Smith, when seated at a
dinner table--having swallowed in life what he called a 'Caspian Sea' of
soup. Talking one day of Sir Charles Lyell's book, the subject of which
was the phenomena which the earth might, at some future period, present
to the geologists. 'Let us imagine,' he said, 'an excavation on the site
of St. Paul's; fancy a lecture by the Owen of his future era on the
thigh-bone of a minor canon, or the tooth of a dean: the form,
qualities, and tastes he would discover from them.' 'It is a great proof
of shyness,' he said, 'to crumble your bread at dinner. Ah! I see,' he
said, turning to a young lady, 'you're afraid of me: you crumble your
bread. I do it when I sit by the Bishop of London, and with both hands
when I sit by the Archbishop.'

Be gave a capital reproof to a lively young M.P. who was accompanying
him after dinner to one of the solemn evening receptions at Lambeth
Palace during the life of the late Archbishop of Canterbury. The M.P.
had been calling him 'Smith,' though they had never met before that day.
As the carriage stopped at the Palace, Smith turned to him and said,
'Now don't, my good fellow, don't call the Archbishop "Howley."'

Talking of fancy-balls--'Of course,' he said, 'if I went to one, I
should go as a Dissenter.' Of Macaulay, he said, 'To take him out of
literature and science, and to put him in the House of Commons, is like
taking the chief physician out of London in a pestilence.'

Nothing amused him so much as the want of perception of a joke. One hot
day a Mrs. Jackson called on him, and spoke of the oppressive state of
the weather. 'Heat! it was dreadful,' said Sydney; 'I found I could do
nothing for it but take off my flesh and sit in my bones.' 'Take off
your flesh and sit in your bones! Oh, Mr. Smith! how could you do that?'
the lady cried. 'Come and see next time, ma'am--nothing more easy.' She
went away, however, convinced that such a proceeding was very
unorthodox. No wonder, with all his various acquirements, it should be
said of him that no 'dull dinners were ever remembered in his company.'

A happy old age concluded his life, at once brilliant and useful. To the
last he never considered his education as finished. His wit, a friend
said, 'was always fresh, always had the dew on it. He latterly got into
what Lord Jeffrey called the vicious habit of water drinking. Wine, he
said, destroyed his understanding. He even 'forgot the number of the
Muses, and thought it was