en_ various places were thus the source
of expense to him, and of injury to the pecuniary interests of his
family.

This strange spendthrift married a Miss Olier, a daughter of a French
emigrant, from Languedoc. Every one may remember the charming attributes
given by Miss Kavanagh, in her delicious tale, 'Nathalie,' to the French
women of the South. This Miss Olier seems to have realized all one's
ideas of the handsome, sweet-tempered, high-minded Southrons of _la
belle France_. To her Sydney Smith traced his native gaiety; her beauty
did not, certainly, pass to him as well as to some of her other
descendants. When Talleyrand was living in England as an emigrant, on
intimate terms with Robert Smith, Sydney's brother, or Bobus, as he was
called by his intimates, the conversation turned one day on hereditary
beauty. Bobus spoke of his mother's personal perfections: _'Ah, mon
ami,'_ cried Talleyrand, _c'etait apparemment, monsieur: volre pere qui
n'etait pas bien.'_

This Bobus was the schoolfellow at Eton of Canning and Frere; and with
John Smith and those two youths, wrote the 'Microcosm.' Sydney, on the
other hand, was placed on the Foundation, at Winchester, which was then
a stern place of instruction for a gay, spirited, hungry boy. Courtenay,
his younger brother, went with him, but ran away twice. To owe one's
education to charity was, in those days, to be half starved. Never was
there enough, even of the coarsest food, to satisfy the boys, and the
urchins, fresh from home, were left to fare as they might. 'Neglect,
abuse, and vice were,' Sydney used to say, 'the pervading evils of
Winchester; and the system of teaching, if one may so call it, savoured
of the old monastic narrowness.... I believe, when a boy at school, I
made above ten thousand Latin verses, and no man in his senses would
dream of ever making another in after-life. So much for life and time
wasted.' The verse-inciting process is, nevertheless, remorselessly
carried on during three years more at Oxford and is much oftener the
test of patient stupidity than of aspiring talent, Yet of what
stupendous importance it is in the attainment of scholarships and
prizes; and how zealous, how tenacious, are dons and 'coaches' in
holding to that which far higher classics, the Germans, regard with
contempt!

Sydney's proficiency promoted him to be captain of the school, and he
left Winchester for New College, Oxford---one of the noblest and most
abused institut