[137] Charles Waterton (1782-1865), Naturalist.

[138] (1748-1820.)

[139] It is possible that the argument about the Wisdom of our Ancestors in
    “Noodle’s Oration” may have been suggested by the following extract
    from the Parliamentary Debates for May 26, 1797.  On Mr. Grey’s Motion
    for a Reform of Parliament, Sir Gregory Page-Turner, M.P., spoke as
    follows—­“He craved the indulgence of the House for a few observations
    which he had to make.  When he got up in the morning and when he lay
    down at night, he always felt for the Constitution.  On this question
    he had never had but one opinion.  When he came first into Parliament,
    he remembered that the Chancellor of the Exchequer proposed a Reform,
    but he saw it was wrong, and he opposed it.  Would it not be madness to
    change what had been handed, sound and entire, down from the days of
    their fathers?”

[140] (1809-1878.)

[141] In these a special appeal is made to “our youthful Gladstone,” then
    recently appointed Vice-President of the Board of Trade.

[142] Afterwards Mrs. Malcolm:  died in 1886.

[143] He said afterwards that this Sermon on Peace was really Channing’s.

[144] Compare his letter on parting from his friends at Edinburgh, quoted
    by Lady Holland:—­“All adieus are melancholy; and principally, I
    believe, because they put us in mind of the last of all adieus, when
    the apothecary, and the heir-apparent, and the nurse who weeps for
    pay, surround the bed; when the curate, engaged to dine three miles
    off, mumbles hasty prayers; when the dim eye closes for ever in the
    midst of empty pillboxes, gallipots, phials, and jugs of
    barley-water.”

CHAPTER VII

CHARACTERISTICS—­HUMOUR—­POLITICS—­CULTURE—­THEORIES OF LIFE—­RELIGION

What Sydney Smith was to the outward eye we know from an admirable portrait by Eddis[145] belonging to his grand-daughter, Miss Caroline Holland.  He had a long and slightly aquiline nose, of the type which gives a peculiar trenchancy to the countenance; a strongly developed chin, thick white hair,[146] and black eyebrows.  His complexion was fresh, inclining to be florid.  In figure he was, to use his own phrase, “of the family of Falstaff.”  Ticknor described him as “corpulent but not gross.”  Macaulay spoke of his “rector-like amplitude and rubicundity.”  He was of middle height, rather above it than below, and sturdily built.  He used to quote a saying from one of his contemporaries at Oxford—­“Sydney, your sense, wit, and clumsiness, always give me the idea of an Athenian carter.”  Except on ceremonious occasions, he was careless about his dress.  His daughter says:—­“His neckcloth always looked like a pudding tied round his throat, and the arrangement of his garments seemed more the result of accident than design.”