nes cease to roar,
Still is that loom which breech'd the world before.

I am very sorry for the little fat Duke de Berri, but infinitely more so
for the dismissal of De Cases,--a fatal measure.

I must not die without seeing Paris. Figure to yourself what a horrid
death,--to die without seeing Paris! I think I could make something of
this in a tragedy, so as to draw tears from Donna Agnes and yourself.
Where are you going to? When do you return? Why do you go at all? Is
Paris more agreeable than London?

We have had a little plot here in a hay-loft. God forbid anybody should
be murdered! but, if I were to turn assassin, it should not be of five
or six Ministers, who are placed where they are by the folly of the
country gentlemen, but of the hundred thousand squires, to whose
stupidity and folly such an Administration owes its existence.

Ever your friend,

SYDNEY SMITH.

27. TO N. FAZAKERLY, ESQ.

COMBE FLOREY, October, 1829.

Dear Fazakerly,

I don't know anybody who would be less affronted at being called
hare-brained than our friend who has so tardily conveyed my message, and
I am afraid now he has only given you a part of it. The omission appears
to be, that I had set up an hotel on the Western road, that it would be
opened next spring, and I hoped for the favour of yours and Mrs.
Fazakerly's patronage. "Well-aired beds, neat wines, careful drivers,
etc. etc."

I shall have very great pleasure in coming to see you, and I quite agree
in the wisdom of postponing that event till the rural Palladios and
Vitruvii are chased away; I have fourteen of them here every day. The
country is perfectly beautiful, and my parsonage the prettiest place in
it.

I was at Bowood last week: the only persons there were seashore Calcott
and his wife,--two very sensible, agreeable people. Luttrell came over
for the day; he was very agreeable, but spoke too lightly, I thought, of
veal soup. I took him aside, and reasoned the matter with him, but in
vain; to speak the truth, Luttrell is not steady in his judgments on
dishes. Individual failures with him soon degenerate into generic
objections, till, by some fortunate accident, he eats himself into
better opinions. A person of more calm reflection thinks not only of
what he is consuming at the moment, but of the soups of the same kind he
has met with in a long course of dining, and which have gradually and
justly elevated the species. I am perhaps making too much of this;