ions then of that grand university. Having obtained a
scholarship, as a matter of course, and afterwards a fellowship, he
remarked that the usual bumpers of port wine at college were as much the
order of the day among the Fellows as Latin verses among the
undergraduates. We may not, however, picture to ourselves Sydney as
partaking of the festivities of the common room; with more probability
let us imagine him wandering with steady gait, even _after_ Hall--a
thing not even then or now certain in colleges--in those evergreen,
leafy, varied gardens, flanked by that old St. Peter's church on the one
side, and guarded by the high wall, once a fortification, on the other.
He was poor, and therefore safe, for poverty is a guardian angel to an
undergraduate, and work may protect even the Fellow from utter
deterioration.

He was turned out into the world by his father with his hundred a year
from the Fellowship, and never had a farthing from the old destroyer of
country-seats afterwards. He never owed a sixpence; nay, he paid a debt
of thirty pounds, which Courtenay, who had no _iron_ in his character,
had incurred at Winchester, and had not the courage to avow. The next
step was to choose a profession. The bar would have been Sydney's
choice; but the church was the choice of his father. It is the cheapest
channel by which a man may pass into genteel poverty; 'wit and
independence do not make bishops,' as Lord Cockburn remarks. We do not,
however, regard, as he does, Sydney Smith as 'lost' by being a
churchman. He was happy, and made others happy; he was good, and made
others good. Who can say the same of a successful barrister, or of a
popular orator? His first sphere was in a curacy on Salisbury Plain; one
of his earliest clerical duties was to marry his brother Robert (a
barrister) to Miss Vernon, aunt to Lord Lansdowne. 'All I can tell you
of the marriage,' Sydney wrote to his mother, 'is that he cried, she
cried, I cried.' It was celebrated in the library at Bowood, where
Sydney so often enchanted the captivating circle afterwards by his wit.

Nothing could be more gloomy than the young pastor's life on Salisbury
Plain: 'the first and poorest pauper of the hamlet,' as he calls a
curate, he was seated down among a few scattered cottages on this vast
flat; visited even by the butcher's cart only once a week from
Salisbury; accosted by few human beings; shunned by all who loved social
life. But the probation was not long; an