His mind ceased to be occupied with speculations; politics interested him no more.  His own ‘personal relationship to his Creator’ was the subject of his thoughts.  Yet Mackintosh was not by any means considered as an advanced Christian, or even as a Christian at all by the zealots of his time.

Sydney Smith’s notions of a bishop were certainly by no means carried out in his own person and character.  ‘I never remember in my time,’ he said, ’a real bishop:  a grave, elderly man, full of Greek, with sound views of the middle voice and preterpluperfect tense; gentle and kind to his poor clergy, of powerful and commanding eloquence in Parliament, never to be put down when the great interests of mankind were concerned, leaning to the Government when it was right, leaning to the people when they were right; feeling that if the Spirit of God had called him to that high office, he was called for no mean purpose, but rather that seeing clearly, acting boldly, and intending purely, he might confer lasting benefit upon mankind.’

In 1831 Lord Grey appointed Sydney Smith a Canon Resilentiary of St. Paul’s; but still the mitre was withheld, although it has since appeared that Lord Grey had destined him for one of the first vacancies in England.

Henceforth his residence at St. Paul’s brought him still more continually into the world, which he delighted by his ‘wise wit.’  Most London dinners, he declared, evaporated in whispers to one’s next neighbours.  He never, however, spoke to his neighbour, but ‘fired’ across the table.  One day, however, he broke his rule, on hearing a lady, who sat next him, say in a sweet low voice, ’No gravy, sir.’—­’Madam!’ he cried, ’I have all my life been looking for a person who disliked gravy, let us swear immortal friendship.’  She looked astonished, but took the oath, and kept it.  ’What better foundation for friendship,’ he asks, ‘than similarity of tastes?’

He gave an evening party once a week; when a profusion of wax-lights was his passion.  He loved to see young people decked with natural flowers; he was, in fact, a blameless and benevolent Epicurean in everything; great indeed was the change from his former residence at Foston, which he used to say was twelve miles from a lemon.  Charming as his parties at home must have been, they wanted the bon-hommie and simplicity of former days, and Of the homely suppers in Orchard Street.  Lord Dudley, Rogers, Moore, ‘Young Macaulay,’ as he was called for many years, formed now his society.  Lord Dudley was then in the state which afterwards became insanity, and darkened completely a mind sad and peculiar from childhood.  Bankes, in his ‘Journal,’ relates an anecdote of him about this time, when, as he says, ’Dudley’s mind was on the wane; but still his caustic humour would find vent through the cloud which was gradually over-shadowing his masterly intellect.’  He was one day sitting in his room soliloquizing aloud; his favourite Newfoundland-dog was at his side, and