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Before concluding, I need hardly say a word on-the question of payment, in any shape, for seats in churches. I do not like to use exaggerated language: and it may be, as we have heard, that some such system is general in other churches, and, on the other hand, that it has been forced upon us by the necessity of the case, in new churches and in town districts. But I shall probably speak in accordance with the feelings of almost all who are here, when I say that I look on it with aversion, and that I rejoice that it has as yet hardly effected any lodgment within our ancient country parishes.

I desire, in conclusion, fully to admit that the plan of absolute freedom is in the abstract the best. I should never think of objecting to it in any place where the people really and unanimously wish it. But I certainly would warn them not to expect perfection from it; nor to complain if they find that they cannot avoid all inconvenience, when that inconvenience is inherent in the nature of the case, and cannot wholly be overcome by any expedients or contrivances. "The bed is shorter than that a man can stretch himself on it; and the covering narrower than that he can wrap himself in it.”

MISCELLANEOUS

NOTICE OF LADY HOLLAND'S MEMOIR OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH,

Published in the Guardian, June 1855.

LADY HOLLAND, we think, has done well in publishing this book. It cannot but raise the reputation of her father, and vindicate it from the misconception which may still linger around it. It has never, indeed, been anything but a vulgar error, and that not a prevalent one, to suppose that Mr. Sydney Smith was a mere jester. But the nobler qualities which distinguished him are strongly set forth in these two volumes; and their readers may cordially adopt the able summary of them given by Mrs. Austin (II. vii.) :-"My opinion of Sydney Smith's great and noble qualities—his courage and magnanimity, his large humanity, his scorn of all meanness and all imposture, his rigid obedience to duty-was very high before. It is much higher now, that his inward life has been laid bare before me. He lived, as he says, in a house of glass. He was brave and frank in every utterance of his thoughts and feelings; yet, though I have found opinions to which I could not assent, and tastes which are certainly opposed to my own, I have not found a sentiment unworthy a man of sense, honour, and humanity. I have found no trace of a mean, an unkind, or an equivocal action."

Not, of course, that his religious views were such as most readers of this paper will sympathize with; and it

is amusing to see the humorous disgust with which, at the end of his life, he was filled by the apparition of "Puseyism." But he seems hardly to have noticed it but in the most superficial manner (see especially II, 459, 470); and on the whole, we know no reason to question the truth of what he says of himself (I. 235, II. 399) "I defy to quote a single passage of my writing contrary to the doctrines of the Church of England." We have, however, made the double reference to this passage, which is quoted in the Memoir, from the Letters, because the Memoir omits a significant sequel to the sentence-"for I have always avoided speculative, and preached practical, religion." There is a converse omission in another part of this quotation in the Letter compared with the Memoir, which explains the above blank in a manner easily understood by those who remember the period.

It would be out of place to dwell on his political or ecclesiastical writings. But it is indisputable that very many of the objects of the former have been attained, and were greatly promoted by his vigorous and independent advocacy (see I. 26-35); and with regard to his celebrated defence of Cathedrals, if carried on somewhat roughly, and not wholly from the loftiest motive, it at least showed a juster appreciation of the value of those institutions than was fashionable at the time. We remember his sketch of the uses to which they might be put (2d Letter to Archdeacon Singleton, Works, III. 100), being taken as the text of one of the speeches in Parliament against the Bill of 1840; and we shall be surprised if the present Cathedral Commissioners do not more or less recur to the substance of them.

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