertfordshire, to beat up the quarters of some of our less-known relations in that fine corn country.

The oldest thing I remember is Mackery End or Mackarel End, as it is spelt, perhaps more properly, in some old maps of Hertfordshire; a farm-house,—delightfully situated within a gentle walk from Wheathampstead. I can just remember having been

there, on a visit to a great-aunt, when I was a child under the care of Bridget; who, as I have said, is older than myself by some ten years. I wish that I could throw into a heap the remainder of our joint existences, that we might share them in equal division. But that is impossible. The house was at that time in the occupation of a substantial yeoman who had married my grandmother's sister. His name was Gladman. My grandmother was a Bruton, married to a Field. The Gladmans and the Brutons are still flourishing in that part of the county, but the Fields are almost extinct. More than forty years had elapsed since the visit I speak of; and for the greater portion of that period we had lost sight of the other two branches also. Who or what sort of persons inherited Mackery End-kindred or strange folk-we were afraid almost to conjecture, but determined some day to explore.

By somewhat a circuitous route, taking the noble park of Luton in our way from St. Albans, we arrived at the spot of our anxious curiosity about noon. The sight of the old farmhouse, though every trace of it was effaced from my recollections, affected me with a pleasure which I had not experienced for many a year. For though I had forgotten it, we had never forgotten being there together, and we had been talking about Mackery End all our lives, till memory on my part became mocked with a phantom of itself, and I thought I knew the aspect of a place which, when present, O how unlike it was to that which I had conjured up so many times instead of it!

Still the air breathed balmily about it; the season was in the "heart of June,” and I could say with the poet,

But thou, that didst appear so fair

To fond imagination,

Dost rival in the light of day

Her delicate creation!

Bridget's was more a waking bliss than mine, for she easily remembered her old acquaintance again-some altered features, of course, a little grudged at. At first, indeed, she was ready to disbelieve for joy; but the scene soon reconfirmed itself in her affections and she traversed every outpost of the old mansion, to the wood-house, the orchard, the place where the pigeon-house had stood (house and birds were alike flown)—with a breathless impatience of recognition, which was more pardonable perhaps than decorous at the age of fifty odd. But Bridget in some things is behind her years.

The only thing left was to get into the house-and that was a difficulty which to me singly would have been insurmountable; for I am terribly shy in making myself known to strangers and out-of-date kinsfolk. Love, stronger than scruple, winged my cousin in without me; but she soon returned with a creature that might have sat to a sculptor for the image of Welcome. It was the youngest of the Gladmans, who by marriage with a Bruton had become mistress of the old mansion. A comely brood are the Brutons. Six of them, females, were noted as the handsomest young women in the country. But this adopted Bruton in my mind was better than they all-more comely. She was born too late to have remembered me. She just recollected in early life to have had her cousin Bridget once pointed out to her, climbing a stile. But the name of kindred and of cousinship was enough. Those slender ties, that prove slight as gossamer in the rending atmosphere of a metropolis, bind faster, as we found it, in hearty, homely, loving Hertfordshire. In five minutes we were thoroughly acquainted as if we had been born and bred up together; were familiar, even to the calling each other by our Christian names. So Christians should call one another. have seen Bridget and her-it was like the meeting of the two scriptural cousins! There was a grace and dignity, an amplitude of form and stature, answering to her mind, in this farmer's wife which would have shined in a palace-or so we thought it. We were made welcome by husband and wife equally-we, and our

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friend that was with us. I had almost forgotten him-but B. F. will not so soon forget that meeting, if peradventure he shall read this on the far distant shores where the kangaroo haunts. The fatted calf was made ready, or rather was already so, as if in anticipation of our coming; and after an appropriate glass of native wine, never let us forget with what honest pride this hospitable cousin made us proceed to Wheathampstead (to introduce us, as some new-found rarity) to her mother and sister Gladmans, who did indeed know something more of us at a time when she almost knew nothing. With what corresponding kindness we were received by them also-how Bridget's memory, exalted by the occasion, warmed into a thousand half-obliterated recollections of things and persons, to my utter astonishment and her own--and to the astoundment of B. F. who sat by, almost the only thing that was not a cousin there-old effaced images of more than half-forgotten names and circumstances still crowding back upon her, as words written in lemon come out upon exposure to a friendly warmth,-when I forget all this, then may my country cousins forget me; and Bridget no more remember that in the days of weakling infancy I was her tender charge-as I have been her care in foolish manhood since-in those pretty pastoral walks, long ago, about Mackery End in Hertfordshire.

(From the Same.)

SYDNEY SMITH

[Sydney Smith was born at Woodford, Essex, in 1771. His father was an Englishman of some means, and very eccentric, his mother had French blood in her. Sydney was educated at Winchester and New College, Oxford, where he obtained a fellowship in the ordinary course, but adopted no profession till he was about seven-and-twenty, when he took orders and was appointed to the curacy of Netheravon in Wiltshire. The squire of the parish, Mr. Hicks-Beach, took a fancy to him and engaged him as tutor to his son, tutor and pupil, as they could not go to Germany for the war, going to Edinburgh. Here Sydney did clerical duty, helped to start the Edinburgh Review, published sermons, and was married. He left Edinburgh in 1803 to establish himself in London, where he did duty at the Foundling Hospital, lectured on Moral Philosophy at the Royal Institution, and became very popular in society. When the Whigs came in, in 1806, he was presented to the Chancellor's living of Foston in Yorkshire, where at first there was no thought of his residing. So he remained in London and published the famous Letters of Peter Plymley on Catholic Emancipation. In 1808 Perceval's Clergy Residence Bill forced him to Foston, where he built a parsonage and lived for some fifteen years. In 1828 Lord Lyndhurst gave him a prebend at Bristol, and he was able to exchange Foston for Combe Florey, near Taunton. When Lord Grey came in, Sydney was appointed to a canonry at St. Paul's, his political friends being apparently afraid to make him either dean or bishop. He had, however, a considerable income from his various preferments, and though in early life he was much straitened for means, had latterly a fair private fortune. He died on 22nd February 1845. His chief writings were contributions to the Edinburgh Review, which he collected in 1839, the above named Peter Plymley, a much later but still more brilliant series of Letters to Archdeacon Singleton on the Ecclesiastical Commission (exhibiting some reaction from his earlier reforming zeal), and a very few other things, nearly all of the pamphlet and letter kind. They have long been collected as his Works in various forms, but should be supplemented by the letters and other matter contained in the two extremely entertaining Lives of him by his daughter, Lady Holland, and by Mr. Stuart Reid.]

COLERIDGE'S celebrated saying that "wit was the stuff and substance of Fuller's intellect" would apply, I think, much better to Sydney Smith than to Fuller. Some limitations of it which are indispensable in the earlier writer's case have been

suggested in the section of this book which deals with him. But to the later it is applicable with hardly any limitations at all, and with only one serious addition-that common-sense was the form just as wit was the matter of the thought and style of the author of Peter Plymley. This combination which was found in Sydney Smith more perfectly than even in Voltaire-though without some additional ingredients which extended Voltaire's range, and exalted his reach beyond Sydney Smith's - will account when it is properly considered for almost all the peculiarities of this famous canon, the wittiest Englishman perhaps, with the possible exception of Charles the Second, of whom English history, literary or other, gives us intelligence. Very much of his ability in this kind was of course expended orally upon society, wherein he ranked as one of the most famous talkers of his time; and of this part nearly all has inevitably and irrecoverably perished, a few traditional anecdotes (some, as usual, of very doubtful attribution) being all that remains. His letters on the other hand exist, and are printed in the Lives referred to above in very considerable numbers; and these letters display, for the merely general reader who wishes to be amused, the combination of wit and common-sense in perfection. But for the literary student even they are not to be compared to the formally literary work, the most perfect examples whereof are the Peter Plymley Letters and those to Archdeacon Singleton, but every piece of which, whether pamphlet, letter, or review, is saturated with this quality.

It is particularly important for the appreciation of Sydney's style as well as of his matter to keep in mind that co-ordination of common-sense with wit which has been defined as his note. Fuller's superabounding wit was most certainly not kept in order by any such companionship, and the result is, that though it has much more unction and far more of poetical tone than Sydney's (which indeed is absolutely prosaic in the transferred sense of that word), it is often extravagant, often irrelevant, not unfrequently childish, sometimes very close to downright silliness and impertinence. That is to say it lacks the quality of justness, and it is this latter quality which is so eminently characteristic of Sydney Smith's. In life and in conversation, as well as more rarely in his private letters, he may sometimes have passed from comedy to farce, but he never does this in his regular literary work. There is, as a rule, no verbal horseplay, no literary practical

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