formed by himself
and 'Kate.' Being advised by his neighbours to purchase oxen, he bought
(and christened) four oxen, 'Tug and Lug,' 'Crawl and Haul.' But Tug and
Lug took to fainting, Haul and Crawl to lie down in the mud, so he was
compelled to sell them, and to purchase a team of horses.

The house plunged him into debt for twenty years; and a man-servant
being too expensive, the 'wise Wit' caught up a country girl, made like
a mile-stone, and christened her 'Bunch,' and Bunch became the best
butler in the county.

He next set up a carriage, which he christened the 'Immortal,' for it
grew, from being only an ancient green chariot, supposed to have been
the earliest invention of the kind, to be known by all the neighbours;
the village dogs barked at it, the village boys cheered it, and 'we had
no false shame.'

One could linger over the annals of Sydney Smith's useful, happy life at
Foston-le-Clay, visited there indeed by Mackintosh, and each day
achieving a higher and higher reputation in literature. We see him as a
magistrate, 'no friend to game,' as a country squire in Suffolk solemnly
said of a neighbour, but a friend to man; with a pitying heart, that
forbade him to commit young delinquents to gaol, though he would lecture
them severely, and call out, in bad cases, 'John, bring me out my
_private gallows_,' which brought the poor boys on their knees. We
behold him making visits, and even tours, in the 'Immortal,' and
receiving Lord and Lady Carlisle in their coach and four, which had
stuck in the middle of a ploughed field, there being scarcely any road,
only a lane up to the house. Behold him receiving his poor friend,
Francis Homer, who came to take his last leave of him, and died at Pisa,
in 1817, after earning honours, paid, as Sir James Mackintosh remarked,
to intrinsic claims alone--'a man of obscure birth, who never filled an
office.' See Sydney Smith, in 1816, from the failure of the harvest (he
who was in London 'a walking patty'), sitting down with his family to
repast without bread, thin, unleavened cakes being the substitute. See
his cheerfulness, his submission to many privations: picture him to
ourselves trying to ride, but falling off incessantly; but obliged to
leave off riding 'for the good of his family, and the peace of his
parish' (he had christened his horse, 'Calamity'). See him suddenly
prostrate from that steed in the midst of the streets of York, 'to the
great joy of Dissenters,' he d