ADVERTISEMENT.

THE chief writings of the Rev. SYDNEY SMITH are included in the original English editions in eight octavo volumes. These are his "Two Volumes of Sermons," 1809; the collection of his "Works" (embracing articles from the Edinburgh Review, the Plymley Letters, and other papers), 4 vols, 1839-40; a posthumous volume," Sermons preached at St.Paul's," &c., 1846; " Elementary Sketches of Moral Philosophy, delivered at the Royal Institution," published In 1850. To these are to be added "Letters on American Debts," 1843; "A Fragment on the Irish Roman Catholic Church," 1845; "Letters on Railway Management," and Pother topics, to the Morning Chronicle; Articles in the Edinburgh Review not collected in his " Works ;" numerous Sketches and Essays printed in the "Memoirs," by his daughter, Lady Holland; and the extensive series of These have mainly

"Letters," edited by Mrs. Austin.

furnished the material of the present volume. In the

preparation of the Table-Talk, Memoir, and Notes, many collateral sources have been drawn upon.

Several of Sydney Smith's Writings, will here be found given entire; while the selection generally presents the most characteristic passages of his "Wit and Wisdom" from the whole. Numerous Miscellanies of much interest, are included which are not to be met with in any previous American collection of the author's works.

NEW YORK, May 20, 1856.

BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR.

SYDNEY SMITH* was born at Woodford, Essex, in the vicinity of London, June 3, 1771, of a respectable family in the middle class of English society. His parents, as will commonly be found with the immediate ancestors of those who have risen to eminence in the world, were persons of marked character. Robert Smith, the father, was a man of curious talents and impulses, with a passion for foreign travel, and a mania, not a little destructive to his finances, for building and altering country-houses in various parts of England. He married a lady of beauty and accomplishments, Miss Olier, of Huguenot birth, her father having been one of the refugees driven to England in the great expatriation consequent on the bigoted tyranny of Louis XIV. This infusion of French blood was afterward called to mind to account for certain peculiarities of disposition, the humours and the mercurial vivacity, associated with strength of purpose, of their son, the subject of the present memoir.

The union of the honourable name of Sydney with the generic patronymic Smith, which has been illustrated by several distinguished personages, would appear to have been adopted in this extensive family from the marriage, in the seventeenth century, of Sir Thomas Smythe, created Viscount Strangford, with a niece of Sir Philip Sydney. It was one of the jests and humours of the Rev. Sydney Smith's life, to confound himself and be confounded with his contemporary, the British admiral, Sir Sidney Smith. George Sydney Smythe, the member of the short-lived Young England party who published a volumes of poems, "Historic Fancies," is another instance of the association of these names.