made out of his papers, with some advantage to the
reader perhaps, if a new edition of his works were undertaken. The chief
of such subjects is America, in dealing with which he pleased the
Americans by descanting on their gradual emancipation from English
prejudices and abuses, but infuriated them by constant denunciations of
slavery, and by laughing at their lack of literature and cultivation.
With India he also dealt often, his brothers' connection with it giving
him an interest therein. Prisons were another favourite subject, though,
in his zeal for making them uncomfortable, he committed himself to one
really atrocious suggestion--that of dark cells for long periods of
time. It is odd that the same person should make such a truly diabolical
proposal, and yet be in a perpetual state of humanitarian rage about
man-traps and spring-guns, which were certainly milder engines of
torture. It is odd, too, that Sydney, who was never tired of arguing
that prisons ought to be made uncomfortable, because nobody need go
there unless he chose, should have been furiously wroth with poor Mr.
Justice Best for suggesting much the same thing of spring-guns. The
greatest political triumph of his manner is to be found no doubt in the
article "Bentham on Fallacies," in which the unreadable diatribes of the
apostle of utilitarianism are somehow spirited and crisped up into a
series of brilliant arguments, and the whole is crowned by the famous
"Noodle's Oration," the summary and storehouse of all that ever has been
or can be said on the Liberal side in the lighter manner. It has not
lost its point even from the fact that Noodle has now for a long time
changed his party, and has elaborated for himself, after his manner, a
similar stock of platitudes and absurdities in favour of the very things
for which Sydney was fighting.

The qualities of these articles appear equally in the miscellaneous
essays, in the speeches, and even in the sermons, though Sydney Smith,
unlike Sterne, never condescended to buffoonery or theatrical tricks in
the pulpit. In _Peter Plymley's Letters_ they appear concentrated and
acidulated: in the _Letters to Archdeacon Singleton_, in the
_Repudiation Letters_, and the _Letters on Railways_ which date from his
very last days, concentrated and mellowed. More than one good judge has
been of the opinion that Sydney's powers increased to the very end of
his life, and it is not surprising that this should have been the ca