Combe Florey was described by Francis Jeffrey as "a horrid
old barn." There the Rector performed two services a Sunday, celebrated the
Holy Communion once a month, and preached his practical sermons,
transcribed from his own execrable manuscript by a sedulous clerk. "I
like," he said, "to look down upon my congregation--to fire into them. The
common people say I am a _bould preacher_, for I like to have my arms free,
and to thump the pulpit." A lady dressed in crimson velvet he welcomed with
the words, "Exactly the colour of my preaching cushion! I really can hardly
keep my hands off you."

An anonymous correspondent kindly furnishes me with this description of the
Valley of Flowers as it was in more recent years:--

"I visited Combe Florey, with camera and vasculum, in 1893. It is one
of the loveliest spots in that district of lovely villages, lying in
the Vale of Taunton on the southern slope of the Quantocks. The
parsonage is entirely unchanged: there is Sydney's study, a
low-ceilinged room supported partly by pillars, level with the garden
and opening into it. There is the old-fashioned fireplace by which he
and his wife sate opposite each other in his last illness. 'Mrs.
Sydney has eight distinct illnesses, and I have nine. We take
something every hour, and pass the mixture from one to the other.'
Outside still grow his Conifers, a large Atlantic Cedar and a Deodara;
unchanged too are the palings over which Jack and Jill[97] peered with
antlered heads. Old villagers still talk of his medical dispensary,
and of the care with which he drove round to collect and carry into
Taunton their monthly deposits for the Savings Bank."

Meanwhile, great events were transacting themselves in the political world,
and they had an important bearing on the tranquil life of Combe Florey. On
the 4th of May 1830, Sydney Smith wrote from London to his wife in the
country:--

"The King is going downhill as before, but seems to be a long time in
the descent. All kinds of intrigues are going on about change of
Ministry, and all kinds of hopes and fears afloat. Nothing is more
improbable than that I should be made a Bishop, and, if I ever had the
opportunity, I am now, when far removed from it, decidedly of opinion
that it would be the greatest act of folly and absurdity to accept
it--to live with foolish people, to do foolish and formal things all
d