Then his experiments were numerous.  Mutton fat was to be burned instead of candles; and working-people were brought in and fed with broth, or with rice, or with porridge, to see which was the most satisfying diet.  Economy was made amusing, benevolence almost absurd, but the humorous man, the kind man, shone forth in all things.  He was one of the first, if not the first, who introduced allotment-gardens for the poor:  he was one who could truly say at the last, when he had lived sixty-six years, ’I have done but very little harm in the world, and I have brought up my family.’

We have taken a glimpse—­and a glimpse merely—­of the ‘wise Wit’ in London, among congenial society, where every intellectual power was daily called forth in combative force.  See him now in the provincial circles of the remote county of York.  ‘Did you ever,’ he once asked, ’dine out in the country?  What misery do human beings inflict on each other under the name of pleasure!’ Then he describes driving in a broiling sun through a dusty road, to eat a haunch of venison at the house of a neighbouring parson.  Assembled in a small house, ’redolent of frying,’ talked of roads, weather, and turnips; began, that done, to be hungry.  A stripling, caught up for the occasion, calls the master of the house out of the room, and announces that the cook has mistaken the soup for dirty water, and has thrown it away.  No help for it—­agreed; they must do without it; perhaps as well they should.  Dinner announced; they enter the dining-room:  heavens! what a gale! the venison is high!

Various other adverse incidents occur, and the party return home, grateful to the post-boys for not being drunk, and thankful to Providence for not being thrown into a wet ditch.

In addition to these troubles and risks, there was an enemy at hand to apprehend—­prejudice.  The Squire of Heslington—­’the last of the Squires’—­regarded Mr. Smith as a Jacobin; and his lady, ’who looked as if she had walked straight out of the Ark, or had been the wife of Enoch,’ used to turn aside as he passed.  When, however, the squire found ’the peace of the village undisturbed, harvests as usual, his dogs uninjured, he first bowed, then called, and ended by a pitch of confidence;’ actually discovered that Sydney Smith had made a joke; nearly went into convulsions of laughter, and finished by inviting the ‘dangerous fellow,’ as he had once thought him, to see his dogs.

In 1813 Sydney Smith removed, as he thought it his duty to do, to Foston-le-Clay, and, ‘not knowing a turnip from a carrot,’ began to farm three hundred acres, and not having any money, to build a parsonage-house.

It was a model parsonage, he thought, the plan being formed by himself and ‘Kate.’  Being advised by his neighbours to purchase oxen, he bought (and christened) four oxen, ‘Tug and Lug,’ ‘Crawl and Haul.’  But Tug and Lug took to fainting, Haul and Crawl to lie down in the mud, so he was compelled to sell them, and to purchase a team of horses.