is much that is valuable, but much also that deserves condemnation. For his English loves and prejudices we have no sympathy. His aspersions of a class of our students known as beneficiaries, which however true they might once have been, are now but foul slanders upon men universally respected for their attainments, and regarded for their social - qualities, and his assaults on what ought to be most sacredly venerated, have everywhere met with the rebuke which their wantonness has so richly deserved.

With him we have done: but we hope at some future time to notice some of the really valuable suggestions for government and education which this work contains.

Sydney Smith as a Workingman.

WE most firmly believe that any man of us who wants literary profit, and pleasure in gaining that profit, will find just what he seeks in the works of Sydney Smith. From the same source too, one gets better ideas of a truth-teller's mission, and more hope in a truth well told. He who plunges into the current of the author's feelings, will, of course, feel a shiver at his peculiar notions of the world's peculiar ways, but, this over, you roll in an ocean of fun. Heaving about you are the greatest ideas, foaming around you is the most creamy of humor, sparkling on all sides is the most brilliant wit. Although in your gambols you have at times a sense of brine and bitterness, you never feel the worse for it. Here is the distinguishing characteristic of Smith's sarcasm. He is fierce, and at times merciless, almost, but-after his deadly blowsthere comes a course of action for which you love him. He has in criticism, killed as many customs as Macaulay has killed men, yet he always sets about their burial so kindly and solemnly, and his dirges are always so pathetic, and his provision for succeeding customs is always so disinterested, and he always recalls in your mind such a vivid picture of the prime sport you had in seeing the system run down and slaughtered, and he has such a soothing way of proving that his victim was a rascality, and that he would not harm anything else for all the world, that you always forgive his critical hardness of heart. To see what Smith and his compeers of the Edinburgh did, you must refer to the whole history of their times, or to what is easier, the short preface to the American edition of his Miscellanies. You had no doubt before of his

mental force, if you knew anything of his works, but seeing this, you would deny that the pen of any man could do such execution. Yet there the record stands, not to be gainsayed, and only be doubted, previous to the reading of the essays which did the business.

Nowhere can a politician determined to battle for right, find better models. When our author steps forth as honest, truth-seeking Peter. Plymley, writing plain letters for Catholic emancipation, you have your ideal of cogency; skirmishing with the supporters of the Corporation and Test Act, he presents your ideal of political subtlety; making war against the man-trap and spring-gun system, your ideal of sarcastic energy, battling against the ten thousand other abuses which hived under the English plan, he presents all you wish in your ideal of mental strength. Perhaps there never was a man who hated every thing like cant more, or bungled in the expression of his hatred, less. His hatred never faltered, and his fierceness of attack was never weakened. Where the hated system was, or who supported it, he never asked. The Primate of all England, feasting at Lambeth, is punished for a little offense, and in the same moment an humble Methodist Missionary in the agonies of sea-sickness, is punished in the same manner and for the same sin. Both canted, and both had to be chastised. Although a single injury to a Methodist, as such, from any one else, would have made him the champion of the whole sect; the fact that they were elate with prosperity, gave him an opposite tendency. He even at times seems bigoted, but it is all in seeming. As a party, he disliked the Methodists much and the East India Company which helped them, more. He hated all alliances between Christianity and mammonism. He therefore proves to the entire satisfaction of the Hon. Company, that a great many clear sighted people consider them liars, and to the religious body aforesaid, that in their Indian course they proved themselves fanatics. Having done this, he serves up in capital style some of the strange acts of both these Associations; among the latter, giving us the well known episode of "Bro. Carey's Piety at Sea." He pounces freely too upon the Game Laws. Beginning with some very clear estimates, thus getting a fast hold on the English attention, he launches such appalling reasonings at the nabobs who upheld the enormity, that they writhe more than their fathers did under the Papal interdicts.

There is a heartiness too in his attack on the Society for the Suppression of Vice, which carries all before it. There were a thousand things in the Society to arouse his scorn. It was at its own best estimate, a poor thing, but at his estimate, it was infinitely insignificant. It was just

Granting very much, he cuts With great bitterness, he compoints out a path to success, of

such a mark as he loved. Not because it was weak, but because it was miserably narrow in its operations, and miserably broad in its blunders. It mistook the sphere of its operations, and continued hopelessly in its mistake. It seemed to our author then incumbent on him, as a man who made such things his business, to kill it in spite of its pious title. Therefore he laid down a basis of sound principles to begin with; he then launched against it some excellent reasoning, and after all, a long account of sins, open, and of the very class at which the Society aimed, but which being conducive to its ease, it had entirely missed. You feel for the men whom he crushes, but he has such a capital method, that you love him none the less. In the Essay entitled "Too much Latin and Greek," he shows up the English University system after a fashion vastly different from that of our Mr. Bristed. beautifully into the heart of their plan. bines great acuteness, and in the end which these Universities, stiffened as they are with their age and importance, have since, in a measure, availed themselves. But, perhaps in our anxiety a few paragraphs back, to make an antithesis, we have upheld Macaulay's merits as a fearless critic of men, to the prejudice of our author. This was by no means our intent. In the art of using all kinds of weapons in all kinds of ways, no man equals Macaulay. The art of discovering pretence and frowning it down, of analyzing the motives of men, and the existing state of society which bears upon their motives, no man surpasses Smith. In a certain kind of invective-the kind which at one moment relies solely on logic, and at the next on our sense of justice which seizes the most ludicrous particulars, and puts them to the best use, no man equals him. The distinction to be drawn between these two great critics, is seen at once, by every one who remembers Macaulay on John Wilson Croker, and Smith on John Bowles. We stand amazed at the knowledge shown in the former criticism, and the impudence in the latter. One is almost sorry that Macaulay is so fearfully accurate; it for a time almost shakes your belief in the comprehensiveness of his intellect in its ability to take in a grand conception, but a reading of his Milton or Dryden gives us a perfect cure. So with the other, one is almost tempted to believe that Smith's reasoning is effrontery-most amazing effrontery-but still wanting a firm basis; but, turning to his Essays on Ireland, or America, or a host of similar pieces, we have a cure, as perfect as in the other case. To many, Smith seems to stand in prose, where Swift stood in verse, yet there is hardly any foundation for such a thought, except their similarity of profession. Admiring both of them

as you must, you are forced to own, that the railleries of the latter are infinitely more suspicious than those of the former. Reading one of Swift's best efforts at satire, pitfalls innumerable stand in the way of your respect for the man, though you continually grow in respect for the man's work. No matter what are the talents of a public censor, or what his chance for bringing his talents to bear on society, if there runs beneath, such a current of egotism, as moistened and weakened many of Swift's ideas. On the other hand, that man doubles his force, who, being master of such mental resources, is actuated by some great principle, as Smith was actuated by love of British prosperity. Whether Swift is an ardent statesman under Harley, or an ardent churchman under Bolingbroke, we see that the prime movers in his character are egotism, a consequent wish for advancement, and, after he lost the See of Hereford, vexation. Under the energies of Smith was a spring infinitely more equable, and, as far as lasting effect goes, infinitely more powerful. True, he sometimes betrays a disappointment at seeing men inferior to him in talent, superior in station-at seeing, continually, men promoted to these stations for abjuring that manliness to which he clung so devoutly. But this feeling strengthened him. It made him strive constantly to show that honest genius beneath the surplice, takes higher rank than stupidity beneath the rochet and mitre.

As a philanthropic writer—a writer determined to thrust the canons of reason and morality, among every-day customs and laws, just where men needed them, he resembled our own Channing. There seems a likeness between them, in that their opponents hedged them about, and yet were worsted—that the opposition had wonderful strength in numbers, while they themselves had wonderful strength in position. Each bore the apostolate, which the needs of his country and his time warranted, and both hewed out for themselves strongholds, from which no man could dislodge them. In their methods of attack, there is little resemblance, and in their weapons none. As divines, they were not at all alike, for Channing, so far as available genius went, was for a time Primate of the American Church, while Smith, to a great body of Tory thinkers, undoubtedly stood, in many respects, just as Theodore Parker stands to many of our Conservatives. In promulging his ideas, he cared nothing for custom, as custom. He had certain old ideas of justice, which set him above custom. He worked unceasingly. Where a weak man was persecuted by a strong man, he was sure before long to interfere. Where Cant was substituted for patriotism, you always find him battling. Any pleasant little myth that smoothed the conscience

of an oppressor, found no favor at his hands. Though the conviction lowers our ideas of human nature, we cannot help thinking that had there been in his nature less manliness, and more meanness, we should all be now remembering him as one of the world's great men, universally known and honored.

W.

The Old Country Church.

WHAT a crowd of associations cling round the old country church! How suggestive is the word of numerous singing meetings, of moonlit walks at their close, perhaps a stolen kiss at the father's door-step, and the half-pleased, half-angry air with which the rustic beauty slapped the cheek of the offender! Memories of long-gone pleasures, of eyes that looked lovingly then, now estranged by death or absence, of tongues that spoke kindly, and hearts that beat warmly, all crowd upon the mind with the mention of the old country church. The joys of boyish days come thronging back like sheeted ghosts, to haunt the chambers of the memory, and affright the heart with the thought of the wild hopes it once cherished, and of the tomb which engulfed them.

A Sabbath at the old country church! How vividly we can recall it ! Early in the morning the necessary farm-work is all finished. The roomy old kitchen, not yet recovered from the effects of its over-night scrubbing, is hushed into silent amazement at its own order. Naught but the slow ticking of the tall old clock, and the cat purring her morning hymn in the chimney corner, disturb the old room's Sabbath musings. The whole house is still, save where the merry voice of childhood breaks out in expostulation at the coldness of the water, and is instantly quieted by the maternal "Hush, dear, it's Sunday." The good man is laboring with a dull razor over a field of a week's growth, and emerges from the final towel with countenance remarkably red, diversified with sundry cuts and gashes very much redder. All are robing themselves in their best "to go to meeting."

The heavy vibrations of the bell swinging slowly, solemnly, half fearful to break the sacred stillness, come in through the open window, borne on the soft summer air. 'Tis only the first bell, but the tidy mother hastens to finish the children that she may have time for her own toilet. The house is a good mile from the church, and Charley, the old family horse, is no rival of Lady Suffolk.