l will come in due season."

To Jeffrey he wrote on the 3rd of September:--

"Instead of being unamused by trifles, I am, as I well knew I should
be, amused by them a great deal too much. I feel an ungovernable
interest about my horses, my pigs, and my plants. I am forced, and
always was forced, to task myself up into an interest for any higher
objects."

Six days later he wrote to Lady Holland:--

"I hear you laugh at me for being happy in the country, and upon this
I have a few words to say. In the first place, whether one lives or
dies I hold, and have always held, to be of infinitely less moment
than is generally supposed. But, if life is to be, then it is common
sense to amuse yourself with the best you can find where you happen to
be placed. I am not leading precisely the life I should choose, but
that which (all things considered, as well as I could consider them)
appeared to me to be the most eligible. I am resolved, therefore, to
like it, and to reconcile myself to it; which is more manly than to
feign myself above it, and to send up complaints by the post, of being
thrown away, and being desolate, and such-like trash. I am prepared,
therefore, either way. If the chances of life ever enable me to
emerge, I will show you that I have not been wholly occupied by small
and sordid pursuits. If (as the greater probability) I am come to the
end of my career, I give myself quietly up to horticulture, etc. In
short, if it be my lot to crawl, I will crawl contentedly; if to fly,
I will fly with alacrity; but, as long as I can possibly avoid it, I
will never be unhappy. If, with a pleasant wife, three children, and
many friends who wish me well, I cannot be happy, I am a very silly,
foolish fellow, and what becomes of me is of very little consequence."

If ample occupation be, as some strenuous moralists assert, the true secret
of happiness, Sydney Smith had plenty to make him happy during the early
years of his life in Yorkshire. Here is his own account of his
translation:--

"A diner-out, a wit, and a popular preacher, I was suddenly caught up
by the Archbishop of York, and transported to my living in Yorkshire,
where there had not been a resident clergyman for a hundred and fifty
years. Fresh from London, and not knowing a turnip from a carrot, I
was compelled to farm three hundred acres, and wit