His literary and social avocations were so intimately blended that they seem to have been almost the same.  He was as thoughtful in his evening parties as he was in the act of composition, and as gentle and kindly in writing as he was to his friends.  He gathered about him not many of the most famous, but many of the most original and peculiar men of his time.  His Wednesday-evening parties were assemblies of thinkers.  They were composed in large part of men who were not balanced by a profession, who were devoted only to wit, fancy, or speculation, who cultivated each a peculiar field and cherished each peculiar tastes and opinions, who were interested in different quarters of the heavens, and yet who came together, prompted by the spirit of sociality and kindliness, to lay perhaps the backs of their heads together, and to talk always sincerely and wisely, but in the form of sense or nonsense, as the case might be.  Lamb and his sister were always ready to appreciate every variety of goodness, and doubtless their guests received an order something like that which was addressed to the dwellers in Thomson’s enchanting castle:—­

  “Ye sons of Indolence! do what you will,
  And wander where you list, through hall or glade;
  Be no man’s pleasure for another stayed: 
  Let each as likes him best his hours employ,
  And cursed be he who minds his neighbor’s trade!”

To these parties sometimes came Coleridge, who in conversation seems to have been a happy mixture of a German philosopher and an Italian improvvisatore.  Here Hazlitt learned to utter the philosophic criticisms which he most passionately believed in; and Lloyd, whose intellect was one of peculiar refinement, discoursed modestly of metaphysical problems, analyzing to an extent that Talfourd says was positively painful.  Here the social reformer Leigh Hunt came, and for the moment forgot that social reforms were needed.  Here the Opium-Eater came, and his cloudy abstract loves and hates and visions were exploded by the sparks of Elia’s wit.  Here the philosopher Godwin developed philosophy out of whist.  Here the pensive face of the Quaker poet, Bernard Barton, shed a mild light upon the scene; and here the lawyer Thomas Noon Talfourd came to admire the finest characters that he knew of.

Having thus noticed the painful experience and unfaltering devotion to noble aims which marked the career of Charles Lamb, we leave him with his friends, and pass to notice the same elements in the life of his brother wit.

Sydney Smith preferred the legal profession, and esteemed himself a victim in entering the Church.  His practical wisdom informed him, that, from the beginning even until then, qualities like his had not found a happy sphere of action in the pulpit, but, on the contrary, had rusted or grown ugly in it.  He had as much sentiment as Sterne, and perhaps as much political sagacity as Swift, yet the finest instincts within