“If you, who only partake of this Sacrament, cannot fail to be struck with its solemnity, we who not only receive it, but minister it to every description of human beings, in every season of peril and distress, must be intimately and deeply pervaded by that feeling....  To know the power of this Sacrament, give it to him whose doom is sealed, who in a few hours will be no more.  The Bread and the Wine are his immense hope! they seem to stand between him and infinite danger, to soothe pain, to calm perturbation, and to inspire immortal courage.”

What is the conclusion of the whole matter?  It is, in my judgment, that Sydney Smith was a patriot of the noblest and purest type; a genuinely religious man according to his light and opportunity; and the happy possessor of a rich and singular talent which he employed through a long life in the willing service of the helpless, the persecuted, and the poor.  To use his own fine phrase, the interests of humanity “got into his heart and circulated with his blood."[181] He wrote and spoke and acted in prompt and uncalculating obedience to an imperious conviction.—­

    “If,” he said, “you ask me who excites me, I answer you, it is that
    Judge Who stirs good thoughts in honest hearts—­under Whose warrant I
    impeach the wrong, and by Whose help I hope to chastise it.”

Here was both the source and the consecration of that glorious mirth by which he still holds his place in the hearts and on the lips of men.  His playful speech was the vehicle of a passionate purpose.  From his earliest manhood, he was ready to sacrifice all that the sordid world thinks precious for Religious Equality and Rational Freedom.

[145] Eden Upton Eddis (1812-1901).

[146] Miss Holland writes—­“His hair, when I know him, was beautifully
    fine, silvery, and abundant; rather taille en brosse, like a
    Frenchman’s.”

[147] Lord Houghton.

[148] A hostile reviewer of his Sermons quotes from them such phrases
    as—­“Lays hid,” “Has sprang,” “Has drank,” “Rarely or ever.”

[149] See p. 90.

[150] I have not attempted to make a catalogue of these jokes.  Such
    catalogues will be found in the previous Memoirs of Sydney Smith, and
    in Sir Wemyss Reid’s Life of Lord Houghton.

[151] Hugo Charles Meynell-Ingram (1784-1869), of Hoar Cross and Temple
    Newsam.

[152] (1808-1891), became 7th Duke of Devonshire in 1858.

[153] This insinuation was quite unfounded.

[154] It is pleasant to cite the testimony of Lord Houghton, who assured
    Mr. Stuart Reid that he “never knew, except once, Sydney Smith to make
    a jest on any religious subject; and then he immediately withdrew
    his words and seemed ashamed that he had uttered them.”

[155] Spencer Perceval.

[156] Lord Hawkesbury.