me unhappy; but, 1st. There is much unhappiness in human life: how can school be exempt? 2dly. Boys are apt to take a particular moment of depression for a general feeling, and they are in fact rarely unhappy; at the moment I write, perhaps he is playing about in the highest spirits. 3dly. When he comes to state his grievance, it will probably have vanished, or be so trifling, that it will yield to argument or expostulation. 4thly. At all events, if it is a real evil which makes him unhappy, I must find out what it is, and proceed to act upon it; but I must wait till I can, either in person or by letter, find out what it is.

Not only is religion calm and tranquil, but it has an extensive atmosphere round it, whose calmness and tranquillity must be preserved, if you would avoid misrepresentation.

Not only study that those with whom you live should habitually respect you, but cultivate such manners as will secure the respect of persons with whom you occasionally converse. Keep up the habit of being respected, and do not attempt to be more amusing and agreeable than is consistent with the preservation of respect.

I am come to the age of seventy; have attained enough reputation to make me somebody: I should not like a vast reputation, it would plague me to death. I hope to care less for the outward world.

Hope.

Don't be too severe upon yourself and your own failings; keep on, don't faint, be energetic to the last.

If you wish to keep mind clear and body healthy, abstain from all fermented liquors.

Fight against sloth, and do all you can to make friends.

If old age is even a state of suffering, it is a state of superior wisdom, in which man avoids all the rash and foolish things he does in his youth, and which make life dangerous and painful.

Death must be distinguished from dying, with which it is often confounded.

Reverence and stand in awe of yourself.

How Nature delights and amuses us by varying even the character of insects; the ill-nature of the wasp, the sluggishness of the drone, the volatility of the butterfly, the slyness of the bug.

Take short views, hope for the best, and trust in God.

PROGRESS OF SOCIETY.

295

MODERN CHANGES."

"The good of ancient times let others state,

I think it lucky I was born so late.”

MR. EDITOR: It is of some importance at what period a man is born. A young man, alive at this period, hardly knows to what improvements of human life he has been introduced: and I would bring before his notice the following eighteen changes which have. taken place in England, since I first began to breathe in it the breath of life-a period amounting now to nearly seventy-three years.

Gas was unknown: I groped about the streets of London in all but the utter darkness of a twinkling oil lamp, under the protection of watchmen, in their grand climacteric, and exposed to every species of depredation and insult.

I have been nine hours in sailing from Dover to Calais, before the invention of steam. It took me nine hours to go from Taunton to Bath, before the invention of railroads, and I now go, in six hours, from Taunton to London! In going from Taunton to Bath, I suffered between ten thousand and twelve thousand severe contusions, before stone-breaking Macadam was born.

I paid fifteen pounds, in a single year, for repairs of carriagesprings on the pavement of London; and I now glide, without noise or fracture, on wooden pavements.

I can walk, by the assistance of the police, from one end of London to the other, without molestation; or, if tired, get into a cheap and active cab, instead of those cottages on wheels, which the hackney-coaches were at the beginning of my life.

I had no umbrella! They were little used, and very dear. There were no waterproof hats, and my hat has often been reduced by rains into its primitive pulp.

I could not keep my smallclothes in their proper place, for braces were unknown. If I had the gout, there was no colchicum. If I was bilious, there was no calomel. If I was attacked by ague, there was no quinine. There were filthy coffeehouses instead of elegant clubs. Game could not be bought. Quarrels about un

*This is published in Longman's octavo edition of Sydney Smith's works. It was written for a London newspaper the year before the author's death.

commuted tithes were endless. The corruption of Parliament, before Reform, infamous.

There were no banks to receive the savings of the poor. The Poor-Laws were gradually sapping the vitals of the country; and whatever miseries I suffered, I had no post to whisk my complaints, for a single penny, to the remotest corners of the empire; and yet, in spite of all these privations, I lived on quietly, and am now ashamed that I was not more discontented, and utterly surprised that all these changes and inventions did not occur two centuries ago.

I forgot to add, that as the basket of stage-coaches, in which luggage was then carried, had no springs, your clothes were rubbed all to pieces; and that, even in the best society, one third of the gentlemen, at least, were always drunk.

PETRR PLYMLEY.

297

PASSAGES FROM PETER PLYMLEY."

INTRODUCTION.

DEAR ABRAHAM: A worthier and better man than yourself does not exist; but I have always told you, from the time of our boyhood, that you were a bit of a goose. Your parochial affairs are governed with exemplary order and regularity; you are as powerful in the vestry as Mr. Perceval is in the House of Commons—and, I must say, with much more reason; nor do I know any church where the faces and smock-frocks of the congregation are so clean, or their eyes so uniformly directed to the preacher. There is another point upon which I will do you ample justice; and that is, that the eyes so directed toward you are wide open; for the rustic has, in general, good principles, though he cannot control his animal habits; and however loud he may snore, his face is perpetually turned toward the fountain of orthodoxy.

Having done you this act of justice, I shall proceed, according to our ancient intimacy and familiarity, to explain to you my opinions about the Catholics, and to reply to yours.

In the first place, my sweet Abraham, the Pope is not landed, nor are there any curates sent out after him-nor has he been hid at St. Alban's by the Dowager Lady Spencer-nor dined privately at Holland House-nor been seen near Dropmore.† If these fears exist (which I do not believe), they exist only in the mind of the Chancellor of the Exchequer; they emanate from his zeal for the Protestant interest; and though they reflect the high

* "Letters on the Subject of the Catholics, to My Brother Abraham, who lives in the Country." By Peter Plymley.

† The seat of Lord Grenville, who advocated concessions to the Catholics.

298

BURNING AND HANGING.

est honour upon the delicate irritability of his faith, must certainly be considered as more ambiguous proofs of the sanity and vigour of his understanding. By this time, however, the best-informed clergy in the neighbourhood of the metropolis are convinced that the rumour is without foundation; and, though the Pope is probably hovering about our coast in a fishing smack, it is most likely he will fall a prey to the vigilance of our cruisers; and it is certain he has not yet polluted the Protestantism of our soil.

Exactly in the same manner, the story of the wooden gods seized at Charing Cross, by an order from the Foreign Office, turns out to be without the shadow of a foundation; instead of the angels and archangels, mentioned by the informer, nothing was discovered but a wooden image of Lord Mulgrave, going down to Chatham, as a head-peace for the Spanker gun-vessel; it was an exact resemblance of his lordship in his military uniform; and therefore as little like a god as can well be imagined.

CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT PERSECUTIONS.

I FOUND in your letter the usual remarks about fire, fagot, and bloody Mary. Are you aware, my dear priest, that there were as many persons put to death for religious opinions under the mild Elizabeth, as under the bloody Mary? The reign of the former was, to be sure, ten times as long; but I only mention the fact, merely to show you that something depends upon the age in which men live, as well as on their religious opinions. Three hundred years ago, men burned and hanged each other for these opinions. Time has softened Catholic as well as Protestant; they both required it, though each perceives only his own improvement, and is blind to that of the other. We are all the creatures of circumstances. I know not a kinder and better man than yourself; but you (if you had lived in those times) would certainly have roasted your Catholic; and I promise you, if the first exciter of this religious mob had been as powerful then as he is now, you would soon have been elevated to the mitre. I do not go the length of saying that the world has suffered as much from Protestant as from Catholic persecution; far from it; but you should remember the Catholics had all the power, when the idea first started up in the world, that there could be two modes of faith; and that it was much more