in In the way of pleasantry, there could hardly be anything better than the following: Nothing amuses me more," said Sydney, "than to observe the utter want of perception of a joke in some minds. Mrs. Jackson called the other day, and spoke of the oppressive heat of last week. 'Heat, ma'am!' I said; it was so dreadful here, that I found there was nothing left for it but to take off my flesh and sit in my bones.' 'Take off your flesh and sit in your bones, sir! Oh, Mr. Smith! how could you do that?' she exclaimed, with the utmost gravity. thing more easy, ma'am; come and see next time.' But she ordered her carriage, and evidently thought it a very unorthodox proceeding." • No who has not body my little friend The racy exaggeration of the following must have highly diverted the hearers :"Some-one mentioned that a young Scotchman, who had been lately in the neighborhood, was about to marry an Irish widow, double his age, and of considerable dimensions. Going to marry her!' he exclaimed, bursting out laughing; going to marry her! impossible!-you mean a part of her: he could not marry her all himself. It would be a case, not of bigamy, but trigamy; the neighborhood or the magistrates ought to interfere. There is enough of her to furnish wives for a whole parish. One man marry her!— it is monstrous. You might people a colony with her; or give an assembly with her, or perhaps take your morning's walk round her, always provided there were frequent restingplaces, and you were in rude health. I once was rash enough to try walking round her before breakfast, but only got half way, and gave it up exhausted. Or you might read the Riot Act and disperse her; in short, you might do anything with her but marry her.' Oh, Mr. Sydney!' said a young lady, recovering from the general laugh, did you make all that yourself?' Yes, Lucy,' throwing himself back in his chair, and shakwith laughter, all myself, child; all my own thunder.' But Sydney Smith's conversation did not wholly consist of jokes; it often contained remarks of the highest order in point of sense and wisdom. This, on female education, may be given in evidence, and serve to qualifying the levity of some of the preceding:-"Never teach false morality. How exquisitely absurd to tell girls that beauty is of no value; dress of no use! Beauty is of value; her whole prospects and happiness in life may often depend upon a new gown or a becoming bonnet, and if she has five grains of common sense she will find this out. The great thing is to teach her their just value, and that there must be something better under the bonnet than a pretty face for real happiness. But never sacrifice truth." The next, too, is excellent ::- "I always say to young people, 'Beware of carelessness-no fortune will stand it long; you are on the high road to ruin, the moment you think yourself rich enough to be careless." " But as the facetious preponderates in the recollections, it must also preponderate in our quotations. Here is a smart remark on great intellects encased in little persons. "An argument arose, in which my father observed how many of the most eminent men of the world had been diminutive in person, and, after naming several among the ancients, he added, Why, look at Jeffrey; and there is Talking once of absence of mind, he said: . "The oddest instance of absence of mind happened to me once in forgetting my own name. I knocked at a door in London; asked, 'Is Mrs. B- at home?' 'Yes, sir; pray, what name shall I say?' I looked in the man's face, astonished: 'What name? what name? ay, that is the question; what is my name? I believe the man thought me mad; but it is literally true, that, during the space of two or three minutes, I had no more idea who I was than if I had never existed. I did not know whether I was a dissenter or a layman. I felt as dull as Sternhold and Hopkins. At last, to my great relief, it flashed across me that I was Sydney Smith." From this he goes on to relate a story of a clergyman who went jogging along a road till he came to a turn-pike gate. "What is to pay?" said he. "Pay, sir? for what?" asked the turn-pike man. "Why, for my horse, to be sure. "Your horse, sir? what horse? Here is no horse, sir." "No horse? God bless me!" said he, suddenly, looking down between his legs, "I thought I was on horseback." But this is hardly equal to the next :"Lord Dudley was one of the most absent men I think I ever met in society. One day he met me in the street, and invited me to meet myself. 'Dine with me to-day; dine with me, and I will get Sydney Smith to meet you.' I admitted the temptation he held out to me, but said I was engaged to meet him elsewhere . . . . He very nearly overset my gravity once in the pulpit. He was sitting immediately under me, apparently very atten tive, when suddenly he took up his stick, as if he had been in the House of Commons, and tapping on the ground with it, cried out in a low but very audible whisper, Hear! hear! hear!" " Once he was telling his company that he was formerly very shy; when some one said, "Were you, indeed, Mr. Smith? how did you cure yourself? Why," said he, "it was not very long before I made two very useful discoveries: first, that all mankind were not solely employed in observing me (a belief that all young people have); and next, that shamming was of no use; that the world was very clear-sighted, and soon estimated a man at his just value. This cured me; and I determined to be natural, and let the world find me out." And so he was quite natural for the rest of his life, and became the sort of man we have already seen. But here we must break off our extracts, and bring this paper to a close. We presume that most of our readers are acquainted with Mr. Smith's published writings; and for this reason we have not thought it necessary to offer any criticism or account of them. Besides his contributions to the Edinburgh Review, and the Peter Plymley Letters, already mentioned, he is the author of Letters to Archdeacon Singleton on the Ecclesiastic Commission; a number of sermons and speeches; Letters on locking-up in Railways; Letters on American Repudiation; a pamphlet on the Ballot; and a fragment on the question of paying the Irish Catholic clergy. They are all distinguished by the most sterling sense and wit, and that in so pleasant and singular a combination, as to render him quite peculiar among the writers of his generation. Like Jean Paul in Germany, he is thoroughly unique. There is no other writer like him. He is the product of French liveliness and English solidity; and is not to be matched for his felicitous unison of sound logic with witty and ludicrous illustration. All his writings have a direct and practical tendency; they were all written with an object; and none of them was published without effecting useful service in their day. "What I have said ought to be done," says he, "generally has been done; not, of course, because I have said it, but because it was no longer possible to avoid doing it." He helped to advance most of the political reforms that have been accomplished since the beginning of the century; and in calmly considering the spirit and temper of his advocacy, he concludes that, in respect to it, he had nothing to repent of. He lived his life in the world like an honest, jovial, and pure-minded man; working always under the strongest sense of duty, and speaking from the stimulus of impulses, which made him the choicest of companions. And when the time came for him to quit the world, he took leave of it with cheerfulness; thanking God that, upon the whole, he had found it a pleasant place of sojourn. He died on the 22nd of February, 1845, and was buried in the cemetery of Kensal Green; but the wealth of wisdom, wit, and pleasantry, which he has devised to us and succeeding generations, remains, and shall long remain, to delight and edify his countrymen. BY TERENCE TIERNEY, AUTHOR OF "MY OLD LODGER," ETC. CHAPTER XIII. A WORK has been written on "What is seen, and what is not seen," which exposes the fallacy of judging of the lives of men, by the great and prominent events which mark their course. The unnoticed mould the ex *Concluded from page 58. istences of most men, and give a shape to their destiny. The tide which runs on the surface, gives only faint indications of the true current which sweeps along below. Hubert was not cast down by the hopes of power vanishing like a transient gleam of sunshine; he had not the stoical indifference of Mazuffer. He was possessed of feelings He which, though blunted somewhat by the hard usage of the world, still rendered him sensitive to disappointment. How, then, shall we account for the calmness with which he faced misfortune? The only way to solve the problem, is by entering into the unseen operations of his mind, and the hidden circumstances hidden even from himself-by which he was influenced. A new feeling had involuntarily grown up within him, which, like Aaron's rod, subdued all others. loved again-not with such a love as that which, springing up suddenly for the woman he had lost, had all the passionate violence and freshness of a new feeling—but with a love which had a quiet force and unfathomed depth, like that of a great stream, which, unconscious of power, rolls resistlessly upon its course. Some people think that there is no love but first love: for woman, that may be so; but not for man. Love bounds the whole circle of the thoughts of the true woman. Crush the opening bud, and often you kill the root. Man has a hardier, if not a better, mental nature. The blossoms which spring from his life-tree are not so bright and so sweet; but tread them down as often as you will, the capability to put forth new buds remains. He is divided between his feelings and his perceptions of his interest. He has a wider intercourse with the world; and the greater surface over which his sentiments and motives spread, does not admit of that concentration of sentiment which leads women to stake their all upon a single cast of the die. If Hubert had asked himself by what means Lelia had established her influence over him, he would have been unable to give an answer to the question. She was not demonstrative-not profuse in visible tokens of affection. There was no sign of fear when he went forth to the fight-when he returned unharmed there were no boisterous tokens of joy-yet he felt that beneath all this there was a deep, quiet sympathy, which acted upon him as though an unseen angel were mysteriously tending him. Of what use is it to talk of the emotions? We analyse, and infer, and think that we know-but at last we only guess, and that very vaguely. Our own nature will enter into our speculations, and give them a tone. We estimate character by viewing it through a medium colored by the hue of our own minds. We are oftener wrong than rightpartly because of this inevitable tendency, and partly because the mind of each separate individual is a mental world within itself—a self-bounded sphere, which, though we touch it at one point, we cannot embrace or enter into. Besides, those who really love do not attempt to analyse; thought-conscious, voluntary thought-destroys that passion which approaches to adoration-the beau ideal of the sentiment we name love. Hubert was like a man bound by a mystic chain, which he neither feels nor sees, and which was all the more powerful because it was hidden from his senses. All Hubert knew, was that he loved— as the bird sings-as the stream flows downward-as the waves rise in the tempest and fall in the calm. He loved because he must love, though why he must he knew not. That is as much as we need know; but Mazuffer was a thinker as well as an observer, and he went through the mental process which we have described. His conclusion, after all, was as blind a one as Hubert's could have been. When he had confused himself, he said, fatalist as he was, "It is destiny." What is destiny? Is there any such thing? Old queries, these, which have agitated the minds of thousand-millions of men, which are still unsettled, and probably will always remain so, because incapable of settlement; but if destiny be a reality, and not a mere figment of the fancy, then Mazuffer had, at all events, the semblance of right upon his side; for we can only conceive of destiny as of the action of a power beyond and above, which causes us to act as if by some blind instinct, and without the exercise of will. Whatever was the precise nature of the cause, Hubert would have given up all else for the being who stood nearest to him. Power took a phantom shape-ambition was like the memory of a dream. If he felt anxious for the return of Dhoondiah, it was because his return would place her in safety. The time went on, and with it the progress of the siege. Day by day the batteries of the English advanced nearer to the doomed city. The walls began to crumble before the force of the huge balls. The men, fearstricken, deserted their posts of defence; all within was dread and confusion. The only hope of Tippoo was, that his foes would be straightened for provisions. Spies told of scarcity in the camp; but General Harris was better provided than at the first siege. He had greater facilities for bringing up supplies, and, though he could not command plenty for his troops, managed to obtain sufficient to keep them in fighting condition. The day came when Dhoondiah had promised to be there; it was the last day of safety. Hubert had been to the walls; a breach had begun to yawn in them, and it increased every minute. In a few hours he saw that an attack would be possible, and it was vain to expect that the demoralized soldiery would stand before the assault. What, he thought, if the town were taken before Dhoondiah was there? What would be the fate of Lelia among troops fresh from the fight? A fate a thousand times worse than death might await her. He hurried back with a troubled face, the index of his mind, and told Mazuffer what he had seen; Mazuffer had all prepared for a hasty start; he spoke confidently of Dhoondiah being there within three hours. At his suggestion Lelia was attired in a suit of his own, so that her sex might not be recognized. The three hours were fast drawing to a close, when suddenly there arose a tumult in the street. A crowd, in which women and children were mingled, rushed along panicstricken, and Mazuffer gathered from their cries that the English had stormed the breach and gained the outer wall. They must move at once gaining the street, they pressed on toward the gate at which Dhoondiah was to await them. The direction they pursued took them nearer to the scene of danger; as they advanced, the sharp rattle of musketry and the wild cheers of the assailants came more distinctly upon the ear. Turning the corner of a street, the small party found themselves within a few yards of the spot where the conflict was raging. A picked A picked body of natives, the body-guard of Tippoo, were making a desperate stand; the keen, crooked scimitar, flashing through the air, clashed against the bayonet and the musketbarrel. The Sultan himself was there, fighting with fury, within a few yards of the spot, where his body, pierced with many wounds, was afterwards found. His life would have been even shorter, if he had worn any of the emblems of power; but there was nothing in his attire to distinguish him from a private individual. Hubert saw at a glance that the Asiatics, vigorously as they fought, must be defeated; physicially weaker than their opponents comparatively undisciplined, and deficient in that steady courage which characterises the men of the west, they were no match for Europeans, even when they were superior in point of number; and in this case VOL. VII. N. S. the numerical advantage was upon the other side. Minute by minute they were forced back towards an archway, which led through into another street in the direction of the palace of the Sultan. Here the presence of mind and the local knowledge of Mazuffer stood them in good stead; five minutes more, and the archway would have been blocked up by the combatants; pointing it out to Hubert as the route they must take, he hurried forward, and the party found themselves within a straight, narrow passage, of some length. They had not proceeded many yards, before the noise, echoing along the vaulted roof, told them how narrow had been their escape. Looking back, they saw the scimitars gleaming between them and the light in the street beyond; the quick eye of Mazuffer caught the falling figure of the Sultan amid the throng, and, pointing it out to Hubert, he said, "The Sultan is downwe must be quick, for now the flight will be headlong." He was right. The mass began to break up, dismayed at the loss of their leader; and if they had not been impeded by their own numbers in the narrow space, they would have been upon the heels of the fugitives. The latter, at a quick run-in which the lithe daughter of the desert kept up, apparently without difficulty, with her companions-emerging from the passage, wound through a labyrinth of narrow lanes, and as they went rapidly on, the sounds of war fell farther into the rear. This incident took them out of the direct track; and when they reached the boundary of the city, it was at gate at some distance from that at which they had appointed to meet Dhoondiah. They were not alone in their flight-within the gate, and straggling over the plain beyond, with fear and anxiety in their faces, were long groups of the inhabitants, escaping from the dangers which threatened them, and carrying off such valuables as could readily be gathered. Some were on horseback-some on foot-a motley group of every classpicturesque in their bright dresses, and the confused way in which they mingled together. Of those who were on foot, some of the men seemed already on the point of sinking beneath their burdens, and the women bent under the weight of children borne in their arms and clinging to their skirts. There was but little time for thought upon the scenes around them; the sense of peril often makes man as callous to suffering as selfishness itself. We think of ourselves, and but little of others, when danger is pressing H upon our heels. They pushed through the throng, and took the direction outside the city to the meeting-place. The path was clear here; for the fear-driven multitude they had just left looked neither upon the one hand nor upon the other, but hurried straight forward from the gate. As they passed along, the sounds of combat--the report of muskets-the wild yells of those who yet fought the cries of the wounded-were borne to them on the air; but these were to them sounds of safety. As long as the conflict raged, their enemies would be too much occupied to give their attention to what was going on outside the walls. At length they reached the gate where Dhoondiah had promised to be; and the Dacoit chieftain, true to his word, was there, with about a hundred mounted followers, armed as he was when Hubert and Lelia first saw him with Mazuffer, but carrying in addition long spears, with diamond-shaped heads of bright blue-tinted steel. The men were muscular, resolutelooking fellows; and the horses, as it was fit the horses of freebooters should be, wiry active animals of the Arab blood. Three of the men led saddled steeds for the friends whom Dhoondiah had come to rescue. There was no time to spend in greetings: at a little distance, sweeping rapidly up to them, came a clump of horsemen at full speed, and they were superior in number to the band of Dhoondiah. Dhoondiah pointed them out to Mazuffer, and told him that they were a party of irregular native cavalry, in the pay of the English. He said, if Mazuffer had not arrived he should have stood the chance of a fight; but as it was there was nothing to be gained by fighting, and they had better retreat to the jungle where his encampment stood. The word of command was given the spirited horses rose to the rein and plunged forward at a quick gallopDhoondiah, by whose side rode Mazuffer, brought up the rear, and Lelia and Hubert sped along a little in advance. What were they thinking of? Perhaps of that desert ride, when the dust-cloud rose behind them, and warned them of approaching danger. Situations, which have in them anything similar to those which have passed before, stimulate the memory, and call forth forgotten feelings; then, as now, they dashed along, side by side; but how different the sentiment which united them at the two periods. Then, the love was all on the part of the Arab girl, who had helped the prisoner to escape from her own tribe, while he, though grateful for | his liberty, regarded her companionship as an incumbrance; now, he would have even followed her into captivity, rather than be banished from her presence. Something of that might have been in the minds of both, when she looked up to him with a sparkling eye, and he bent down and spoke a few words in a low tone. It does not matter what the words were: those who have loved know that there may be a charm in some commonplace remark. It is not the meaning that resides in the words, when they are spoken by cold, passionless lips. It is the modulation of the voice, and the glance of the eye, in which the magic consists. Those who have not loved, could not comprehend that, although we filled a volume in the endeavor to bring it home to them. They neared the jungle, which, skirting the plain, stretched away farther than the eye could reach. The pursuing party was at much the same distance behind, as when they started in the race; and Dhoondiah, turning round in his saddle, with a yell of defiance, shook his spear at the foe, and called to his men to halt. The cavalry in the rear thought, probably, that those who had till then fled, meant to give them battle; for they, too, came to a stand-still, closed up their ranks, and made ready for an onset. Such, however, was no part of Dhoondiah's intention. Mazuffer came to the side of Hubert and Lelia, and explained, that at that point they were about to enter the jungle. The path amid the tall trees and thick brushwood, he told them, was so narrow, that there was only space for one horse to pass at a time; and the ground was broken, swampy, and difficult in various places; darkness, too, was just beginning to fall around them. The plan they must adopt was to follow the leading horseman, who knew every inch of the path by night as well as by day, and to give the horses, who were well acquainted with the ground, their reins-that, in fact, they were to be passive, only taking care to keep their seats. That halt was a cunning manœuvre of the wily Dhoondiah. The danger he dreaded was, that in the time occupied in defiling singly into the narrow jungle-path, the enemy would pounce upon them and cut them down. There were only two alternatives-one was to deceive them, the other to fight them; he was ready for either-but he could be as cautious as he was brave, and he chose the former. He formed his men to face the foe, and then, with some half-dozen of his best 1 |