446 66 PREACHER AT THE 'FOUNDLING." ble that he would have had a crowd daily at his table had he been left to himself. The death of Lord Holland completely broke up the unrivaled dinners, and the subsequent evenings in the "gilded chamber." Lady Holland, to whom Holland House was left for her lifetime, declined to live there. With Holland House, the mingling of aristocracy with talent; the blending ranks by force of intellect; the assembling, not only of all the celebrity that Europe could boast, but of all that could enhance private enjoyment, has ceased. London, the most intelligent of capitals, possesses not one single great house in which pomp and wealth are made subsidiary to the true luxury of intellectual conversation. On the morning of the day when Lord Holland's last illness began, these lines were written by him, and found after his death on his dressing-table: "Nephew of Fox, and friend of Grey, If those who know me best shall say Of him his best friend, Sydney Smith, left a short but discriminative character. "There was never (among other things he says) a better heart, or one more purified from all the bad passions-more abounding in charity and compassion—or which seemed to be so created as a refuge to the helpless and oppressed." Meantime Sydney Smith's circumstances were still limited; £50 a year as evening preacher to the Foundling Hospital was esteemed as a great help by him. The writer of this memoir remembers an amusing anecdote related of him at the table of an eminent literary character by a member of Lord Woodhouselee's family, who had been desirous to obtain for Sydney the patronage of the godly. To this end she persuaded Robert Grant and Charles Grant (afterward Lord Glenelg) to go to the Foundling to hear him, she hoped, to advantage; to her consternation he broke forth into so familiar a strain, couched in terms so bordering on the jocosethough no one had deeper religious convictions than he hadthat the two saintly brothers listened in disgust. They forgot how South let loose the powers of his wit and sarcasm; and how the lofty-minded Jeremy Taylor applied the force of humor to lighten the prolixity of argument. Sydney Smith became, nevertheless, a most popular preacher; but the man who prevents people from sleeping once a week in their pews is sure to be criticised. Let us turn to him, however, as a member of society. His SYDNEY'S " GRAMMAR OF LIFE." 449 circle of acquaintance was enlarged, not only by his visits to Holland House, but by his lectures on moral philosophy at the Royal Institution. Sir Robert Peel, not the most impressionable of men, but one whose cold shake of the hand is said-as Sydney Smith said of Sir James Mackintosh-"to have come under the genus Mortmain," was a very young man at the time when Albemarle Street was crowded with carriages from one end of the street to the other, in consequence of Sydney Smith's lectures; yet he declared that he had never forgotten the effect given to the speech of Logan, the Indian chief, by Sydney's voice and manner. His lectures produced a sum sufficient for Sydney to furnish a house in Orchard Street. Doughty Street-raised to celebrity as having been the residence, not only of Sydney Smith, but of Charles Dickens-was too far for the habitué of Holland House and the orator of Albemarle Street long to sojourn there. In Orchard Street Sydney enjoyed that domestic comfort which he called the "grammar of life;" delightful suppers to about twenty or thirty persons, who came and went as they pleased. A great part of the same amusing and gifted set used to meet once a week also at Sir James Mackintosh's at a supper, which, though not exactly Cowper's "radish and an egg," was simple but plentiful-yet most eagerly sought after. "There are few living," writes Sydney Smith's daughter, "who can look back to them, and I have always found them do so with a sigh of regret." One night, a country cousin of Sydney Smith's was present at a supper. "Now, Sydney," whispered the simple girl, "I know all these are very remarkable people; do tell me who they are." "Oh, yes; there's Hannibal," pointing to a grave, dry, stern man, Mr. Whishaw; "he lost his leg in the Carthaginian war: there's Socrates," pointing to Luttrell: "that," he added, turning to Horner, "is Solon." 66 Another evening, Mackintosh brought a raw Scotch cousin —an ensign in a Highland regiment with him. The young man's head could carry no idea of glory except in regimentals. Suddenly, nudging Sir James, he whispered, "Is that the great Sir Sidney Smith ?" 'Yes, yes," answered Sir James; and instantly telling Sydney who he was supposed to be, the grave evening preacher at the Foundling immediately assumed the character ascribed to him, and acted the hero of Acre to perfection, fighting his battles over again-even charging the Turks-while the young Scot was so enchanted by the great Sir Sidney's condescension, that he wanted to fetch the pipers of his regiment, and pipe to the great Sir Sydney, who had never enjoyed the agonizing strains of the bagpipe. Upon this 450 THE PICTURE MANIA. the party broke up, and Sir James carried the Highlander off, lest he should find out his mistake, and cut his throat from shame and vexation. One may readily conceive Sydney Smith's enjoying this joke, for his spirits were those of a boy: his gayety was irresistible; his ringing laugh, infectious; but it is difficult for those who knew Mackintosh in his later years—the quiet, almost pensive invalid-to realize in that remembrance any trace of the Mackintosh of Doughty Street and Orchard Street days. One day Sydney Smith came home with two hackney-coaches full of pictures, which he had picked up at an auction. His daughter thus tells the story: Another day he came home with two hackney-coach loads of pictures, which he had met with at an auction, having found it impossible to resist so many yards of brown-looking figures and faded landscapes going for 'absolutely nothing, unheard-of sacrifices.' 'Kate' hardly knew whether to laugh or cry when she saw these horribly dingylooking objects enter her pretty little drawing-room, and looked at him as if she thought him half mad; and half mad he was, but with delight at his purchase. He kept walking up and down the room, waving his arms, putting them in fresh lights, declaring they were exquisite specimens of art, and if not by the very best masters, merited to be so. He invited his friends, and displayed his pictures; discovered fresh beauties for each new comer; and for three or four days, under the magic influence of his wit and imagination, these gloomy old pictures were a perpetual source of amusement and fun." At last, finding that he was considered no authority for the fine arts, off went the pictures to another auction, but all rechristened by himself with unheard-of names. "One, I remember," says Lady Holland, "was a beautiful landscape, by Nicholas de Falda, a pupil of Valdezzio, the only painting by that eminent artist. The pictures sold, I believe, for rather less than he gave for them under their original names, which were probably as real as their assumed ones.' Ι Sydney Smith had long been styled by his friends the "Bishop of Mickleham," in allusion to his visits to, and influence in, the house of his friend, Richard Sharp, who had a cottage at that place. A piece of real preferment was now his. This was the living of Foston le Clay, in Yorkshire, given him by Lord Erskine, then Chancellor. Lady Holland never rested till she had prevailed on Erskine to give Sydney Smith a living. Smith, as Rogers relates, went to thank his lordship. "Oh," said Erskine, "don't thank me, Mr. Smith; I gave you the living because Lady Holland insisted on my doing so; and if she had desired me to give it to the devil, he must have had it." Notwithstanding the prediction of the saints, Sydney Smith |