The religious character of Sydney Smith was less peculiar than that of Elia. An earnest Christian, with a will too resolute to allow the aid of the punch-bowl in vanquishing trouble, professionally wielding the religious and moral ideas, and habitually obeying them, he stood erect and looked at the life to come with a firm eye. "The beauty of the Christian religion," he says, "is that it carries the order and discipline of heaven into our very fancies and conceptions, and, by hallowing the first shadowy notions of our minds, from which actions spring, makes our actions themselves good and holy." This central and vital beauty he had cultivated in a very diversified life, and he looked with confidence for the prize which is laid up for the well-doer.
Probably, if any successful life were examined, it would be found to consist of a series of hairbreadth escapes. Every movement would be the crossing of the Rubicon. That man is of little account who at every step that he has taken has not been weighing matters as nicely as if he were matching diamonds. How narrowly did Coleridge escape being the greatest preacher, philosopher, poet, or author of his time! Almost everything was possible to him; and one can but marvel how he went through life avoiding in turn each of his highest possibilities. It is the glory of Charles Lamb and Sydney Smith, that, as far as it can be said of any men, they did the best that was possible with their circumstances and endowments. The old fancy which says of every person, that there is an ideal character which he can attain, in which he shall be peculiar and unsurpassed, was in their cases realized.
Their characters were projected into literature, where they remain as permanent blessings. The style of writing of both of them approaches to the simplest way of saying things. Elia employed the choicest language of the seventeenth century, and the divine used the plainest English of the day. The perpetual danger of literature is of becoming rhetorical; and hardly fares vigor of thought when long words and periods are preferred to short ones, and when the native shape and properties of ideas are less cared for than the abundant drapery. The style of the "Essays of Elia" is as admirable as their fancy. The author hated a formal sentence as much as he disliked stately and insipid society. Unlike Thomas Carlyle, in avoiding the faults of rhetorical culture, he did not become a literary barbarian. In refusing to comb his hair like a prig, he did not go to the extreme of making himself horridly uncomely. His sentences are unsurpassed for neatness, are as graceful as they are quaint and clear. The writings of Sydney Smith rarely attain the perfect grace which uniformly distinguishes Elia; yet he never attempts magnificence, and he so unites brilliancy and plainness as to make his statements seem equally felicitous to the rude and the scholarly ear. His Peter Plymley letters are remarkable examples of the way in which one yeoman speaks to another. His literary bequest, however, is neither so valuable nor so charming as that of Charles Lamb. His powers were too various, and he engaged in too many fields of labor, to attain supreme success in any direction. The best result of his life is his own exuberant and unresting character, which harmonized all the diversities in his career; and adequately to behold this there is needed a fuller and more philosophical biography of him than has yet been written.
BULLS AND BEARS.
[Continued.]
CHAPTER XV.
On the morning of the day which brought the downfall of Stearine and his indorsers, Sandford and Fayerweather, with the Vortex, whose funds they had misappropriated, Monroe came to the counting-room unusually cheerful. His anxiety respecting his little property was relieved, for he thought the monetary crisis was past, and that thenceforth affairs would improve. He had reasoned with himself that such a pressure could not last always, and that this had certainly reached its limit. The clear, bracing air of the morning had its full influence over his sensitive nature. All Nature seemed to rejoice, and he, for the time, forgot the universal distress, and sympathized with it. But the thermometer fell rapidly as he caught the expression which the face of his employer wore. Mr. Lindsay, of the house of Lindsay & Co., was usually a reserved, silent man—in business almost a machine, honest both from instinct and habit, and proud, in his quiet way, of his position and his stainless name. He had a wife and daughter, and therefore was presumed to have affections; but those whom he met in the market never thought of him, save as the systematic merchant. Well as Monroe knew him, being his confidential clerk, he never had seen more than the case in which the buying, selling, and note-paying machinery was inclosed. He respected the evident integrity and worth of the head of the house, but never dreamed of a different feeling; he could as easily have persuaded himself into cherishing an affection for the counting-house clock.
This morning, Mr. Lindsay's face wore an unusually sleepless, anxious look. The man of routine was but a man, after all, and, in his distress, he longed for some intelligent, friendly sympathy. Monroe recognized the mute appeal, but, from long habits of reticence, he was at a loss how to approach his stately chief. Determined, however, to give him an opportunity to speak, if he chose, Monroe asked after the news, the day's failures, and the prospects of business. The merchant needed only a word, and broke out at once,—
"Prospect? there is no prospect but ruin. If a whirlwind would bury the city, or a conflagration leave it a heap of ashes, it would be better for all of us."
"But don't you think the darkest time has past?"