LORD  BYRON  and  his  TIMES
Byron
Documents Biography Criticism
A Memoir of the Reverend Sydney Smith
Letters 1835
Sydney Smith to Sir Robert John Wilmot Horton, 15 July 1835
INTRODUCTION & INDEXES
DOCUMENT INFORMATION
GO TO PAGE NUMBER:
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
 
1835.
Dear Horton,

Why do you not come home, as was generally expected you would do? Come soon; life is short: Europe is better than Asia. The battle goes on between Democracy and Aristocracy; I think it will end in a compromise, and that there will be nothing of a revolutionary nature; our quarrels, though important, are not serious enough for that.

Read Mrs. Butler’s (Fanny Kemble’s) Diary; it is much better than the reviews and papers will allow it to be: what is called vulgarity, is useful and natural contempt for the exclusive and the superfine. Lord Grey has given up public life altogether, and is retired into the country. No book has appeared for a long time more agreeable than the Life of Mackintosh; it is full of important judgments on important men, books, and things.

MEMOIR OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 367

I have seen Lord Clare: he hardly looks a shade more yellow. The men who have risen lately into more notice are Sir George Grey, Lord Grey’s nephew, and Lord Howick; Lord John and Morpeth have done very well; Peel admirably.

The complete —— has returned from Italy a greater bore than ever; he bores on architecture, painting, statuary, and music. Frankland Lewis is filling his station of King of the Paupers extremely well: they have already worked wonders; but of all occupations it must be the most disagreeable. I don’t blame the object, but dislike the occupation; the object is justified, because it prevents a much greater destruction of human beings hereafter.

—— will get no credit for his book; it is impossible now to be universal; men of the greatest information and accuracy swarm in the streets,—mineralogists, astronomers, ornithologists, and lousologists; the most minute blunder is immediately detected.

Believe me, my dear Horton, yours sincerely,
Sydney Smith.