Sydney Smith. George William Erskine Russell
we should at this moment be dividing our food with our fingers, and drinking out of the palms of our hands."
It was just as bad when a lady sent her son to his own University.—
"I feel for her about her son at Oxford, knowing, as I do, that the only consequences of a University education are the growth of vice and the waste of money."
In 1792 Sydney Smith took his degree,[5] and now the question of a profession had to be faced and decided. It was necessary that he should begin to make money at once, for the pecuniary resources of the family, narrow at the beat, were now severely taxed by his mother's failing health and by the cost of starting his brothers in the world. At Oxford, he had dabbled in medicine and anatomy, and had attended the lectures of Dr., afterwards Sir Christopher, Pegge,[6] who recommended him to become a doctor. His father wished to send him as a super-cargo to China! His own strong preference was for the Bar, but his father, who had already brought up one son to that profession and found it more expensive than profitable, looked very unfavourably on the design; and under paternal pressure the wittiest Englishman of his generation determined to seek Holy Orders, or, to use his own old-fashioned phrase, to "enter the Church." He assumed the sacred character without enthusiasm, and looked back on its adoption with regret. "The law," he said in after life, "is decidedly the best profession for a young man if he has anything in him. In the Church a man is thrown into life with his hands tied, and bid to swim; he does well if he keeps his head above water."
Under these rather dismal auspices, Sydney Smith was ordained Deacon in 1794. He might, one would suppose, have been ordained on his Fellowship, and have continued to reside in College with a view to obtaining a Lectureship or some other office of profit. Perhaps he found the mental atmosphere of Oxford insalubrious. Perhaps he was unpopular in College. Perhaps his political opinions were already too liberal for the place. Certain it is that his visit to France, in the earlier stages of the Revolution, had led him to extol the French for teaching mankind "the use of their power, their reason, and their rights." Whatever was the cause, he turned his back on Oxford, and, as soon as he was ordained, became Curate of Netheravon, a village near Amesbury.[7] As he himself said, "the name of Curate had lost its legal meaning, and, instead of denoting the incumbent of a living, came to signify the deputy of an absentee." He had sole charge of the parish of Netheravon, and was also expected to perform one service every Sunday at the adjoining village of Fittleton. "Nothing," wrote the new-fledged Curate, "can equal the profound, the immeasurable, the awful dulness of this place, in the which I lie, dead and buried, in hope of a joyful resurrection in 1796." Indeed, it is not easy to conceive a more dismal situation for a young, ardent, and active man, fresh from Oxford, full of intellectual ambition, and not very keenly alive to the spiritual opportunities of his calling. The village, a kind of oasis in the desert of Salisbury Plain, was not touched by any of the coaching-roads. The only method of communication with the outside world was by the market-cart which brought the necessaries of life from Salisbury once a week. The vicar was non-resident; and the squire, Mr. Hicks-Beach, was only an occasional visitor, for his principal residence was fifty miles off, at Williamstrip, near Fairford. (He had acquired Netheravon by his marriage with Miss Beach.) The church was empty, and the curate in charge likened his preaching to the voice of one crying in the wilderness. The condition of the village may best be judged from a report made to Mr. Hicks-Beach by his steward in 1793. Nearly every one was dependent on parochial relief. Not a man earned ten shillings a week. A man with a wife and four children worked for six shillings a week. A girl earned, by spinning, four shillings a month. Idleness, disease, and immorality were rife; and, as an incentive to profitable industry, a young farmer beat a sickly labourer within an inch of his life.
Mrs. Hicks-Beach referred this uncomfortable report on the condition of her property to the newly-installed curate, requesting his opinion on the cases specified. The curate replied with characteristic vigour. One family owed its wretched condition to mismanagement and extravagance; another to "ignorance bordering on brutality"; another to "Irish extraction, numbers, disease, and habits of idleness." One family was composed of "weak, witless people, totally wretched, without sense to extricate them from their wretchedness"; a second was "perfectly wretched and helpless"; and a third was "aliment for Newgate, food for the halter—a ragged, wretched, savage, stubborn race."[8]
The squire and Mrs. Hicks-Beach, who seem to have been thoroughly high-principled and intelligent people, were much concerned to find the curate corroborating and even expanding the evil reports of the steward. They immediately began considering remedies, and decided that their first reform should be to establish a Sunday-school. The institution so named bore little resemblance to the Sunday-schools of the present day, but followed a plan which Robert Raikes[9] and Mrs. Hannah More[10] had originated, and which Bishop Shute Barrington[11] (who was translated to Durham in 1791) had strongly urged on the Diocese of Sarum.[12] Boys and girls were taught together. The master and mistress were paid the modest salary of two shillings a Sunday. The children were taught spelling and reading, and, as soon as they had mastered those arts, were made to read the Bible, the Prayer Book, and Mrs. More's tracts. The children attended church, sitting together in a big pew, and, in hot weather, had their lessons in the church, before and after the service. As soon as the Sunday-school had proved itself popular and successful, an Industrial School was arranged for three nights in the week, so that the girls of the village might be taught domestic arts. Both institutions prospered, and ninety years later Mr. Stuart Reid, visiting the cottages of Netheravon in order to collect material for his book, caught the lingering tradition that Sydney Smith "was fond of children and young people, and took pains to teach them."
This tradition bears out what Sydney Smith said in his Farewell Sermon to the people of Netheravon. Preaching from Proverbs iv. 13, "Take fast hold of instruction," he said:—
"The Sunday-school which, with some trouble and expense, has been brought to the state in which you see it, will afford to the poorest people an opportunity of giving to their children some share of education, and I will not suppose that anybody can be so indolent, and so unprincipled, as not to exact from their children a regular attendance upon it. I sincerely exhort you, and beg of you now, for the last time, that after this institution has been got into some kind of order, you will not suffer it to fall to ruin by your own negligence. I have lived among your children, and have taught them myself, and have seen them improve, and I know it will make them better and happier men."
And now a change was at hand. The curate of Netheravon had never intended to stay there longer than he was obliged, and the "happy resurrection" for which he had hoped came in an unexpected fashion. Here is his own account of his translation, written in 1839:—
"The squire of the parish took a fancy to me, and requested me to go with his son to reside at the University of Weimar; before we could get there, Germany became the seat of war, and in stress of politics we put into Edinburgh, where I remained five years. The principles of the French Revolution were then fully afloat, and it is impossible to conceive a more violent and agitated state of society."
Sydney Smith and his pupil, Michael Beach,[13] arrived at Edinburgh in June 1798. They lodged successively at 38 South Hanover Street, 19 Ann Street, and 46 George Street. The University of Edinburgh was then in its days of glory. Dugald Stewart was Professor of Moral Philosophy; John Playfair, of Mathematics; John Hill, of Humanity. The teaching was at once interesting and systematic, the intellectual atmosphere liberal and enterprising. English parents who cared seriously for mental and moral freedom, such as the Duke of Somerset, the Duke of Bedford, and Lord Lansdowne, sent their sons to Edinburgh instead of Oxford or Cambridge. The University was in close relations with the Bar, then adorned by the great names of Francis Jeffrey, Francis Homer, Henry Brougham, and Walter Scott. While Michael Beach was duly attending the professorial lectures, his tutor was not idle. From Dugald Stewart, and Thomas Brown, he acquired the elements of Moral Philosophy. He gratified a lifelong fancy by attending the Clinical Lectures given by Dr. Gregory[14] in the hospitals of Edinburgh, and studied Chemistry under Dr. Black.[15] He amused himself with chemical experiments.—
"I mix'd 4 of Holland gin with 8 of olive oil, and stirr'd them well together. I then added 4 of nitric acid. A violent ebullition ensued. Nitrous oether, as I suppos'd, was generated, and in about four hours the oil became perfectly concrete, white and hard as tallow."
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