A.D. 1847.]

THE RAILWAY KING.

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the afternoon-the old church, of immense size, having five aisles ; and the Methodist Chapel in the evening. To perpetuate my remembrance of this service would be unkind.

On January 29, 1847, he wrote to Mrs Beal :

I am going on very comfortably with Father now, seldom or never going to Chapel, or asked to do so.

Another letter to the same, written a month later, gives the impression made on young Smith by a well-known individual:

I have had an interview with the great George Hudson, the Railway King. The 'Times' wrote for a man to come up to town, on my representation, who knew something of the railways down in the North, and we went together to see this great man, and to remonstrate with him concerning some errors in the arrangement of the trains. We were with him about half an hour, and had a good opportunity of seeing his character, of which I have not formed a very favourable opinion. I think he is a cunning, clever man, but very deficient in everything that is noble and commanding respect; very much of a bully in conversation if he thinks he can succeed; if not, possessed of little courage, if any. At first he was disposed to treat me very slightingly, and I felt rather angry, and in the course of conversation brought in the names of the conductors of the 'Times' and 'Chronicle,' which had such a magical effect upon the honourable gentleman that both my companion and myself could hardly refrain from laughing in his face.

It has been a matter of much consideration how far it is expedient to unveil the most secret and sacred thoughts of the man whose narrative fills these pages. One shrinks from putting on permanent record anything that might be but the fruit of a transient mood or merely evidence of a youthful phase of thought; yet no estimate of William Smith's character and work would be faithful which did not show how, from very early days down to his latest years, he was constantly penetrated with deep religious feeling, and unremitting in the practice both of private prayer and public worship. There are those who believe that this is incompatible with the higher intellectual power; that the bolder spirits are those which show themselves

somewhat impatient of church services and incredulous as to the efficacy of prayer: not the less would such as these have cause for complaint if the leading motive of all Smith's actions were kept in the background. It will be for each one to form his own judgment of the degree in which the man's usefulness, and the confidence he gained from his fellow-men, was affected by his undoubted piety.

Smith's early journals are full of religious meditation, expressions of deep regret for failings, and gratitude for deliverance from evil.1 But there would be little profit in quoting extracts, differing not much from the sentences in which many a serious-minded youth must have committed to paper his perplexity and hope, his ardour and disappointment. Yet there has been preserved on a loose slip of paper something so characteristic of the writer, something that may give, once for all, so clear an insight into his ardent, yet withal methodical, devotion-not merely the sentiment of adolescence but the enduring practice of his life that there seems no reason to withhold it. This document, written about the time Smith came of age, contains a list of the subjects for which he prayed daily. They are as follows:

1. For repentance. 2. Faith. 3. Love. 4. Grace to help. 5. Gratitude. 6. Power to pray. 7. Constant direction in all things. 8. A right understanding of the Bible, and a thorough knowledge of it. 9. Deliverance from my easily. besetting sinwatchfulness. 10. Grace that blessings and talents-God's giftsmay not be the means of withdrawing my heart's service from God

1 Like all men of prayerful natures, Smith was subject to moods of deep despondency. One is reminded by the tenor of many notes in his handwriting of similar expressions made use of by Dr Johnson -his prayerful reflection, for instance, on his fifty-sixth birthday : "I have now spent fifty-five years in resolving, having, from the earliest time almost that I can remember, been forming schemes of a better life. I have done nothing. The need of doing, therefore is pressing, since the time of doing is short. O God! grant me to resolve aright, and to keep my resolutions, for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen."

A SERIOUS BOYHOOD.

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the Giver. 11. My wife-if it is God's will I should have one. 12. Like blessings for my Father and Sisters, according to their several necessities. 13. My friends. 14. This place. 15. Missionaries. 16. All for whom I ought. 17. Pardon for all ignorance and sin in all my prayers. Remember the 4th February, and pray that I yield not to temptation.

Never, surely, did the boyhood and youth of one whose parents were, if not in affluent, at least in easy circumstances, pass with so little provision for amusement as did those of William Smith. Games generally bulk largely in a schoolboy's letters, but in the few that have survived from the brief school-days of this boy, there is not even a passing reference to football or cricket. The only exercise which he seems to have been at liberty to enjoy—and that from very early years-was riding. Each year, however, after leaving Tavistock, he used to take an autumn holiday with his mother and sisters. In 1844 and 1846 they went to Rydal; in 1847 they made a tour in Scotland; and in 1848 and 1849 they travelled in Ireland.

The absence of active recreation does not seem to have been compensated for by a decided appetite for literature. True, he was at some pains-after his desire to go to a University had been sacrificed to his father's wish for him to enter the business-to carry on such studies as his limited opportunities allowed, and for a couple of years after he came of age he used to study with a private tutor; but he used books not so much from a love of literature, as from a desire for knowledge. His letters are not those of a bookish man; and long afterwards he remarked once to Mr White, who still holds an important, confidential appointment in the head office, "I don't read, I appropriate."

But he had one darling occupation-one, too, in the pursuit of which he had the good fortune to be encouraged by his father. He was passionately fond of music, and learned to play with some skill on the organ. This taste

was dominant with him throughout his life, and the last addition to his country seat at Greenlands in 1885 included the conversion of the kitchen into a large organ-room, in which was placed a fine instrument by Willis.

It is perhaps fruitless to speculate what his life might have been, and to what level he might have risen, had William Smith been allowed to follow his inclination in the choice of a profession. There are few parents who

think it wise to thwart the decided prepossession of their sons for definite callings-few that do not rejoice when such prepossession for a worthy vocation is shown. Still, looking back over the circumstances surrounding Smith in boyhood and manhood, it is difficult to see matter for regret in the obstacles placed in the way of fulfilling his ambition. One cannot but see that his was a character requiring external pressure to develop it: had he become a clerk in Holy Orders, he might have filled a rural incumbency, with diligence indeed, and with profit for his own soul and the souls of his parishioners, but his light would not have shone before men, showing how pure and lofty principles can be successfully carried into the highest and most complex conditions of modern government. His private friends and parishioners might have gained something, but the public could not but have failed to lose much. In the last year of his life, in reply to a letter from his old friend, the Rev. H. H. D'Ombrain, vicar of Westwell, congratulating him on his appointment to the Wardenship of the Cinque Ports, an honorary post reserved for the highest in the service of the State, Smith wrote: "Our courses in life have been very different, but if I had had my choice at twenty-one, I should have been as you are." There comes to mind a story told of old John Brown, the minister of Haddington, to whom a conceited young fellow, who thought himself too good for his calling, had expressed his ardent

CORRESPONDENCE WITH INCE.

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desire to be a minister of the Gospel. "I wish," he said, "to preach and glorify God." "My young friend," replied the cool-headed old divine, "a man may glorify God making broom besoms; stick to your trade, and glorify God by your walk and conversation."

To some such conclusion Smith's own strong commonsense seems to have led him. Forty years later in 1885 -he was writing to his daughter Emily, now the Hon. Mrs W. Acland, from Balmoral, where he was Minister in attendance on the Queen :—

Your account of yourself reminds me of my own feeling when I was young. I thought my life was aimless, purposeless, and I wanted something else to do; but events compelled me to adhere to what promised to be a dull life and a useless one; the result has been that few men have had more interesting and useful work to do-whether it has been done ill or well-than I have had.

Man proposes and God disposes, and His dispositions yielded to and accepted turn out for our happiness.

One of Smith's most constant correspondents during his early years was William Ince (now Canon Ince, of Christ Church, Oxford). Interspersed with copious reflections on serious subjects, especially on the development of the Tractarian movement, there occur in his letters to Smith references to matters of the day which are not without interest at the present time:—

30th Jany. 1844.— Pray, are you acquainted with Keble's 'Christian Year'? If not, I would advise you to get or borrow it of some one, as it contains some of the most melodious verses and beautiful sentiments that have been produced in modern times, and you may have it without much fear of being suspected of favouring the party to which its author belongs, as it is read and admired by alleven his bitterest opponents.

30th March 1846.— . . As for political parties, they appear to me to be all alike. One when in power pursues the very same line of policy which it denounced when out. Great broad principles are abandoned, and mere expediency is the guide of conduct.

In writing to Ince about this time Smith observed :—

Your Bishop [Wilberforce] has come out in the House of Lords in good style-independently—like a man, and although he may have