ffection, of the magnitude of which I was not
aware"

Sixteen years later, when he lay dying and half-conscious, the cry
"Douglas, Douglas!" was constantly on his lips.

The prebendal stall at Bristol carried with it the incumbency of Halberton,
near Tiverton; and Sydney Smith exchanged the living of Foston for that of
Combe Florey in Somerset, which could be held conjointly with Halberton. On
the 14th of July 1829 he wrote from the "Sacred Valley of Flowers," as he
loved to call it:--

"I am extremely pleased with Combe Florey, and pronounce it to be a
very pretty place in a very beautiful country. The house I shall make
decently convenient."

"I need not say how my climate is improved. The neighbourhood much the
same as all other neighbourhoods. Red wine and white, soup and fish,
commonplace dulness and prejudice, bad wit and good-nature. I am,
after my manner, making my place perfect, and have twenty-eight people
constantly at work."

"I am going on fighting with bricklayers and carpenters, and shall
ultimately make a very pretty place and a very good house." "I
continue to be delighted with the country. My parsonage will be
perfection. The harvest is got in without any rain. The Cider is such
an enormous crop, that it is sold at ten shillings a hogshead; so that
a human creature may lose his reason for a penny."

"Luttrell came over for a day, from whence I know not, but I thought
not from good pastures; at least, he had not his usual soup-and-pattie
look. There was a forced smile upon his countenance, which seemed to
indicate plain roast and boiled; and a sort of apple-pudding
depression, as if he had been staying with a clergyman.... 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 that 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; but the failures of
a man of sense are always painful"