SYDNEY SMITH, JOHN STYLES, AND GRANTLEY BERKELEY. THIRTY years ago, Sydney Smith thought proper, in the Edinburgh Review, to attack Methodism and Missions, and he was replied to by Mr. John Styles. This reply drew forth a retort from the reverend reviewer, which he has republished in his collected works, vol. i. pp. .185-201. It is as witty as Smith's articles usually were in those days; and succeeded in demolishing, for a while, the "sacred and silly gentleman," who exposed himself to the caustic pen of the droll divine. A specimen of the manner in which Styles was dealt with may divert our readers: "We are a good deal amused, indeed, with the extreme disrelish which Mr. John Styles exhibits to the humour and pleasantry with which he admits the Methodists to have been attacked; but Mr. John Styles should remember, that it is not the practice with destroyers of vermin to allow the little victims a veto upon the weapons used against them. If this were otherwise, we should have one set of vermin banishing small-tooth combs; another protesting against mouse-traps; a third prohibiting the finger and thumb; a fourth exclaiming against the intolerable infamy of using soap and water. It is impossible, however, to listen to such pleas. They must all be caught, killed, and cracked, in the manner, and by the instruments which are found most efficacious to their destruction; and the more they cry out, the greater plainly is the skill used against them. We are convinced a little laughter will do them more harm than all the arguments in the world. Such men as the author before us cannot understand when they are outargued; but he has given us a specimen, from his irritability, that he fully comprehends when he has become the object of universal contempt and derision. We agree with him, that ridicule is not exactly the weapon to be used in matters of religion; but the use of it is excusable when there is no other which can make fools tremble. Besides, he should remember the particular sort of ridicule we have used, which is nothing more than accurate quotation from the Methodists themselves. It is true, that this is the most severe and cutting ridicule to which we could have had recourse; but whose fault is that? 64 Nothing can be more disingenuous than the attacks Mr. Styles has made upon us for our use of Scripture language. Light and grace are certainly terms of Scripture. It is not to the words themselves that any ridicule can ever attach. It is from the preposterous application of those words, in the mouths of the most arrogant and ignorant of human beings; it is from their use in the most trivial, low, and familiar scenes of life; it is from the illiterate and ungrammatical prelacy of Mr. John Styles, that any tinge of ridicule ever is or ever can be imparted to the sacred language of Scripture. "We admit also, with this gentleman, that it would certainly evince the most vulgar and contracted heart to ridicule any religious opinions, methodistical or otherwise, because they were the opinions of the poor, and were conveyed in the language of the poor. But are we to respect the poor, when they wish to step out of their province, and become the teachers of the land ?—when men, whose proper talk is of bullocks, pretend to have wisdom and understanding,' is it not lawful to tell them they have none? An ironmonger is a very respectable man, so long as he is merely an ironmonger,an admirable man if he is a religious ironmonger; but a great blockhead, if he sets up for a bishop or a dean, and lectures upon theology. It is not the poor we have attacked, but the writing poor, the publishing poor,-the limited arrogance which mistakes its own trumpery sect for the world nor have we attacked them for want of talent, but for want of modesty, want of sense, and want of true rational religion, for every fault which Mr. John Styles defends and exemplifies." Again : But "It is not true, as this bad writer is perpetually saying, that the world hates piety. That modest and unobtrusive piety, which fills the heart with all human charities, and makes a man gentle to others, and severe to himself, is an object of universal love and veneration. mankind hate the lust of power, when it is veiled under the garb of piety;-they hate canting and hypocrisy ;-they hate advertisers and quacks in piety;—they do not choose to be insulted;-they love to tear folly and imprudence from that altar, which should only be a sanctuary for the wretched and the good. The Works of the Rev. Sydney Smith, in 3 vols. London: Longman, and Co., 1839. 8vo. pp. 1256. Perhaps we may give these volumes hereafter a separate notice. Having concluded his defence of Methodism, this fanatical writer opens upon us his Missionary battery, firing away with the most incessant fury, and calling names, all the time, as loud as lungs accustomed to the eloquence of the tub usually vociferate. In speaking of the cruelties which their religion entails upon the Hindoos, Mr. Styles is pecu liarly severe upon us for not being more shocked at their piercing their limbs with kimes. This is rather an unfair mode of alarming his readers with the idea of some unknown instrument. He represents himself as having paid considerable attention to the manners and customs of the Hindoos; and, therefore, the peculiar stress he lays upon this instrument is naturally calculated to produce, in the minds of the humane, a great degree of mysterious terror. A drawing of the kime was imperiously called for; and the want of it is a subtle evasion, for which Mr. Styles is fairly accountable. As he has been silent on this subject, it is for us to explain the plan and nature of this terrible and unknown piece of mechanism. A kime, then, is neither more nor less than a false print in the Edinburgh Review for a knife; and from this blunder of the printer has Mr. Styles manufac tured this Dædalean instrument of torture, called a kime! We were at first nearly persuaded by his arguments against kimes; -we grew frightened; we stated to ourselves the horror of not sending missionaries to a nation which used kimes; we were struck with the nice and accurate information of the Tabernacle upon this important subject:but we looked in the errata, and found Mr. Styles to be always Mr. Styles,-always cut off from every hope of mercy, and remaining for ever himself." After amusing himself some time longer with this comical mistake, Smith concludes his article by stating, that Mr. Styles had destroyed himself with a kime. In this, however, the wit was mistaken. Mr. Styles is still, in 1839, writing as vigorously and as busily as in 1809- and he does not remain for ever Mr. Styles. He is now Dr. Styles; the D. D.ism being granted by the grace of an American manufactory of degrees. Being, as every body knows, no admirers of free trade, and anxious that our native workmen should have a preference over foreigners, we are happy to say, that the Americans are nearly put out of this branch of business-degrees being now made up as good and cheap for the supply of the home market, by the celebrated factory in Gower Street, yclept the London University; as well as by the British College of Health in the New Road, where Dr. Morison, the illustrious hygeist, dispenses diplomas at easy rates, for doctoring all the people in the world, and helping a good many out of it, by the Union, which, however, is no Living, of turpentine-cum-gamboge. It is not He merely in the literal appendage to his name that Mr. Styles has altered. With his transatlantic degree, he mounted a cisatlantic hat, and looked as grand as any bishop on the bench. Nor did he become episcopal merely in appearance. Though once a keen, though rather occult, advocate of the voluntary system, he conformed so much to the church as to use her liturgy. Sailing in a dissenting bottom, he hoisted episcopal colours. hushed the symphonies of independent voices, by the introduction of what the sterner dissenters of former days called, "the kist fu' o' whustles, that mak sic a cleero;" sported a splendid gown and cassock; and, to complete the whole, upraised a belfry, hanging therein a church-bell with as bishoplike an intonation as ever fell from cathedral or university. All this was done to decoy unwary churchmen from the parish church to Holland Chapel; and it is even said that the doctor, on being asked why be, a stanch and sturdy Independent, adopted all the forms of the church (save ordination), replied quietly, "to gammon the flats," a classical expression, which he perhaps picked up in the course of his travels through Smithfield, knackers'-yard, butcher's shambles, cock-pit, &c., which he was compelled to visit, in order to qualify himself for writing his Essay on the Animal Creation.* Sorry are we to have it to relate, that the speculation was a failure. The flat fishery was not successful. Pockets were closed as eyes were opened; pewrents became greater strangers than even the visits of pew-holders; collec *The Animal Creation, its claims on our humanity stated and enforced, by the W X X X I URQ Bey Ciociety for the tions degenerated into coppers, and sixpences, with silver sound, were, like angel-visits, few and far between. The bell tolled a funeral dirge, the organ played not a voluntary but an involuntary requiem, and Holland Chapel passed over to the Church of England in good faith, leaving the doctor to pass away any where else he listed. What private anecdotes were connected with his departure from the ominous vicinity of Brixton, we have not time to inquire; but with bis abandonment of the Holland Chapel, it would appear, that he divested himself for a while of the strictly clerical character, and took occasion to represent himself, in a journal of great authority, published on Tuesdays and Fridays, as a" Lodging-house-keeper." On investigation, it appeared, that he resembled the apostles, in having neither silver nor gold; and yet to his oppressors, who were many in number, and large in demand, he gave as much as the whole world was made of-nothing. Struck with his meritorious career, and abhorring the cruelty of his enemies, some non-con. preachers, looking upon him as a martyr, have clubbed to build him another chapel, where, no doubt, he will flourish as before. In the meantime, not having any opportunity of preaching, he has turned his hand to book-making, and published, besides the essay we are about to notice, The Mammon of Unrighteousness, a Discourse suggested by the Funeral of N. M. Rothschild, Esq.,-which we have never seen, and therefore cannot say whether or not he designates the buried banker, the pillar of the Exchange, as that "least erected spirit that fell;"-The Book of the Denominations, which has nothing to do with Boyle's Court Guide, or the PostOffice Directory, being an account of "the churches and sects of Christendom in the nineteenth century;" Pulpit Studies, or Aids to Preaching and Meditation;-and The Stage, its Character and Influence, which has reached its fourth edition. This last work was, we believe, published five-and-twenty years ago, at which time Styles was a regular playgoer-on compulsion. When called to account for this carnal indulgence, he very properly answered, that he went to theatres to make himself thoroughly acquainted with the evils of the theatrical system. In like manner, we take it for granted, when he assumed the pen to expose the enormities of bull-baiting, badger-drawing, cat-hunting, cock-fighting, dog-worrying, and so forth, he must have shewn his reverend and rubicund visage brimful of spirit and indignation, over ring, hole, and pit. We do not know how else he could have obtained the copious and minute mass of information which he has accumulated, and which has obtained a prize for his essay," published under the auspices of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and with the special sanction of her majesty's name," laid as a dainty dish before the queen. It grieves us to be compelled to state that there are people in the world uncharitable enough not to scruple to say, that prize-essays given by societies of the cruelty-to-animals kind are what the profane call "humbug." These people maintain that no secrecy is kept on such occasions; that those who write the essays (if there be more than one, which is not usual) are perfectly well known; that the prize is assigned, beforehand, to the great literary gun of the society, who generally has suggested it; that any body who enters the list against him is as shallow a flat as ever was gammoned; and that the essay predestined for the prize is either written smack out, and in existence beforehand, or else concocted from old material lying by, vamped up sermons, articles rejected by the magazines, or the refuse scissors-and-paste work of the commonplace-book. We fear that an examination of Dr. Styles's prize essay will tend much to confirm these sceptical personages in their unhappy belief, for he has made it up exactly after the recipe we have just given. Thirty-four essays, however, it seems, were presented on this occasion; the three-and-thirty rejected of which must have been curious specimens. "The adjudicators were the Right Hon. the Earl of Carnarvon, the Hon. and Rev. Baptist W. Noel, and Mr. Sergeant Talfourd, M.P. ;" and, under the sanction of these names, Styles makes his appearance before "the candour of the public." Let it not, however, be imagined that these unfortunate gentlemen were doomed to read the thirty-four essays. That would be such a cruelty to animals as the records of their own Society never presented. Lord Car |