. . . you are vicar of Edmonton." They all burst into tears, and
"I wept and groaned for a long time. Then I rose, and said I thought it
was very likely to end in their keeping a buggy, at which we all laughed
as violently. . . . The charitable physician wept too" (i., p. 343). He
wrote to:--

MRS GROTE, 3_rd Jan._ 1844.--"You have seen more than enough of my giving
the living of Edmonton to a curate. The first thing the unscriptural
curate does, is to turn out his fellow curate, the son of him who was
vicar before his father. . . . The Bishop, the Dean and Chapter, and I
have in vain expostulated; he perseveres in his harshness and cruelty."

Towards the end of 1843 he made his well-known attack on the scandal of
the State of Pennsylvania not paying interest to English investors--he
being one. He declares them to be "men who prefer any load of infamy,
however great, to any pressure of taxation, however light" (i., p. 352).

Sydney Smith died 22nd February 1845 from disease of the heart. He was
buried at Kensal Green "as privately as possible."

Macaulay {185} wrote in 1847 to Mrs Sydney: "He is universally admitted
to have been a great reasoner, and the greatest master of ridicule that
has appeared among us since Swift." Mrs Sydney adds in a note that there
is not a line in his writing "unfit for the eye of a woman," a great
contrast to Swift.

2. LETTERS.

In 1807-8 appeared anonymously Sydney Smith's _Letters on the Subject of
the Catholics to my brother Abraham who lives in the Country_, by Peter
Plymley.

Abraham is said to be a "kind of holy vegetable" and to be a type of
people who were exclaiming:--"For God's sake, don't think of raising
cavalry and infantry in Ireland! . . . They interpret the Epistle to
Timothy in a different manner to what we do!"

Sydney points out (in his character of Peter Plymley) that the "Catholic
is excluded from Parliament because he will not swear that he disbelieves
the leading doctrines of his religion!"

He refers to Perceval in the following passage: "What remains to be done
is obvious to every human being--but to the man who, instead of being a
Methodist preacher, is, for the ruin of Troy, and the misery of good old
Priam and his sons, become a legislator and a politician." Sydney
continues: "I say, I fear he will ruin Ireland, and pursue a line of
policy destructive to the true interests of his country: and then you
tell me he is faithful to Mrs Pe