have entered on the "silent land;" and latterly has dropped down one
of the wittiest and shrewdest of them all--the projector of the "Edinburgh
Review"--the author of "Peter Plymley's Letters"--the preacher--the
politician--the brilliant converser--the "mad-wag"--Sidney Smith.

It was the praise of Dryden that he was the best reasoner in verse who
ever wrote; let it be the encomium of our departed Sidney that, he was one
of the best reasoners in wit of whom our country can boast. His
intellect--strong, sharp, clear, and decided--wrought and moved in a rich
medium of humor. Each thought, as it came forth from his brain, issued as
"in dance," and amid a flood of inextinguishable laughter. The march of
his mind through his subject resembled the procession of Bacchus from the
conquest of India--joyous, splendid, straggling--to the sound of flutes and
hautboys--rather a victory than a march--rather a revel than a contest. His
logic seemed always hurrying into the arms of his wit. Some men argue in
mathematical formulae; others, like Burke, in the figures and flights of
poetry; others in the fire and fury of passion; Sidney Smith in exuberant
and riotous fun. And yet the matter of his reasoning was solid, and its
inner spirit earnest and true. But though his steel was strong and sharp,
his hand steady, and his aim clear, the management of the motions of his
weapon was always fantastic. He piled, indeed, like a Titan, his Pelion on
Ossa, but at the oddest of angles; he lifted and carried his load bravely,
and like a man, but laughed as he did so; and so carried it that beholders
forgot the strength of the arm in the strangeness of the attitude. He thus
sometimes disarmed anger; for his adversaries could scarcely believe that
they had received a deadly wound while their foe was roaring in their
face. He thus did far greater execution; for the flourishes of his weapon
might distract his opponents, but never himself, from the direct and
terrible line of the blow. His laughter sometimes stunned, like the
cachination of the Cyclops, shaking the sides of his cave. In this
mood--and it was his common one--what scorn was he wont to pour upon the
opponents of Catholic emancipation--upon the enemies of all change in
legislation--upon any individual or party who sought to obstruct measures
which, in his judgment, were likely to benefit the country. Under such, he
could at any moment spring a mine of laughter; and what neither the fierce
i