s and
entertaining. My friend sups late; he eats some strong soup, then a
lobster, then some tart, and he dilutes these esculent varieties with wine.
The next day I call upon him. He is going to sell his house in London, and
to retire into the country. He is alarmed for his eldest daughter's health.
His expenses are hourly increasing, and nothing but a timely retreat can
save him from ruin. All this is the lobster; and, when over-excited nature
has had time to manage this testaceous encumbrance, the daughter recovers,
the finances are in good order, and every rural idea effectually excluded
from the mind.

"In the same manner old friendships are destroyed by toasted cheese, and
hard salted meat has led to suicide. Unpleasant feelings of the body
produce correspondent sensations in the mind, and a great scene of
wretchedness is sketched out by a morsel of indigestible and misguided
food. Of such infinite consequence to happiness is it to study the
body."--_Quoted by Lady Holland in her "Memoir of Sydney Smith_."

APPENDIX E

"I am sorry that I did not, in the execution of my self-created office as a
reviewer, take an opportunity in this, or some other military work, to
descant a little upon the miseries of war; and I think this has been
unaccountably neglected in a work abounding in useful essays, and ever on
the watch to propagate good and wise principles. It is not that human
beings can live without occasional wars, but they may live with fewer wars,
and take more just views of the evils which war inflicts upon mankind. If
three men were to have their legs and arms broken, and were to remain all
night exposed to the inclemency of weather, the whole country would be in a
state of the most dreadful agitation. Look at the wholesale death of a
field of battle, ten acres covered with dead, and half dead, and dying; and
the shrieks and agonies of many thousand human beings. There is more of
misery inflicted upon mankind by one year of war, than by all the civil
peculations and oppressions of a century. Yet it is a state into which the
mass of mankind rush with the greatest avidity, hailing official murderers,
in scarlet, gold, and cocks' feathers, as the greatest and most glorious of
human creatures. It is the business of every wise and good man to set
himself against this passion for military glory, which really seems to be
the most fruitful source of human misery.

"What would be said of a party of gentlemen who w