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 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." 66 To some such conclusion Smith's own strong common-sense seems to have led him. Forty years later in 1885- he was writing to his daughter Emily, now the Hon. Mrs W. Acland, CORRESPONDENCE WITH INCE. 39 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, which Ince, as a Low Churchman, regarded with suspicion and aversion, there occur in his letters to Smith references to matters of the day which are not without interest at the present time :— 30th Jan 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 all-even 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 made a mistake or two, they are nothing to the spirit which is in the man. He will do you in Oxford immense good-make men who never thought of thinking for themselves (or acting, rather) first admire his energetic character, and then copy it. . . I am amused, even among people who are a little educated, to observe the easiness with which a man first starting a subject can induce all the rest to follow in his stepstaking the same view of it. I suppose it must be so, or the world would be in a terrible mess. For my part, however, I should be inclined to examine any conclusion, all the more because other men had arrived at it; and I do not think that even if I had thought, and expressed the thought, with them on a previous occasion, it would show either a dishonourable or a weak mind if, on further information and more consideration, I dissented from them and acted accordingly. Here is another extract from Ince's letters: Dec. 8, 1848.-We had a grand treat here last week in Jenny Lind's concert; nobody has talked of anything else since; every anecdote of her stay and every word she uttered are most assiduously treasured up. Her singing was certainly most enchanting, and besides its own AN ENDURING FRIENDSHIP. 41 intrinsic merit was enhanced by the simplicity and artlessness of her manners, so utterly free from all affectation, and so indicative of goodness. She sang two or three songs to the servants at the Angel where she staid, sang some pieces from the Messiah in New College Chapel, and, when asked by the Bodleian Librarian to sign her name in the book provided for distinguished visitors, refused, saying, "No; Oxford is so great and I am SO little." The circumstances of Smith's boyhood and youth forbade the planting of many friendships at that season when the tender rootlets of affection creep silently and fasten themselves deeply into the fabric of a human life. With Ince his friendship was enduring; he was almost the only one of whom he could have exclaimed with Charles Lamb: "Oh! it is pleasant as it is rare to find the same arm linked in yours at forty, which at thirteen helped it to turn over the Cicero De amicitiâ, or some other tale of antique friendship, which the young heart even then was burning to anticipate." KILBURN HOUSE-YOUNG SMITH ENTERS THE BUSINESS, AND HIS DEALINGS WITH EMPLOYÉS EXPANSION OF THE BUSINESS-WORK ON THE COMMITTEE OF KING'S COLLEGE HOSPITAL. NOTWITHSTANDING the agitation of alternate hopes and fears as to the realisation of his dream of becoming a clergyman, young William Smith had shown no want of willing application to the business of news-agency, upon which he entered at the age of sixteen. While it is imof his religious possible to doubt the reality conviction and the large place which it filled in all his schemes for the future, it is equally impossible not to admire the resolution with which he acted on Candide's maxim-il faut cultiver notre jardin. |