After breakfast the next morning I walked to church with Sydney Smith.  The edifice is not at all in keeping with the rectory.  It is a miserable little hovel with a wooden belfry.  It was, however, well filled, and with decent people, who seemed to take very much to their pastor.  I understand that he is a very respectable apothecary; and most liberal of his skill, his medicine, his soul, and his wine, among the sick.  He preached a very queer sermon—­the former half too familiar and the latter half too florid, but not without some ingenuity of thought and expression.

Sydney Smith brought me to York on Monday morning, in time for the stage-coach which runs to Skipton.  We parted with many assurances of goodwill.  I have really taken a great liking to him.  He is full of wit, humour, and shrewdness.  He is not one of those show-talkers who reserve all their good things for special occasions.  It seems to be his greatest luxury to keep his wife and daughters laughing for two or three hours every day.  His notions of law, government, and trade are surprisingly clear and just.  His misfortune is to have chosen a profession at once above him and below him.  Zeal would have made him a prodigy; formality and bigotry would have made him a bishop; but he could neither rise to the duties of his order, nor stoop to its degradations.

He praised my articles in the Edinburgh Review with a warmth which I am willing to believe sincere, because he qualified his compliments with several very sensible cautions.  My great danger, he said, was that of taking a tone of too much asperity and contempt in controversy.  I believe that he is right, and I shall try to mend.

Ever affectionately yours

T. B. M.

Lancaster:  September 1, 1827.

My dear Father,—­Thank Hannah from me for her pleasant letter.  I would answer it if I had anything equally amusing to say in return; but here we have no news, except what comes from London, and is as stale as inland fish before it reaches us.  We have circuit anecdotes to be sure; and perhaps you will be pleased to hear that Brougham has been rising through the whole of this struggle.  At York Pollock decidedly took the lead.  At Durham Brougham overtook him, passed him at Newcastle, and got immensely ahead of him at Carlisle and Appleby, which, to be sure, are the places where his own connections lie.  We have not been here quite long enough to determine how he will succeed with the Lancastrians.  This has always hitherto been his least favourable place.  He appears to improve in industry and prudence.  He learns his story more thoroughly, and tells it more clearly, than formerly.  If he continues to manage causes as well as he has done of late he must rise to the summit of the profession.  I cannot say quite so much for his temper, which this close and constant rivalry does not improve.  He squabbles with Pollock more than, in generosity or policy, he ought to do.  I have heard several of our younger