Behold, then, the long and venerable line of the clergy opening to receive him, and behold him entering it!  The clergy, the priesthood, the holy fathers, the strong bishops, the monks, the ghostly race, the retired enthusiasts, now melancholy, now rapt, now merry-making, the consolers of sorrow, the divine heroes in an earthly life,—­even one of this family does Sydney propose to be.  At the age of twenty-four he becomes curate in the little hamlet of Salisbury Plain,—­the young graduate of Oxford sent into the country to be pastor to the inmates of half-a-dozen hovels!  Then he writes his description of a curate:—­“The poor working man of God,—­a learned man in a hovel, good and patient,—­a comforter and a teacher,—­the first and purest pauper of the hamlet; yet showing that in the midst of worldly misery he has the heart of a gentleman, the spirit of a Christian, and the kindness of a pastor.”  He regards himself as almost excluded from his kind, and quotes (or originates) the proverb, that there are three sexes, men, women, and clergymen.  He took long solitary walks over the plains of Salisbury, reflecting upon the manifold activities of the world, in which he had no part.  The only society that he had was during the occasional visits of the squire to the neighborhood, who, surprised to find the curate so interesting a person, gave him frequent invitations to dinner.  Thus passed two years, when the squire consigned his son to the curate to be educated, and Sydney Smith, starting with the young man for the Continent, was driven by stress of war to Edinburgh.

There he met Horner, Jeffrey, Brougham, and others, young thinkers and full of matter,—­Horner the philosopher, Jeffrey the critic, Brougham the statesman, and Sydney Smith the divine,—­and the divine was unsurpassed by any of the others in wit, energy, or decision of character.  While the events with which the times were rife were striking fire in all their brains, it was the divine who first turned their thoughts to account by suggesting that they should start a review.  The suggestion was acted upon, and under his editorial care the first numbers of the “Edinburgh Review” appeared.  His prudence and remonstrances saved it from manifold excesses; for Jeffrey was not a man to be moderate in times like those.  The brilliant critic received not a few such lectures as the following:—­“I certainly, my dear Jeffrey, in conjunction with the Knight of the Shaggy Eyebrows [Homer], do protest against your increasing and unprofitable skepticism.  I exhort you to restrain the violent tendency of your nature for analysis, and to cultivate synthetical propensities.  What is virtue?  What’s the use of truth?  What’s the use of honor?  What’s a guinea but a d—­d yellow circle?  The whole effort of your mind is to destroy.  Because others build slightly and eagerly, you employ yourself in kicking down their houses, and contract a sort of aversion for the more honorable, useful, and difficult task of building well yourself.”