SYDNEY SMITH ' S WORKS.

THE first and second volumes of this collection contain the au- thor's articles in the Edinburgh Review; the third consists of miscellaneous pamphlets, a few sermons, and Peter Plyndey's Let- ters, whose paternity is now acknowledged. A kind of autobiogra. phical preface gives an account of the origin of the Edinburgh; touches, not untruly or ungracefully, upon the depression and dif- ficulties the author braved in maintaining his principles and inde- pendence ; and quietly plants a blow upon some modern professing Liberals. From this, the newest and not the least interesting paper in the volumes, we shall draw freely.

IIONV THE EDINBURGH REVIEW CAME TO BE ESTABLISHED.

When first I went into the Church, I had a curacy in the middle of Salis- bury Plain. The squire of the parish took a fancy to me, and requested me to go with his son to reside at the University of Weimar ; before he could get there, Germany became the scat of war, and in stress of politics we put into Edinburgh, where I remained five years. The principles of the French Rota • lution were then fully afloat, and it is impossible to conceive a more violent and agitated state of society. Amon the first persons with whom I became ac- quainted, were Lord Jeffrey, Lord Murray (late Lord Advocate for Scottie ,) and Lord Brougham ; all of them maintaining opinions upon political subje. - a little ton Liberal for the dynasty, of Dundas, then exercising supreme power over the Northern division of the island.

One day we happened to meet in the eighth or ninth story or flat in But- dough Place, the elevated residence of the then Mr. Jeffrey. I proposed that we should set up a Review ; this was acceded to with acclamation. I was ap- pointed editor, and remained in Edinburgh to edit the first number of the Edinburgh Reeler. The motto I proposed for the Review was,

" Tenni mamma medilamor arena."

" We cultivate literature upon a little oatmeal."

But this was too near the truth to be admitted, and so we took our present grave motto from Pnblitts Syria, of whom none of us had, I am sure, ever read, a single line ; mul so began what has since turned out to be a very important and able journal.

THE ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF PLYMLEY.

I have printed in this collection the Letters of Peter Plymley. The Go- vernment of that day took great pains to timid out the author ; all that they could find was, that they were brought to Mr. 'Budd, the publisher, by the Earl of Lauderdale. Somehow or another, it came to be conjectured that I was that author. I have always denied it ; but finding that 1 deny it in vain, I have thought it might be as well to include the letters in this collection. They had an immense circulation at the time, and 1 think above 20,000 collies were sold.

WHAT AN OLD WHIG HAD Ti) BEAM,

From the beginning of the century (about which time the Review began) to the death of Lord Liverpool, was an awful period for those who had the mis- fortune to entertain Liberal opinions, and who were too honest to sell them for the ermine of the judge or the lawn of the prelate ;—a long and hopeless career in your profession, the chuckling grin of noodles, the sarcastic leer of thege- nuine political rogue—prebendaries, deans, and bishops made over your head— reverend renegadoes advanced to the highest dignities of the Church, for help- ing to rivet the fetters of Catholic and Protestaut Dissenters, and no more chance of a Whig Administration than of a thaw in Zembla—these were the penalties exacted for liberality of opinion at that period ; and not only was there no pay, but there were many stripes. It is always considered as a piece of impertinence in England, if a man of less than two or three thousand a year has any opinions at all upon important subjects ; and in addition, Ile was sure at that time to be assailed with all the Billingsgate of the French Revolution— Jacobin, Leveller, Atheist, Deist, Socinian, Incendiary, Regicide, were the gentlest appellations used ; and the man who breathed a syllable against the senseless bigotry of the two Georges, or hinted at the abominable tyranny and persecution exercised upon Catholic Ireland, was shunned as unfit for the rela- tions of social life.

A JUST BOAST FOR HIMSELF AND A F.ult HIT AT OTHERS.

To set on foot such a journal in such times, to contribute towards it for many years, to bear patiently the reproach and poverty which it caused, and to look back and see that I have nothing to retract, and no intemperance and violence to reproach myself with, is a career of life which I must think to be extremely fortunate. Strange and ludicrous are the chant,es in human affairs. The Tories are now on the treadmill, and the well-paid 'Whigs are riding in chariots : with many faces, however, looking out of the windows (including that of our Prime Minister,) which I never remember to have seen in the days of the poverty and depression of Whiggism. Liberality is now a lucrative business. Whoever has any institution to destroy, may consider himself as a commissioner, and his fortune as made ; and to my utter and never ending astonishment, I, an old Edinburgh Reviewer, find myself fighting, in the year 1839, against the Archbishop of Canterbury and thevBishop of London existence of the National Church. for the To fill two volumes with a republication of between forty and fifty articles, written for a temporary purpose and frequently on tem- porary subjects, and spread over a period of years forty save three, is a bold undertaking, and in most cases would have been a fatal one. But it is not with Mr. SYDNEY SMITH. His wit, his pregnant sense, his point—the thought which he has bestowed upon his subject, till he has stripped it of all incumbrances—and the care with which he has finished his style—render every thing pungent, or at the least readable. The strength with which he limns the lineaments of sonic weak, vain, or foolish person, who happens to have fallen in his way or thrust himself before him, renders many passages fre- quently amusing and striking to a high degree. But there is much more than these things. He has often chosen subjects which though occasional in their form, were general in their nature ; the capital stock of society either for record or practice. Such is his exposition, from a long file of their own publications, of the grosser Methodism of that day with its " serious " Margate Hoy ; such his exposure, on more than one occasion, of the Missions to Hindos-

tan, and the ridiculous results in a religious—the frightful catastro- phe in a political sense—they were likely to produce. Such, too, amongst others, arc his articles on Education— on the education of

the aristocracy at public schools ; on female education ; and on popular education, in a review of the well-meaning Mrs. TRIMMER'S attack upon LANCASTER. The world has not advanced so much in thirty years, but that all his articles on these subjects may be perused with advantage now. Front the many excellent passages in these papers we can only spare room for one specimen.

PERMANENT VALUE OF KNOWLEDGE.

One of the most agreeable consequences of knowledge, is the respect and im- portance which it communicates to old age. Men rise in character often as they increase in years; they are venerable from what they have acquired, and pleasing from what they can impart. If they outlive their faculties, the mere

frame itself is respected for what it once contained; but women (such is their unfortunate style of education) hazard every thing upon one cast of the die ; when youth is gone, all is gone. No human creature gives his admiration for nothing : either the eye must be charmed or the understanding gratified. A woman must talk wisely or look well. Every human being must put up with the coldest civility, who has neither the charms of youth nor the wisdom of age. Neither is there the slightest commiseration for decayed accomplish- ments ; no man mourns over the fragments of a dancer, or drops a tear on the relics of musical skill. They are flowers destined to perish ; but the decay of great talents is always the subject of solemn pity ; and even when their last memorial is over, their ruins and vestiges are regarded with pious affection.

Of some of the contents of the last volume we have lately had occasion to speak at length, in noticing the republication of Peter Plymley and the Letters to Archdeacon Singleton. Of the four Sermons, that on the Accession of the Queen we think scarcely equal to the subject or the occasion ; that on Christian Charity, preached at Bristol on the 5th November 1828, is broad in est charity, bold in its principles, and yet discreet in its management ; the two preached before the Judges on Circuit are very rare specimens of pulpit composition—remarkable for their skilful adaptation to the pursuits and professional character of the audience addressed. The pamphlet on Ballot, though not long since published, we hap- pen to meet for the first time ; and it undoubtedly says all that can be said against the Ballot in the most effective way; nor have its ar- guments been yet refuted, or all of them noticed. Now is not the time, nor is this the place, to try our hand upon the subject ; but, remarking that 31i. SYDNEY SMITH confounds, as he often does, the power to do a thing with the right to do it—and-that there is uo analogy between the case of a representative voting for a mea- sure and an elector voting for a representative—we will quote a passage or tiro as a specimen of his inimitable powers of statement. See how the assertion that few thrillers have political opinions is stamped in.

COERCION Or TENANTS LNAGGEHATED.

All these practices are bad ; but the units and the consequences arc exag- gerated.

Lt the first place, the plough is not a political machine : the loom and the steam-engine are furiously political, but the plough is not. Nineteen tenants out of twenty care nothing about their votes, and pull off their opinions as easily to their landlords as they do their hats. As far as the great majority of tenants are concerned, these histories of persecution are mere declamatory non- sense : they have no more predilection for whom they vote than organ-pipes have for what tunes they are to play. A tenant dismissed for a fair and just cause often attributes Ins dismissal to political motives, and endeavours to make himself a martyr with the public : a man who ploughs badly, or who pays badly, says he is dismiss 2d fir his vote. No candidate is willing to allow that he has lost his election by his demerits ; and he seizes hold of these stories, and circulates them with the greatest avidity : they are stated in the House of Commons; John Russell and Spring Rice fall a crying : there is lamentation of Liberals in the land, and many groans for the territorial tyrants.

CHECK UPON 'CHANGE AND CHARACTER OP SHOPKEEPERS.

To part with tenants for political reasons always make a landlord unpopular. The Constitutional, price 4d.; the Cato, at 3W.; and the Lucius Junius Brutus, at 2d., all set upon the unhappy scutiger ; and the squire, unused to be pointed at, and thinking that all Europe and part of Asia are thinking of him and his fanners, is driven to the brink of suicide and despair. That such things are done is not denied, that they are scandalous when they are done is equally true ; butt these are reasons why such acts are less frequent than they arc commonly represented to be. In the same manner, there arc instances of shopkeepers being materially injured in their business from the votes they have given; but the filets themselves, as well as the consequences, are grossly ex- aggerated. If shopkeepers lose Tory they gain Whig customers ; and it is not always the vote which does the mischief, but the low vulgar impertinence, and the unbridled scurrility of a man who thinks that by dividing to mankind their rations of butter and of cheese, he has qualified himself for legislation, and that lie can hold the rod of empire because he has wielded the yard of mensuration. I detest all inquisition into political opinions, but I have very rarely seen a combination against any tradesman who modestly, quietly, and conscientiously took his own line in politics. But Brutus and butterman, cheesemonger and Cato, do not harmonize well together; good taste is offended, the coxcomb loses his friends, and general disgust is mistaken for combined op- pression. Shopkeepers too, are very apt to cry out before they are hurt : a man who sees after an Clection one of his customers buying a pair of gloves on the opposite side of the way, roars out that his honesty will make him a bank- rupt, and the county papers are filled with letters from Brutus, Publieola, Hampden, and Pym. This kind of language seems strange in the founder of the Edinburgh Review—in the clergyman who was under the ban of his cloth, and considered as not a Christian if not an Atheist, and whose adherence to his principles barred the door of preferment against him. But it is perfectly consistent with himself at starting, and with the views of the old Whig party. As regards the man, let any reader turn to Vol. I. p. 188, and he will see less venera- tion for the people than is expressed in the last quotation ; and the principle "not to respect the poor when they wish to step out of their province," was a true principle of Whiggery. Government for the people was their maxim : popular self-government was an abomination in their eyes. They advocated, perhaps because they were out, for they never did much being in, certain changes which the Tories opposed. They were professional politicians, or rather born statesmen. They would, according to their lights, govern the mass "for their good;' just as a physician prescribes or a lawyer advises, to the best of his ability. But your true Whig would be taken as much aback if the people should presume to interpose in the measures concocted for them, as the solemn professional if it patient should discuss the composition of a draught, or a client criticize the drawing of a deed. "The people" were only "very well in their proper place."