ten thousand times better than wit; wit is then, a beautiful and delightful part of our nature. There is no more interesting spectacle than to see the effects of wit upon the different characters of men ; than to observe it expanding caution, relaxing dignity, unfreezing coldness, teaching age, and care, and pain to smile, extorting reluctant gleams of pleasure from melancholy, and charming even the pangs of grief. It is pleasant to observe how it penetrates through the coldness and awkardness of society, gradually bringing men nearer together, and, like the combined force of wine and oil, giving every man a glad heart and a shining countenance. Genuine and innocent wit like this

is surely the flavour of the mind! Man could direct his ways by plain reason, and support his life by tasteless food; but God has given us wit, and flavour, and laughter, and perfumes to enliven the days of man's pilgrimage, and to charm his pained steps over the burning marle.'-Vol. i. p. 40.

Up to the year 1829, Sydney Smith continued at Foston, where his pursuits were rural enough, and his social tastes occasionally regaled by visits to and from some of his most distinguished friends. A few reminiscences of these are found in his Memoirs.

'I turned schoolmaster to educate my son, as I could not afford to send him to school. Mrs. Sydney turned schoolmistress to educate my girls, as I could not afford a governess. I turned farmer, as I could not let my land. A man-servant was too expensive, so I caught up a little garden girl, made like a milestone, christened her Bunch, put a napkin in her hand, and made her my butler. The girls taught her to read, Mrs. Sydney to wait, and I undertook her morals. Bunch became the best butler in the country.'-Ib. pp. 157, 159.

Mrs. Marcet, the well-known author of 'Conversations on Science,' was witness to one of Sydney Smith's most amusing demonstrations of his success in the tuition of Bunch, which is thus recorded :—

"Come here, Bunch!" (calling out to her) "come and repeat your crimes to Mrs. Marcet;" and Bunch, a clean, fair, squat, tidy little girl, about ten or twelve years of age, quite as a matter of course, as grave as a judge, without the least hesitation, and with a loud voice, began to repeat-" Plate-snatching, gravy-spilling, door-slamming, blue-bottle-fly-catching, and curtsey-bobbing." "Explain to Mrs. Marcet what blue-bottle-fly-catching is." "Standing with my mouth open, and not attending, sir." And what is curtsey-bobbing ?" "Curtseying to the centre of the earth, please sir." "Good girl! now you may go. She makes a capital waiter, I assure you; on state occasions Jack Robinson, my carpenter, takes off his apron and waits too, and does pretty well, but he sometimes naturally makes a mistake, and sticks a gimlet into the bread instead of a fork."-Ib. pp. 185, 186.

And here we must quit for a moment our indulgence in Sydney's genial wit, to make a graver allusion to his behaviour to

his servants. He once told a friend who was querulous on the subject, that he 'never had a bad servant, because he always studied their comforts; and that, he said, is one receipt for securing good servants. And a note on this passage informs us

that he hardly ever lost a servant, except from the circumstance of marriage or death.' The dying words of Mr. Justice Talfourd still linger in the ears of the public, That the crying vice of society is the lack of social sympathy, insomuch that we do not know if the servants who wait upon us day by day have parents, brothers, or sisters, or anything indeed of their dearest personal interests.' Sydney Smith was a most benign exception to this rule; he compelled the love of his humblest domestics, one of whom, having served him, and enjoyed the crumbs of his society through his life, attended him in his death, and not long after mingled her dust with his. A beautiful instance of his fond condescension is recorded in these pages. Accompanied by some distinguished visitor, he called upon his parish clerk, who was laid aside by a serious accident, which forbade his performing his duties at the church :

Ah!' he said, 'I shall miss you very much next Sunday morning, especially in the singing.' Then turning to his friend, 'If you were to hear him lead off the Old Hundredth, you would be delighted.' "Oh, sir!" said the old clerk, with tears in his eyes, "you only say that to cheer me up a bit." Indeed his benevolence was absolutely boundless; witness his receipt for making every day happy:' 'When you rise in the morning, form a resolution to make the day a happy one to a fellow creature; it is easily done. A left-off garment to the man who needs it; a kind word to the sorrowful; an encouraging expression to the striving; trifles in themselves as light as air, will do it, at least for the twenty-four hours; and if you are young, depend upon it it will tell when you are old; and if you are old, rest assured it will send you gently and happily down the stream of human time to eternity.'-Ib. p. 295.

During his residence at Foston he was continually visited by the most distinguished intellectual men of his age, and a few of. his innumerable witticisms are recorded in these volumes. One or two of these we must re-produce. I always write best,' says Mr. P-, ' with an amanuensis.' 'Ah!' says Sydney, but are you quite sure that he puts down what you dictate?' 'One day,' says Lady Holland, 'when we were on a visit at Bishopsthorpe, soon after he had preached a visitation sermon, in which, amongst other things, he had recommended the clergy not to devote too much time to shooting and hunting, the archbishop, who rode beautifully in his youth, and knew full well my father's deficiencies in this respect, said, smiling, and evidently much amused, "I hear, Mr. Smith, you do not approve of much riding

202

for the clergy;" "Why, my lord," said my father, bowing, with assumed gravity, "perhaps there is not much objection, provided they do not ride too well, and stick out their toes professionally."' In his conversations about this time, we find some things which every critic seems to deem worthy of record. Speaking of diminutive men who have possessed great intellectual power, he said, 'Why, look there at Jeffrey; and there is my little friendwho has not body enough to cover his mind decently with; his intellect is improperly exposed.' In another conversation he comments on Dante's conceptions of Infernal Torture as exceedingly feeble, and proposed such substitutes as the following; 'You,' turning merrily to his old friend, Mrs. Marcet, you should be doomed to listen for a thousand years to conversations between Caroline and Emily, where Caroline should always give wrong explanations in chemistry, and Emily in the end be unable to distinguish an acid from an alkali. You, Macaulay; let me consider? Oh! you should be dumb. False dates and facts of the reign of Queen Anne should for ever be shouted in your ears; all liberal and honest opinions should be ridiculed in your presence, and you should not be able to say a single word during that period in their defence.'

The list of Sydney Smith's promotions comprise his preferment to the living of Combe Florey, in Somersetshire, to a prebendal stall at Bristol, and a canonry in St. Paul's Cathedral. While enjoying these preferments, he continued to cultivate the society of the most eminent men of his day, and he was thus thrown more deeply into the political agitations which then disturbed society. Throughout these he exhibited himself as a thorough Whig, and the extent of his views as a reformer is shown, we think, rather humiliatingly in his letters. For example, in a letter to Lord Jeffrey, he says: I am strongly inclined to think, whether now or twenty years hence, that parliament must be reformed. The case that the people have is too strong to be resisted. An answer may be made to it which will satisfy enlightened people perhaps, but none that the mass will be satisfied with. I am doubtful whether it is not your duty and my duty to become moderate reformers to keep off worse."

Mr. Smith's politics were the result of his position, and we turn with pleasure from this phase of his character to some nobler illustrations of his nature. The living of Edmonton

fell into his gift, and the death of the former incumbent had left the family, whose eldest son was the curate, in very indigent circumstances. Sydney thus relates, in a letter to his wife, his interview with the distressed family :

'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 relations 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. They all burst into tears. It flung me also into a great agitation of tears, and I wept and groaned for a long time. Then I rose and said I thought it was very likely to end in their keeping a buggy, at which we all laughed as violently.'-Vol. ii. p. 291.

It would be an injustice to Mr. Sydney Smith to close this notice, without mentioning one other act of genuine benevolence. 'Almost the last act of his life,' says Lady Holland, 'was to bestow a small living of £120 per annum on a poor, worthy, and friendless clergyman (a high Tory by the way), who had lived a long life of struggle with poverty on £40 per annum. Full of happiness and gratitude, he entreated he might be allowed to see my father; but the latter so dreaded any agitation, that he most unwillingly consented, saying, "Then he must not thank me; I am too weak to bear it." He entered, my father gave him a few words of advice, the clergyman silently pressed his hand, and blessed his death-bed.'

We are compelled by our limits to omit scores of witticisms with which we have been delighted, and numerous traits of goodness which would charm the heart of every reader. A happy piece of dog Latin we must subjoin for such of our readers as are interested in this species of wit? In writing to Lord Holland on the threatened invasion of Buonaparte, he closes his letter in the following humorous style. Omnes ibimus ad Diabolum, et Buonaparte nos conquerabit, et dabit Hollandiam Domum ad unum corporalium suorum, et ponet ad mortem Joannem Allenium.' To the last day of his life his wit and humour blazed with its wonted intensity, and shed their livelier tints over the sunset of a most benevolent life.

We would have wished that Sydney Smith had followed his own inclinations, and had not become a clergyman; but it is only doing justice to his memory to say, that his compulsory ecclesiasticism may well be laid aside, and his character viewed from that stand-point which he himself would originally have chosen. So viewing him, we cannot but regard him as one of the brightest ornaments of our age. A man of singular force of intellect, of vast and varied attainments, of unparalleled wit and fancy, free from the slightest taint of party bitterness or personal venom, with a heart as large as the world, and sympathies

as various as the tribes and classes of mankind, and as deep as their wants and their woes; a writer who strained to the utmost the capacities of our language, and whose presentation of truth was enforced by singular logical powers, and by the rarest graces of style;-in a word, a man who will stand as a lasting model of that character which genius, learning, and virtue may combine to make, to charm, enlighten, and reform mankind.

ART. VI.-The Thirty-first Annual Report of the Directors of the Manchester Mechanic's Institution. Presented by the Retiring Board at the Annual General Meeting of the Members, held in the Lecture Theatre of the Institution, on Tuesday evening, February 27th, 1855.

THE Manchester Mechanics' Institution has been in existence twenty-eight years. We believe that it is the oldest, and, on the whole, the most flourishing society of the kind in the country. Perhaps there are not two others which can claim equal maturity or equal merit. Whatever faults may be laid to the charge of its managing officers (and they are numerous and serious enough), it will be obvious from even a cursory perusal of its reports, that large and long-sustained efforts have been made,-much energy and wisdom displayed,-considerable sums of money annually expended, in the service, and for the intellectual well being, of the artisan class. The founders of this institution were earnest, business-like, determined men,-true types of the Manchester school,' ere yet that 'school' had become nationally notorious. These men believed they had a worthy object in view, and laboured with characteristic zeal through fair weather and foul. As a necessary consequence, their institution has had a distinctly perceptible growth; irregular it is true, but not the less real. Operations were begun in hired rooms, affording slender accommodation, and offering few attractions to those not in earnest about self-education. Men of the bank, the warehouse, and the mill, met nightly to conduct, by disinterested labour, classes for the tuition of the swarthy denizens of the machine-shop and the factory. By dint of great perseverance, they drew together a large number of anxious and exacting scholars. Their scarcely respectable premises became too small to hold them. The infant outgrew its garment, and it became necessary to provide a larger and more suitable exterior. Money was not long wanting for