ife is
well known: it consisted of "six small silver teaspoons much worn," with
which worldly goods he did her literally endow by throwing them into her
lap. It would appear that there never was a happier marriage; but it
certainly seemed for some years as if there might have been many more
prosperous in point of money. When Sydney moved to London he had no
very definite prospect of any income whatever; and had not Mrs. Smith
sold her mother's jewels (which came to her just at the time), they
would apparently have had some difficulty in furnishing their house in
Doughty Street. But Horner, their friend (the "parish bull" of Scott's
irreverent comparison), had gone to London before them, and impressed
himself, apparently by sheer gravity, on the political world as a good
young man. Introduced by him, Sydney Smith soon became one of the circle
at Holland House. It is indeed not easy to live on invitations and your
mother-in-law's pearls; but Sydney reviewed vigorously, preached
occasionally, before very long received a regular appointment at the
Foundling Hospital, and made some money by lecturing very agreeably at
the Royal Institution on Moral Philosophy--a subject of which he
honestly admits that he knew, in the technical sense, nothing. But his
hearers did not want technical ethics, and in Sydney Smith they had a
moral philosopher of the practical kind who could hardly be excelled
either in sense or in wit. One little incident of this time, however,
throws some light on the complaints which have been made about the delay
of his promotion. He applied to a London rector to license him to a
vacant chapel, which had not hitherto been used for the services of the
Church. The immediate answer has not been preserved; but from what
followed it clearly was a civil and rather evasive but perfectly
intelligible request to be excused. The man was of course quite within
his right, and a dozen good reasons can be guessed for his conduct. He
may really have objected, as he seems to have said he did, to take a
step which his predecessors had refused to take, and which might
inconvenience his successors. But Sydney would not take the refusal, and
wrote another very logical, but extremely injudicious, letter pressing
his request with much elaboration, and begging the worthy Doctor of
Divinity to observe that he, the Doctor, was guilty of inconsistency and
other faults. Naturally this put the Doctor's back up, and he now
replied with a f