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changes you will see in feature, form, and fashion, amongst all you knew and loved; and how much, no sudden squall, or violent tempest, but the slow and gradual progress of life's long voyage, has severed all the gallant fellowships whom you left spreading their sails to the morning breeze, I really am not sure that you would have much pleasure.

The gay and wild romance of life is over with all of us. The real, dull, and stern history of humanity has made a far greater progress over our heads; and age, dark and unlovely, has laid his crutch over the stoutest fellow's shoulders. One thing your old society may boast, that they have all run their course with honour, and almost all with distinction; and the brother suppers of Frederick Street have certainly made a very considerable figure in the world, as was to be expected, from her talents under whose auspices they were assembled.

One of the most pleasant sights which you would see in Scotland, as it now stands, would be your brother George in possession of the most beautiful and romantic place in Clydesdale-Corehouse. I have promised often to go out with him, and assist him with my deep experience as a planter and landscape gardener. I promise you my oaks will outlast. my laurels; and I pique myself more upon my compositions for manure than on any other compositions whatsoever to which I was ever accessary. But so much does business of one sort or other engage us both, that we never have been able to fix a time which suited us both; and with the utmost wish to make out the party, perhaps we never may.

This is a melancholy letter, but it is chiefly so from the sad tone of yours-who have had such real disasters to lamentwhile mine is only the humorous sadness, which a retrospect on human life is sure to produce in the most prosperous. For my own course of life, I have only to be ashamed of its prosperity, and afraid of its termination; for I have little

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reason, arguing on the doctrine of chances, to hope that the same good fortune will attend me for ever. I have had an affectionate and promising family, many friends, few unfriends, and I think, no enemies-and more of fame and fortune than mere literature ever procured for a man before.

I dwell among my own people, and have many whose happiness is dependent on me, and which I study to the best of my power. I trust my temper, which you know is by nature good and easy, has not been spoiled by flattery or prosperity; and therefore I have escaped entirely that irritability of disposition which I think is planted, like the slave, in the poet's chariot, to prevent his enjoying his triumph.

Should things, therefore, change with me--and in these times, or indeed in any times, such change is to be apprehended-I trust I shall be able to surrender these adventitious advantages, as I would my upper dress, as something extremely comfortable, but which I can make shift to do without.

Edinburgh, 1825.

For myself, if things go badly in London, the magic wand of the Unknown will be shivered in his grasp. He must then, faith, be termed the Too-well-known. The feast of fancy will be over with the feeling of independence. He shall no longer have the delight of waking in the morning with bright ideas in his mind, hasten to commit them to paper, and count them monthly, as the means of planting such scaurs, and purchasing such wastes; replacing dreams of fiction by other prospective visions of walks by

Fountain heads, and pathless groves;

Places which pale passion loves.'

This cannot be ; but I may work substantial husbandry,

i.e. write history, and such concerns. They will not be received with the same enthusiasm; at least I much doubt, the general knowledge that an author must write for his bread, at least for improving his pittance, degrades him and his productions in the public eye. He falls into the secondrate rank of estimation:

'While the harness sore galls, and the spurs his side goad,

The high-mettled racer's a hack on the road.'

It is a bitter thought; but if tears start at it, let them flow. My heart clings to the place I have created. There is scarce a tree on it that does not owe its being to me.

What a life mine has been!-half educated, almost wholly neglected, or left to myself; stuffing my head with most nonsensical trash, and undervalued by most of my companions for a time; getting forward, and held a bold and clever fellow, contrary to the opinion of all who thought me a mere dreamer; broken-hearted for two years; my heart handsomely pieced again; but the crack will remain till my dying day. Rich and poor four or five times; once on the verge of ruin, yet opened a new source of wealth almost overflowing. Now to be broken in my pitch of pride, and nearly winged (unless good news should come), because London chooses to be in an uproar, and in the tumult of bulls and bears, a poor inoffensive lion like myself is pushed to the wall. But what is to be the end of it? God knows; and so ends the catechism.

Nobody in the end can lose a penny by me-- that is one comfort. Men will think pride has had a fall. Let them indulge their own pride in thinking that my fall will make them higher, or seem so at least. I have the satisfaction to recollect that my prosperity has been of advantage to many, and to hope that some at least will forgive my transient

wealth on account of the innocence of my intentions, and my real wish to do good to the poor. Sad hearts, too, at Darnick, and in the cottages of Abbotsford. I have half resolved never to see the place again. How could I tread my hall with such a diminished crest? How live a poor indebted man, where I was once the wealthy—the honoured? I was to have gone there on Saturday in joy and prosperity to receive my friends. My dogs will wait for me in vain. It is foolish-but the thoughts of parting from these dumb creatures have moved me more than any of the painful reflections I have put down. Poor things, I must get them kind masters! There may be yet those who, loving me, may love my dog, because it has been mine. I must end these gloomy forebodings, or I shall lose the tone of mind with which men should meet distress. I feel my dogs feet on my knees. I hear them whining and seeking me every where. This is nonsense, but it is what they would do could they know how things may be. An odd thought strikes me-When I die, will the journal of these days be taken out of the ebony cabinet at Abbotsford, and read with wonder, that the well-seeming Baronet should ever have experienced the risk of such a hitch? Or will it be found in some obscure lodging-house, where the decayed son of Chivalry had hung up his scutcheon, and where one or two old friends will look grave, and whisper to each other, 'Poor gentleman'—'a well-meaning man'-'nobody's enemy but his own''thought his parts would never wear out''family poorly left'-' pity he took that foolish title.' Who can answer this question?

Poor Will Laidlaw-Poor Tom Purdie-such news will wring your hearts, and many a poor fellow besides to whom my prosperity was daily bread.-Lockhart's Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott.

LI.

SYDNEY SMITH.

1771-1845.

SYDNEY SMITH was born at Woodford, near London, in the year 1771. He was educated at Winchester School and at New College, where he obtained a Fellowship in 1790. He took orders, and settled in his first curacy in a remote village on Salisbury Plain.

At the end of two years he resigned this charge, in order to accompany the son of the squire of the parish to Weimar, where he was to reside for his education. The war of 1797 defeated this purpose, and tutor and scholar were driven to Edinburgh, where Sydney Smith remained for five years as minister of the Episcopal Church in that city. He became the intimate friend of Jeffrey, Murray, and Brougham, and in company with them commenced the Edinburgh Review, of which he was the first editor as well as one of the founders. On his removal to London he continued to be one of its principal contributors, advocating in its pages the cause of progress in political matters, as well as in the many questions now best known under the name of social science. In London he became both a popular preacher and also a successful lecturer at the Royal Institution. During the greater part of his life he was the friend of Lord Grey, Lord Holland, and the other leaders of the Whig party. He was made a Canon of Bristol in 1828, and of St. Paul's in 1831. He died in 1845.

His principal writings are:—(1) Peter Plymley's Letters on the subject of the Catholics, 'to my brother Abraham who lives in the country,' in which he pleads the cause of Catholic emancipation, and attacks Mr. Perceval and the Ministers

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