One word before we enter on the subject of Sydney Smith’s ministry.  In this biography of a great Wit, we touch but lightly upon the graver features of his character, yet they cannot wholly be passed over.  Stanch in his devotion to the Church of England, he was liberal to others.  The world in the present day is afraid of liberality.  Let it not be forgotten that it has been the fanatic and the intolerant, not the mild and practical, among us who have gone from the Protestant to the Romish faith.  Sydney Smith, in common with other great men, had no predilection for dealing damnation round the land.  How noble, how true, are Mackintosh’s reflections on religious sects!  ’It is impossible, I think, to look into the interior of any religious sect, without thinking better of it.  I ought, indeed, to confine myself to those of Christian Europe, but with that limitation it seems to me the remark is true; whether I look at the Jansenists of Port Royal, or the Quakers in Clarkson, or the Methodists in these journals.  All these sects, which appear dangerous or ridiculous at a distance, assume a much more amicable character on nearer inspection.  They all inculcate pure virtue, and practise mutual kindness; and they exert great force of reason in rescuing their doctrines from the absurd or pernicious consequences which naturally flow from them.  Much of this arises from the general nature of religious principle—­much also from the genius of the Gospel.’

Nothing could present a greater contrast with the comforts of Orchard Street than the place on which Sydney Smith’s ‘lines’ had now ‘fallen.’  Owing to the non-residence of the clergy, one-third of the parsonage houses in England had fallen into decay, but that of Foston-le-Clay was pre-eminently wretched.  A hovel represented what was still called the parsonage-house:  it stood on a glebe of three hundred acres of the stiffest clay in Yorkshire:  a brick-floored kitchen, with a room above it, both in a ruinous condition was the residence which, for a hundred and fifty years, had never been inhabited by an incumbent.  It will not be a matter of surprise that for some time, until 1808, Sydney Smith, with the permission of the Archbishop of York, continued to reside in London, after having appointed a curate at Foston-le-Clay.

The first visit to his living was by no means promising.  Picture to yourself, my reader, Sydney Smith in a carriage, in his superfine black coat, driving into the remote village, and parleying with the old parish clerk, who after some conversation, observed, emphatically, shaking his stick on the ground, ’Master Smith, it stroikes me that people as comes froe London is such fools.—­’I see you are no fool,’ was the prompt answer; and the parson and the clerk parted mutually satisfied.

The profits, arising from the sale of two volumes of sermons, carried Sydney Smith, his family, and his furniture, to Foston-le-Clay in the summer of 1809, and he took up his abode in a pleasant house about two miles from York, at Heslington.