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A Memoir of the Reverend Sydney Smith
Letters 1814
Sydney Smith to John Allen, 13 January 1814
INTRODUCTION & INDEXES
DOCUMENT INFORMATION
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Author's Preface
Contents
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Index
Editor’s Preface
Letters 1801
Letters 1802
Letters 1803
Letters 1804
Letters 1805
Letters 1806
Letters 1807
Letters 1808
Letters 1809
Letters 1810
Letters 1811
Letters 1812
Letters 1813
Letters 1814
Letters 1815
Letters 1816
Letters 1817
Letters 1818
Letters 1819
Letters 1820
Letters 1821
Letters 1822
Letters 1823
Letters 1824
Letters 1825
Letters 1826
Letters 1827
Letters 1828
Letters 1829
Letters 1830
Letters 1831
Letters 1832
Letters 1833
Letters 1834
Letters 1835
Letters 1836
Letters 1837
Letters 1838
Letters 1839
Letters 1840
Letters 1841
Letters 1842
Letters 1843
Letters 1844
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Heslington, Jan. 13th, 1814.
My dear Allen,

I did not know before your letter that Lord Holland had been ill, and I received the intelligence, as you may suppose, with sincere regret. It is very easy and old-womanish to offer advice, but I wish he would leave off wine entirely, after the manner of the Sharpe and Rogers school. He is never guilty of excess; but there is a certain respectable and dangerous plenitude, not quite conducive to that state of health which all his friends most wish to Lord Holland.

What can you possibly mean by lamenting the restoration of the Bourbons? What so likely to pro-
MEMOIR OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH.113
mote renewed peace, and enable the French to lay some slight foundation of real liberty? for as to their becoming free at once, it is a mere joke. I think I see your old Edinburgh hatred of the Bourbons; but the misfortunes of the world have been such as to render even these contemptible personages our hope and our refuge.

We are all well, and I persevere in my intention of entering on my new house on the 25th of March.

I hear great complaints of Mackintosh’s review of Madame de Staël, as too laudatory. Of this I cannot judge, as I have not read the original; but the review itself is very splendid, though (as is the case with all these polishers of precious stones) I remember of old many of the phrases and many of the opinions.

I am going to educate my little boy till he is twelve years old, being at present nine; and if I could get a clever boy to educate with him, I should be glad to do so. I would not take any boy who was not quick and clever, for such (unless the ordinary partiality of a parent mislead me) is Douglas; but I rather suppose it is too far from town for these sort of engagements.

There is a bad account of ——, and no wonder; the loss has been very severe, and he has never met with any check, but gone away before the wind all his life.

It will be very kind of you to write me a line now and then, and if you will have the goodness to do this, pray let me know how Mackintosh’s speech went off: I have only the account of an honest citizen of York.

Pray tell Lady Holland I am a Justice of the Peace,—one of those rural tyrants so deprecated by poor
114MEMOIR OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH.
Windham. I am determined to strike into the line of analogous punishments.

Ever most truly yours,
Sydney Smith.