and success. I contributed from England many articles, which I have been foolish enough to collect and publish with some other tracts written by me. To appreciate the value of the "Edinburgh Review," the state of England at the period when that journal began should be had in remembrance. The Catholics were not emancipated—the Corporation and Test Acts were unrepealed-the Game Laws were horribly oppressive-Steel Traps and Spring Guns were set all over the country-Prisoners tried for their Lives could have no Counsel-Lord Eldon and the Court of Chancery pressed heavily upon mankind-Libel was punished by the most cruel and vindictive imprisonments-the principles of Political Economy were little understood-the Law of Debt and of Conspiracy were upon the worst possible footing-the enormous wickedness of the Slave Trade was tolerated-a thousand evils were in existence, which the talents of good and able men have since lessened or removed; and these effects have been not a little assisted by the honest boldness of the "Edinburgh Review." I see very little in my reviews to alter or repent of: I always endeavored to fight against evil; and what I thought evil then, I think evil now. I am heartily glad that all our disqualifying laws for religious opinions are abolished, and I see nothing in such measures but unmixed good and real increase of strength to our Establishment. The idea of danger from the extension of the Catholic religion in England I utterly deride. The Catholic faith is a misfortune to the world, but those whose faith it conscientiously is are quite right in professing it boldly, and in promoting it by all means which the law allows. A physician does not say "You will be well as soon as the bile is got rid of;" but he says, "You will not be well until after the bile is got rid of." He knows, after the cause of the malady is removed, that morbid habits are to be changed, weakness to be supported, organs to be called back to their proper exercise, subordinate maladies to be watched, secondary and vicarious symptoms to be studied. The physician is a wise manbut the anserous politician insists, after two hundred years of persecution, and ten of emancipation, that Catholic Ireland should be as quiet as Edmonton, or Tooting. Again he says "To set on foot such a journal in such times, to contribute towards it for many years, to bear patiently the reproach and poverty which it caused, and to look back and see that I have nothing to retract, and no intemperance and violence to reproach myself with, is a career of life which I must think to be extremely fortunate." After his removal to London, Mr. Smith continued for many years one of the most active contributors to the "Edinburgh Review," writing on Prison Discipline, on the abuses and corrupting influence of the Game Laws, on Transportation to Botany Bay, on Toleration, on Methodism, on Education, on Irish Bulls, on Quakerism, on Counsel for Prisoners, on Chimney-Sweepers, and a variety of other topics. In this great city he became an extremely popular preacher, and he had, among his crowded auditory, the wealthy, the titled, and the learned. It was thought that his wit, acumen, and learning might be displayed to better advantage elsewhere than in the pulpit. He, therefore, became a lecturer on the Belles Lettres at the Royal Institution, and his lectures were, of course, attended by "overflowing audiences." About this time he wrote the celebrated “Letters of Peter Plymley," by which, it is said, he did more than any other man of the day for the relief of the Roman Catholics. They are among the most amusing and interesting publications of this century. "They are written in the best spirit of controversy; they abound in the happiest illustrations; and though light, lively, and sparkling, these qualities abate nothing of their logical force and downright common sense." It would be difficult, however, to make an extract from them: they must be read consecutively and as a whole. "The conversational witticisms of Sydney Smith would fill a jest-book; but his character will be estimated by posterity on far higher grounds. When his 'quips and cranks' are lost and forgotten, it will be remembered that he supported the Roman Catholic claims, and that they were conceded; that he strenuously assailed the game laws, and that they underwent great modification; that he compelled a large portion of the public to acknowledge the mischief of our penal settlements; that he became the advocate of the wretched chimney-sweepers, and their miseries were alleviated; that he contended against many of the unjust provisions of the Church Reform Bill, and they were amended; that, whereas, before his time, a man accused at the bar of a criminal court might be hanged before he had been half heard, now every prisoner has the benefit of a defence by counsel. It will further be freely acknowledged that no public writer was more successful than he in denouncing a political humbug, or demolishing a literary pretender; that he was, on the whole, an upright and benevolent man, and, as the world goes, a disinterested politician; that he had opportunities of improving his fortune which he nobly rejected; and that, having lived with unostentatious respectability, he died without accumulating wealth. His generous presentation of the rectory of Edmonton to the Rev. Mr. Tate, when it fell to his gift by the death of that gentleman's father, will be fresh in the reader's recollection." About three years before his death, Mr. Smith gave the following description of himself in a letter to a correspondent of the "New York American." "I am seventy-four years old; and, being a canon of St. Paul's, in London, and rector of a parish in the country, my time is equally divided between town and country. I am living amidst the best society in the metropolis; am at ease in my circumstances; in tolerable health; a mild Whig; a tole rating churchman; and much given to talking, laughing, and noise. I dine with the rich in London, and physic the poor in the country; passing from the sauces of Dives to the sores of Lazarus. I am, upon the whole, a happy man; have found the world an entertaining world; and am heartily thankful to Providence for the part allotted me in it." Mr. Smith died at his residence in Green Street, Hyde Park, London, on the 21st of February, 1845. CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERN SERMONS. The great object of modern sermons is to hazard nothing: their characteristic is decent debility; which alike guards their authors from ludicrous errors, and precludes them from striking beauties. Every man of sense, in taking up an English sermon, expects to find it a tedious essay, full of commonplace morality; and if the fulfilment of such expectations be meritorious, the clergy have certainly the merit of not disappointing their readers. In pointing out the total want of connection between the privilege of preaching, and the power of preaching well, we are giving no opinion as to whether it might or might not be remedied; but merely stating a fact. Pulpit discourses have insensibly dwindled from speaking to reading; a practice, of itself, sufficient to stifle every germ of eloquence. It is only by the fresh feelings of the heart that mankind can be very powerfully affected. What can be more ludicrous than an orator delivering stale indignation and fervor of a week old; turning over whole pages of violent passions, written out in German text; reading the tropes and apostrophes into which he is hurried by the ardor of his mind; and so affected at a preconcerted line and page, that he is unable to proceed any farther! FEMALE EDUCATION. A great deal has been said of the original difference of capacity between men and women; as if women were more quick, and men more judicious-as if women were more remarkable for delicacy of association, and men for stronger powers of attention. All this, we confess, appears to us very fanciful. That there is a difference in the understandings of the men and the women we every day meet with, everybody, we suppose, must perceive; but there is none surely which may not be accounted for by the difference of circumstances in which they have been placed, without referring to any conjectural difference of original conformation of mind. As long as boys and girls run about in the dirt, and trundle hoops together, they are both precisely alike. If you catch up one-half of these creatures, and train them to a particular set of actions and opinions, and the other half to a perfectly opposite set, of course their understandings will differ as one or the other sort of occupations has called this or that talent into action. There is surely no occasion to go into any deeper or more abstruse reasoning, in order to explain so very simple a phenomenon. Taking it, then, for granted, that nature has been as bountiful of understanding to one sex as the other, it is incumbent on us to consider what are the principal objections commonly made against the communication of a greater share of knowledge to women than commonly falls to their lot at present: for, though it may be doubted whether women should learn all that men learn, the immense disparity which now exists between their knowledge we should hardly think could admit of any rational defence. It is not easy to imagine that there can be any just cause why a woman of forty should be more ignorant than a boy of twelve years of age. If there be any good at all in female ignorance, this (to use a very colloquial phrase) is surely too much of a good thing. It is said that the effect of knowledge is to make women pedantic and affected; and that nothing can be more offensive than to see a woman stepping out of the natural modesty of her sex to make an ostentatious display of her literary attainments. This may be true enough; but the answer is so trite and obvious that we are almost ashamed to make it. All affectation and display proceed from the supposition of possessing something better than the rest of the world possesses. Nobody is vain of possessing two legs and two arms; because that is the precise quantity of either sort of limb which everybody possesses. Va Diffuse knowledge generally among women, and you will at once cure the conceit which knowledge occasions while it is rare. nity and conceit we shall of course witness in men and women as long as the world endures: but by multiplying the attainments upon which these feelings are founded, you increase the difficulty of indulging them, and render them much more tolerable, by making them the proofs of a much higher merit. When learning ceases to be uncommon among women, learned women will cease to be affected. * * * A great many of the lesser and more obscure duties of life necessarily devolve upon the female sex. The arrangement of all household matters, and the care of children in their early infancy, must of course depend upon them. Now, there is a very general notion that the moment you put the education of women upon a better footing than it is at present, at that moment there will be an end of all domestic economy; and that, if you once suffer women to eat of the tree of knowledge, the rest of the family will very soon be reduced to the same kind of aerial and unsatisfactory diet. These, and all such opinions, are referable to one great and common cause of error; that man does everything, and that nature does nothing; and that everything we see is referable to positive institution rather than to original feeling. Can anything, for example, be more perfectly absurd than to suppose that the care and perpetual solicitude which a mother feels for her children, depends upon her ignorance of Greek and mathematics; and that she would desert an infant for a quadratic equation? We seem to imagine that we can break in pieces the solemn institution of nature by the little laws of a boarding-school; and that the existence of the human race depends upon teaching women a little more or a little less; that Cimmerian ignorance can aid paternal affection, or the circle of arts and sciences produce its destruction. In the same manner, we forget the principles upon which the love of order, arrangement, and all the arts of economy depend. They depend not upon ignorance nor idleness; but upon the poverty, confusion, and ruin which would ensue for neglecting them. * * A great part of the objections made to the education of women are rather objections made to human nature than to the female sex; for it is surely true that knowledge, where it produces any bad effects at all, does as much mischief to one sex as to the otherand gives birth to fully as much arrogance, inattention to common affairs, and eccentricity among men, as it does among women. But it by no means follows that you get rid of vanity and self-conceit because you get rid of learning. Self-complacency can never want an excuse; and the best way to make it more tolerable, and more useful, is to give to it as high and as dignified an object as possible. But at all events it is unfair to bring forward against a part of the world an objection which is equally powerful against the whole. When foolish women think they have any distinction, they are apt to be proud of it; so are foolish men. But we appeal to any one who has lived with cultivated persons of either sex, whether he has not witnessed as much pedantry, as much wrongheadedness, as much arrogance, and certainly a great deal more rudeness, produced by learning in men, than in women; therefore, we should make the accusation general-or dismiss it altogether. We must in candor allow that those women who begin will have something more to overcome than may probably hereafter be the case. We cannot deny the jealousy which exists among pompous |