. Grey's Motion
for a Reform of Parliament, Sir Gregory Page-Turner, M.P., spoke as
follows--"He craved the indulgence of the House for a few observations
which he had to make. When he got up in the morning and when he lay
down at night, he always felt for the Constitution. On this question
he had never had but one opinion. When he came first into Parliament,
he remembered that the Chancellor of the Exchequer proposed a Reform,
but he saw it was wrong, and he opposed it. Would it not be madness to
change what had been handed, sound and entire, down from the days of
their fathers?"

[140] (1809-1878.)

[141] In these a special appeal is made to "our youthful Gladstone," then
recently appointed Vice-President of the Board of Trade.

[142] Afterwards Mrs. Malcolm: died in 1886.

[143] He said afterwards that this Sermon on Peace was really Channing's.

[144] Compare his letter on parting from his friends at Edinburgh, quoted
by Lady Holland:--"All adieus are melancholy; and principally, I
believe, because they put us in mind of the last of all adieus, when
the apothecary, and the heir-apparent, and the nurse who weeps for
pay, surround the bed; when the curate, engaged to dine three miles
off, mumbles hasty prayers; when the dim eye closes for ever in the
midst of empty pillboxes, gallipots, phials, and jugs of
barley-water."

CHAPTER VII

CHARACTERISTICS--HUMOUR--POLITICS--CULTURE--THEORIES OF LIFE--RELIGION

What Sydney Smith was to the outward eye we know from an admirable portrait
by Eddis[145] belonging to his grand-daughter, Miss Caroline Holland. He
had a long and slightly aquiline nose, of the type which gives a peculiar
trenchancy to the countenance; a strongly developed chin, thick white
hair,[146] and black eyebrows. His complexion was fresh, inclining to be
florid. In figure he was, to use his own phrase, "of the family of
Falstaff." Ticknor described him as "corpulent but not gross." Macaulay
spoke of his "rector-like amplitude and rubicundity." He was of middle
height, rather above it than below, and sturdily built. He used to quote a
saying from one of his contemporaries at Oxford--"Sydney, your sense, wit,
and clumsiness, always give me the idea of an _Athenian carter_." Except on
ceremonious occasions, he was careless about his dress. His daughter
says:--"His neckcloth always looked like a pudding tied round his throat,
an