this and similar cases. A little
daughter--Lady Holland, the wife of the celebrated physician, Sir Henry
Holland--was sent to bless the sensible pair. Sydney had wished that she
might be born with one eye, so that he might never lose her;
nevertheless, though she happened to be born with two, he bore her
secretly from the nursery, a few hours after her birth, to show her in
triumph to the future Edinburgh Reviewers.

The birth of the 'Edinburgh Review' quickly followed that of the young
lady. Jeffrey,--then an almost starving barrister, living in the eighth
or ninth flat of a house in Buccleuch Place,--Brougham, and Sydney Smith
were the triumvirate who propounded the scheme, Smith being the first
mover. He proposed a motto: 'Tenui Musam meditanum avenir:' We cultivate
literature on a little oatmeal; but this being too near the truth, they
took their motto from Publius Syrus; 'of whom,' said Smith, 'none of us
had, I am sure, read a single line.' To this undertaking Sydney Smith
devoted his talents for more than twenty-eight years.

Meantime, during the brief remainder of his stay in Edinburgh, his
circumstances improved. He had done that which most of the clergy are
obliged to do--taken a pupil. He had now another, the son of Mr. Gordon,
of Ellon; for each of these young men he received L400 a year. He became
to them a father and a friend; he entered into all their amusements. One
of them saying that he could not find conversation at the balls for his
partners, 'Never mind,' cried Sydney Smith, 'I'll fit you up in five
minutes.' Accordingly he wrote down conversations for them amid bursts
of laughter.

Thus happily did years, which many persons would have termed a season of
adversity, pass away. The chance which brought him to Edinburgh
introduced him to a state of society never likely to be seen again in
Scotland. Lord Cockburn's 'Memorials' afford an insight into manners,
not only as regarded suppers, but on the still momentous point, of
dinners. Three o'clock was the fashionable hour, so late as the
commencement of the present century. That hour, 'not without groans and
predictions,' became four--and four was long and conscientiously adhered
to. 'Inch by inch,' people yielded, and five continued to be the
standard polite hour from 1806 to 1820. 'Six has at length prevailed.'

The most punctilious ceremony existed. When dinner was announced, a file
of ladies went first in strict order of precedence. 'Mrs. Colonel