No man expresses warm and animated feelings anywhere else with his mouth close, but with his whole body; he articulates with every limb, and talks from head to foot with a thousand voices. Why this holoplexia on sacred occasions alone? Why call in the aid of paralysis to piety? Is it a rule of oratory to balance the style against the subject, and to handle the most sublime truths in the dullest language and the driest manner? Is sin to be taken from men, as Eve was from Adam, by casting them into a deep slumber? . . . We have cherished contempt for centuries, and persevered in dignified tameness so long, that while we are freezing common sense for large salaries in stately churches, amidst whole acres and furlongs of empty pews, the crowd are feasting on ungrammatical fervour and illiterate animation in the crumbling hovels of the Methodists.'

In considering the relation of Mr. Sydney Smith's other works to his living reputation, it seems difficult for the one to sustain and continue the other unless by some combination of interest in their subjects and their forms, and on this point he shares the destiny and the difficulties of the most eminent names in the history of British letters. Should, indeed, a complete English educa

tion ever become an object of serious study in this country, a great advantage and facility will be recognised in the circumstance that our best writers are more or less political. I do not allude to professed historians, or even to those who describe, attack, or defend the public affairs in which they have been personally engaged-such as Bacon, Milton, Clarendon, or Bolingbroke— but to the specially literary classes-the novelists. and the divines-who have not been content to deal either with abstractions or theories, but have come down among their fellow-citizens to contend for any common cause that is agitating the nation. Hence there often seems a ludicrous disproportion between what seems the importance of the defence or attack and the weight of the defender or assailant. We might gladly commit the apology of the House of Hanover to the pellucid English of Addison's Freeholder,' or the less important party struggles of the Dukes of Grafton and Bedford to the rhetoric of the long-mysterious Junius ; but we grudge the gigantic satire of Swift evoked by Wood's copper half-pence, and even the time of Walter Scott, devoted to the one-pound note of his country. But whether this be a waste of power or not, it seems to be so necessary a

product of our character and our institutions, that when any powerful writer has the taste and temperament of a politician, it is a wonder if he be anything else. Thus it is fortunate that the questions in which Mr. Sydney Smith lavished his wit, were not only the topics of the day, but had their roots in serious and permanent interests.

The Irish Church, which he so boldly satirised, is abolished; the Ballot, which he ridiculed, is established; the Ecclesiastical Commission, which he was ready to oppose 'even to the loss of a portion of his own income and the whole of Dr. Spry's,' is now the sole depository of the temporalities of the Church, the Colonial' freedom he so early advocated is complete; and if the Game-laws be still on the statute-book, it is not from want of criticism or objection. Thus whether his advocacy succeeded or failed, it must not be forgotten that these were matters which deeply agitated the public mind of the England in which he lived, and full account should be taken of the influence which such a statesman of the study, armed with so rare and well-tempered a glaive of wit, must have exercised. But besides and beyond this marvellous faculty, let no one despise the admirable vehicle of language in which it is conveyed, or decline to join

in the adjuration he solemnly uttered: 'God preserve us the purity of style which from our earliest days we have endeavoured to gather in the great schools of ancient learning.'

VIII.

THE LAST DAYS OF HEINRICH HEINE.

THERE is no necessity to suppose any determined hostility, or the existence of either envy or malignity, in the repulsion with which ordinary minds shrink from the humouristic character. If to studious men it seems shallow, if to severe men it seems indifferent, if to pious men it seems irreverent, these are the inevitable consequences of their mental vision being brought to bear on objects it is not fitted to contemplate. The contrasts, the inconsistencies, the incongruities, which provoke and exercise the faculty of humour, are really invisible to most persons, or, when perceived, arouse a totally distinct order of ideas and associations. It must seem to them at best a mischievous inclination to find a source of mirth in the sufferings, and struggles, and troubles of others; and when the humourist extends this practice to himself, and discovers a certain satisfaction in his own weaknesses and miseries, introverting the very