THE CURSE OF WAR.

A second great object which I hope will be impressed upon the mind of this royal lady is a rooted horror of war-an carnest and passionate desire to keep her people in a state of profound peace. The greatest curse which can be entailed upon mankind is a state of war. All the atrocious crimes committed in years of peace— all that is spent in peace by the secret corruptions or by the thoughtless extravagance of nations, are mere trifles compared with the gigantic evils which stalk over the world in a state of war. God is forgotten in war-every principle of Christian charity trampled upon-human labor destroyed-human industry extinguished; you see the son and the husband and the brother dying miserably in distant lands-you see the waste of human affections-you see the breaking of human hearts-you hear the shrieks of widows and children after the battle-and you walk over the mangled bodies of the wounded calling for death. I would say to that royal child, worship God, by loving peace-it is not your humanity to pity a beggar by giving him food or raiment-I can do that; that is the charity of the humble and the unknown--widen you your heart for the more expanded miseries of mankind-pity the mothers of the peasantry who see their sons torn away from their familiespity your poor subjects crowded into hospitals, and calling in their last breath upon their distant country and their young queen--pity the stupid, frantic folly of human beings who are always ready to tear each other to pieces, and to deluge the earth with each other's blood; this is your extended humanity-and this the great field of your compassion. Extinguish in your heart the fiendish love of military glory, from which your sex does not necessarily exempt you, and to which the wickedness of flatterers may urge you. Say upon your death-bed, "I have made few orphans in my reign-I have made few widows-my object has been peace. I have used all the weight of my character, and all the power of my situation, to check the irascible passions of mankind, and to turn them to the arts of honest industry: this has been the Christianity of my throne, and this the gospel of my sceptre; in this way I have strove to worship my Redeemer and my Judge.'

From a Letter to the Queen on her accession to the throne.

Of his keen wit, and of the manner in which he "did up" authors, the following is a fine specimen. It is the shortest review in the whole eighty-five volumes of the "Edinburgh," and I give it entire. It is a notice of the "Anniversary Sermon of the Royal Humane Society, by W. Langford, D. D."

A SOPORIFIC SERMON.

An accident which happened to the gentleman engaged in reviewing this sermon proves, in the most stri

portance of this charity for restoring to life persons in whom the vital power is suspended. He was discovered, with Dr. Langford's discourse lying open before him, in a state of the most profound sleep; from which he could not, by any means, be awakened for a great length of time. By attending, however, to the rules prescribed by the Humane Society, flinging in the smoke of tobacco, applying hot flannels, and carefully removing the discourse itself to a great distance, the critic was restored to his disconsolate brothers.

The only account he could give of himself was that he remembers reading on, regularly, till he came to the following pathetic description of a drowned tradesman; beyond which he recollects nothing:

"But to the individual himself, as a man, let us add the interruption to all the temporal business in which his interest was engaged. To him, indeed, now apparently lost, the world is as nothing; but it seldom happens that man can live for himself alone: society parcels out its concerns in various connections; and from one head issue waters which run down in many channels. The spring being suddenly cut off, what confusion must follow in the streams which have flowed from its source! It may be, that all the expectations reasonably raised of approaching prosperity, to those who have embarked in the same occupation, may at once disappear; and the important interchange of commercial faith be broken off before it could be brought to any advantageous conclusion."

This extract will suffice for the style of the sermon. itself is above all praise.

The charity

The following extract from "Peter Plymley's Letters" is a fine specimen of his inimitable wit in ridiculing the idea, then prevalent, that a conspiracy, headed by the pope, had been formed against the Protestant religion:

CONSPIRACY OF THE POPE.

The pope has not landed-nor are there any curates sent out after him-nor has he been hid at St. Albans by the Dowager Lady Spencer-nor dined privately at Holland House-nor been seen near Dropmore. If these fears exist, (which I do not believe,) they exist only in the mind of the chancellor of the exchequer; [the late Mr. Spencer Perceval;] they emanate from his zeal for the Protestant interest; and, though they reflect the highest honor upon the delicate irritability of his faith, must certainly be considered as more ambiguous proofs of the sanity and vigor of his understanding. By this time, however, the best-informed clergy in the neighborhood of the metropolis are convinced that the rumor is without foundation: and, though the pope is probably hovering about our coast in a fishing-smack, it is most likely he will fall a

prey to the vigilance of the cruisers: and it is certain he has not yet polluted the Protestantism of our soil. Exactly in the same manner the story of the wooden gods seized at Charing Cross, by an order from the Foreign Office, turns out to be without the shadow of a foundation: instead of the angels and archangels mentioned by the informer, nothing was discovered but a wooden image of Lord Mulgrave going down to Chatham as a head-piece for the Spanker gun-vessel: it was an exact resemblance of his lordship in his military uniform; and therefore as little like a god as can well be imagined.

In a similar vein he holds up, in a manner highly ludicrous and amusing, the fears entertained by England of a French invasion. He is arguing that, notwithstanding these fears, the British rulers neglected the obvious means of selfdefence against

THE FRENCH INVASION.

As for the spirit of the peasantry in making a gallant defence behind hedgerows, and through plate-racks and hencoops, highly as I think of their bravery, I do not know any nation in Europe so likely to be struck with panic as the English; and this from their total unacquaintance with sciences of war. Old wheat and beans blazing for twenty miles round; cart-mares shot; sows of Lord Somerville's breed running wild over the country; the minister of the parish wounded sorely in his hinder parts; Mrs. Plymley in fits; all these scenes of war an Austrian or a Russian has seen three or four times over; but it is now three centuries since an English pig has fallen in a fair battle upon English ground, or a farm-house been rifled, or a clergyman's wife been subjected to any other proposals of love than the connubial endearments of her sleek and orthodox mate. The old edition of Plutarch's Lives, which lies in the corner of your parlor window, has contributed to work you up to the most romantic expectations of our Roman behavior. You are persuaded that Lord Amherst will defend Kew Bridge like Cocles; that some maid of honor will break away from her captivity and swim over the Thames; that the Duke of York will burn his capitulating hand; and little Mr. Sturges Bourne give forty years' purchase for Moulsham Hall while the French are encamped upon it. I hope we shall witness all this, if the French do come; but in the mean time I am so enchanted with the ordinary English behavior of these invaluable persons, that I earnestly pray no opportunity may be given them for Roman valor, and for those very un-Roman pensions which they would all, of course, take especial care to claim in consequence.

In a speech delivered in Taunton, in 1831, he thus ridicules the attempt of the Lords to stop the

PROGRESS OF REFORM.

I do not mean to be disrespectful, but the attempt of the lords to stop the progress of reform reminds me very forcibly of the great storm of Sidmouth, and of the conduct of the excellent Mrs. Partington on that occasion. In the winter of 1824 there set in a great flood upon that town-the tide rose to an incredible heightthe waves rushed in upon the houses-and every thing was threatened with destruction. In the midst of this sublime storm, Dame Partington, who lived upon the beach, was seen at the door of her house with mop and pattens, trundling her mop, and squeezing out the sea water, and vigorously pushing away the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic was roused; Mrs. Partington's spirit was up; but I need not tell you that the contest was unequal. The Atlantie Ocean beat Mrs. Partington. She was excellent at a slop or a puddle; but she should not have meddled with a tempest.1

CHIMNEY SWEEPS.

We have been thus particular in stating the case of the chimney sweepers, and in founding it upon the basis of facts, that we may make an answer to those profligate persons who are always ready to fling an air of ridicule upon the labors of humanity, because they are desirous that what they have not virtue to do themselves, should appear to be foolish and romantic when done by others. A still higher degree of depravity than this, is to want every sort of compassion for human misery, when it is accompanied by filth, poverty, and ignorance, to regulate humanity by the income tax, and to deem the bodily wretchedness and the dirty tears of the poor a fit subject for pleasantry and contempt. We should have been loath to believe that such deep-seated and disgusting immorality existed in these days; but the notice of it is forced upon us. Nor must we pass over a set of marvellously weak gentlemen who discover democracy and revolution in every effort to improve the condition of the lower orders, and to take off a little of the load of misery

The following are a few of the good things of Sydney Smith:

Definition of the Popish Ritual: "Posture and imposture, flections and genu-flections, bowing to the right, curtseying to the left, and an immense amount of man-millinery." "Every man fancies he can do three things: farm a small property, drive a gig, and write an article for a Review."

Of a great talker, he once said-"It would improve him if he now and then had a few flashes of silence."

One of the chief titles of distinction in the Scotch law is, "The Dean of the Faculty," and when Sydney Smith, Dean of St. Paul's, first met in company a gentleman bearing that tide, he assumed a reverential expression in looking at him, and said-"A most surprising title; for in England the deans have no faculties."

from those points where it presses the hardest. Such are the men into whose hearts Mrs. Fry has struck the deepest terror-who abhor Mr. Bentham and his penitentiary; Mr. Bennet and his hulks; Sir James Mackintosh and his bloodless assizes; Mr. Tuke and his sweeping machines-and every human being who is great and good enough to sacrifice his quiet to his love for his fellow-creatures. Certainly we admit that humanity is sometimes the vail of ambition or of faction; but we have no doubt that there are a great many excellent persons to whom it is misery to see misery, and pleasure to lessen it; and who, by calling the public attention to the worst cases, and by giving birth to judicious legislative enactments for their improvement, have made, and are making, the world somewhat happier than they found it. Upon these principles we join hands with the friends of the chimney sweepers, and most heartily wish for the diminution of their numbers and the limitation of their trade.1

DR. PARR'S WIG AND SERMON.

Whoever has had the good fortune to see Dr. Parr's wig, must have observed, that while it trespasses a little on the orthodox magnitude of perukes in the anterior parts, it scorns even Episcopal limits behind, and swells out into boundless convexity of frizz, the mega thauma (the "great wonder") of barbers, and the terror of the literary world. After the manner of his wig, the Doctor has constructed his sermon, giving us a discourse of no common length, and subjoining an immeasurable mass of notes, which appear to concern every learned thing, every learned man, and almost every unlearned man since the beginning of the world.

PHENOMENA OF BOTANY BAY.

In this remote part of the earth, Nature (having made horses, oxen, ducks, geese, oaks, elms, and all regular and useful productions for the rest of the world) seems determined to have a bit of play, and to amuse herself as she pleases. Accordingly, she makes cherries with the stone on the outside; and a monstrous animal, as tall as a grenadier, with the head of a rabbit, a tail as big as a bed-post, hopping along at the rate of five hops to a mile, with

Sydney Smith had a genuine Christian sympathy with his fellow-creatures, and far more serious intentions in almost all he wrote than the gravest of his opponents could well imagine. He was an extraordinary man, and did a great deal of good."-Leigh Hunt's “Wit and Humor."

A great scholar, as rude and violent as most Greek scholars are, unless they happen to be bishops. He has left nothing behind him worth leaving: he was rather fitted for the law than the church, and would have been a more considerable man, if he had been more knocked about among his equals. He lived with country gentlemen and clergymen, who flattered and feared him.