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A Memoir of the Reverend Sydney Smith
Letters 1826
Sydney Smith to Catharine Amelia Smith, 4 May 1826
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
Creative Commons License

Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
Produced by CATH
 
Paris, May 4th, 1826.
Dearest Kate,

I was engaged all yesterday in seeing the procession. The King laid the first stone of a statue to Louis XVI. in the Place de Louis XV. The procession passed under my window, where were Miss Fox, Miss Vernon, Lady Holland, and others. There were about twelve hundred priests, four cardinals, a piece of the real Cross, and one of the nails, carried under a canopy upon a velvet cushion; the King, the Marshals, the House of Peers, and the House of Commons following. A more absurd, disgraceful, and ridiculous, or a finer, sight, I never saw. The Bourbons are too foolish and too absurd; nothing can keep them on the throne.

264 MEMOIR OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH.

The season is very cold; it is a decided east wind today. I am fully a month too soon; the foliage is not half out.

You know Mrs. H. S——. On Sunday, when I preached, she sat near Sir Sidney Smith; he commended the sermon very much. “Yes,” said Mrs. S——, “I think it should make you proud of your name!” You may easily guess how this was relished.

I am a good deal alarmed by these riots in England, because I do not know how they are to end. There is a want of work; when will the demand for manufacturing labour revive? How is it possible to support such a population in idleness?

The King is grown dreadfully old since I dined with him at the Duke of Buccleuch’s, in Scotland; I should not have known him again. There are some hopes of the Dauphin and of the Duchess d’Angoulême. If some change does not soon take place, there will be a revolution. God bless you all!

S. S.