[Illustration:  SYDNEY SMITH’S WITTY ANSWER TO THE OLD PARISH CLERK.]

Let us now, for a time, forget the wit, the editor of the ’Edinburgh Review,’ the diner out, the evening preacher at the Foundling, and glance at the peaceful and useful life of a country clergyman.  His spirits, his wit, all his social qualities, never deserted Sydney Smith, even in the retreat to which he was destined.  Let us see him driving in his second-hand carriage, his horse, ‘Peter the Cruel,’ with Mrs. Smith by his side, summer and winter, from Heslington to Foston-le-Clay.  Mrs. Smith, at first, trembled at the inexperience of her charioteer; but ‘she soon,’ said Sydney, ’raised my wages, and considered me an excellent Jehu.’  ‘Mr. Brown,’ said Sydney to one of the tradesmen of York, through the streets of which he found it difficult to drive, ’your streets are the narrowest, in Europe,’—­’Narrow, sir? there’s plenty of room for two carriages to pass each other, and an inch and a half to spare!’

Let us see him in his busy peaceful life, digging an hour or two every day in his garden to avoid sudden death, by preventing corpulency; then galloping through a book, and when his family laughed at him for so soon dismissing a quarto, saying, ‘Cross-examine me, then,’ and going well through the ordeal.  Hear him, after finishing his morning’s writing, saying to his wife, ’There, Kate, it’s done:  do look over it; put the dots to the i’s, and cross the t’s:’  and off he went to his walk, surrounded by his children, who were his companions and confidants.  See him in the lane, talking to an old woman whom he had taken into his gig as she was returning from market, and picking up all sorts of knowledge from her; or administering medicine to the poor, or to his horses and animals, sometimes committing mistakes next to fatal.  One day he declared he found all his pigs intoxicated, grunting ‘God save the King’ about the sty.  He nearly poisoned his red cow by an over-dose of castor-oil; and Peter the Cruel, so called because the groom once said he had a cruel face, took two boxes of opium pills (boxes and all) in his mash, without ill consequences.

See him, too, rushing out after dinner—­for he had a horror of long sittings after that meal—­to look at his ‘scratcher.’

He used to say, Lady Holland (his daughter) relates, ’I am all for cheap luxuries, even for animals; now all animals have a passion for scratching their backbones; they break down your gates and palings to effect this.  Look! there is my universal scratcher, a sharp-edged pole, resting on a high and a low post, adapted to every height, from a horse to a lamb.  Even the Edinburgh Reviewer can take his turn:  you have no idea how popular it is; I have not had a gate broken since I put it up; I have it in all my fields.’