nor a Premier. One wrong begets another, of like brood and kind with itself. Τὸ γὰρ δυσσεβὲς ἔργον μετὰ μὲν πλείονα τίκτει, σφετέρα δ' εικότα γέννα.* The cup which in his youth he tranquilly suffered a nobler soul to drain to the dregs, how should he refuse in his declining years to put his lips to the margin? Let him try its taste with the best face he can, without superfluous whinings or complainings. He need not be unnecessarily apprehensive of its effect; it will not act on him as it did on a nobler nature. The chill and callous organisation of the egotist will receive no more than a beneficial stimulus from the potion which is death to the generous soul. The darts which would find their way direct to the frank and open heart, will fall blunt and powerless long before they reach those hidden and inaccessible recesses of his own, cased as it is in a triple mail of coldness, secrecy, and self-delusion. Should a stray one, piercing that elephantine hide, awaken an unwonted smart, our pity would be steeled by the reflection,-"Pallas te hoc vulnere, Pallas immolat," and we should watch the flow of blood, with no apprehension of a serious effect, but with feelings of pleasure, arising from the sense of a somewhat satisfied justice. What, then, is the moral of the whole matter? A short and simple extensive influence and popularity. It is this, indeed, which renders his example more peculiarly baneful and demoralising, for, owing to the favour he has gained by his recent measures, the hollowness and insincerity of his previous career are by many wholly overlooked. The admiration lavished on such a policy as this, must exercise a most pernicious influence, injurious to the character of public men, and of the nation at large. Every thing that can counteract this mistaken tendency, would be a real benefit; and it is chiefly with this view that we have been induced to contribute our mite in an otherwise ungenial task. But when we find skilful insincerity receiving the praises due only to disinterested virtue, we feel called upon to lift our feeble voice against so fatal a delusion. The prospect, by no means improbable, of his return to power, renders such efforts still more important. For such an event is far more likely than many would be inclined to deem. However deserted he may be by his old friends, a new and rising party is gathering around him, and the old champion of the High Tories is become the flower of the Ultra Radicals. The strongest hopes are entertained by these of his speedy return to the post of Minister. We are told, as quoted above, that he is to be triumphantly borne into power on the shoulders of the people, and in that enviable position to remain as long as he pleases; a sort of perpetual Grand Vizier. He has made friends, it would appear, with the Mammon of the Cotton Lords, that when the Landlords failed they might receive him into everlasting habitations. That he has sufficient popularity and influence for this purpose is not to be questioned, and the jealousies of the two great rival parties are likely to be favourable to his views. If it be true that he has all along been working to this consummation, that his secret and steady aim has been to come out as the Popular Minister of the movement, however severely his previous conduct must be censured, we cannot deny it a certain amount of skill. We Revenge and wrong bring forth their kind : The foul cubs like the parents are." hope, however, that it will meet with the ill success that it deserves. It is impossible to think that a character like this, however able, is fitted to govern the nation. That the popular will, whatever it may be, will be readily executed by him, is perfectly clear; but something more than this is necessary to constitute a good Minister. They must indeed be a peculiar kind of Liberals who would gladly ally themselves with such a leader as this. "License they mean, when they cry liberty, For who loves that must first be wise and good." Now their chosen master, Sir Robert, has unfortunately placed himself in such a position, that he cannot be both wise and good. His course must either have been very much mistaken, or very insincere, so that if he be wise he cannot be good, and if he be good he cannot be wise. It is impossible, therefore, that he can be both, though perfectly possible that he may be neither. We cannot, then, congratulate the Ultra party upon the acquisition that they have made; and if as friends they find reason to be satisfied with their new champion, they will be the first of his friends who have done so. Surely, however, we are not yet so badly off, but that we may find men both wiser and better for our Ministers. Let us hope that the new government, in spite of its very inauspicious commencement, may at least, by its honesty and sincerity, form a brilliant contrast to its predecessor. They have a great task before them, one which will test their worth and their abilities to the utmost, and afford the amplest scope to their energies; viz. the improvement of the social condition of the labouring classes. Let them know at once, and let them openly proclaim it, that this will require far higher and more extensive principles than those of political economy; that it will not be accomplished by the "competition" or by the "state of nature " proposed by an Episcopal economist, nor by the mere process of buying in the cheapest and selling in the dearest market. Nay, let them be well assured that it will require an infringement of this sacred principle, however blasphemous it may sound in the ears of our Liberal cottonocracy. It will require an interference with the market of labour, and with the lordly privileges of capital. They must be prepared to encounter the censure of many a dogmatic economist, the odium of many a wealthy capitalist, and even the ingratitude of many of the people upon whom their benefits shall be conferred. The problem is one for which their predecessor, Sir Robert, was evidently totally unfitted, for it will require minds above the spirit of the time, Statesmen who must anticipate, not follow, the reigning popular doctrines. Their present conduct will show whether they are really Liberals, or merely false and empty assumers of the name; whether they are in possession of the high and true principles which conduce to the virtue and happiness of States, or whether, like the mass, they are principally engrossed in commercial and industrial doctrines. It cannot be disguised that they have made a very poor beginning, disgraceful to their name and to their former achievements; let us hope that shame may serve to stimulate them for the future to something more glorious and honourable. Sir Robert Peel's conduct will serve them in many matters as a useful example, as a solemn warning, as a practical illustration of the homely adage, that "honesty is the best policy." We have seen enough of the evils entailed by a masked and disingenuous policy, which delights in allowing people to deceive themselves. Let us now contrast with it the advantages of a sincere, open, and consistent course. Let us profit by the late Premier's career ás an example, in which case it will not have been without its use; and let us, by so doing, avoid the disgrace of falling again under his power. Printed by William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh. BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. No. CCCLXXVI. FEBRUARY, 1847. VOL. LXI. MEMOIR OF THE LATE JOHN WILLIAM SMITH, OF THE INNER TEMPLE, BARRISTER-AT-LAW. BY SAMUEL warren, of THE INNER TEMPLE, BARRISTER-AT-LAW. But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, THE name of John William Smith, barrister-at-law, of the Inner Temple, now appears, possibly for the first time, before nineteen-twentieths of the readers of Blackwood's Magazine. It is that, however, of a remarkable and eminent man, just cut off in his prime, before he had completed his thirty-seventh year: having as yet lain little more than a twelvemonth in his grave, to which he had been borne by a few of his sorrowful and admiring friends, on the 24th of December, 1845. Another eminent member of the English bar, Sir William Follett, belonging to the same Inn of Court, and also cut off in the prime of life, while glittering in the zenith of his celebrity and success, had been buried only five months previously. I endeavoured to give the readers of this Magazine, in January 1846, some account of the character of that distinguished person; and Mr. MILTON.-Lycidas. Smith, learning that Iwas engaged upon the task, with morbid anxiety repeatedly begged me to show him what I was writing, up to within a few weeks of his own decease: a request with which, for reasons which will become obvious to the reader of this sketch, I declined to comply. With Sir William Follett's name all the world is acquainted: yet I venture to think that the name of John William Smith has greater claims upon the attention of readers of biography. His character and career will, it is believed, be found permanently and intrinsically interesting,at once affecting, inspiriting, and admonitory. He fell a martyr to intense study, just as that competent and severe body of judges, the English bench and bar, had recognised his eminent talents and acquirements, and the shining and substantial rewards of unremitting exertion were beginning to be showered upon him This narrative was originally composed in the third person; but so much of it consists of my own personal intercourse with Mr. Smith, that the use of that circuitous form of expression became as irksome to the writer, as he thinks it would have proved tedious and irritating to the reader. VOL. LXI.-NO. CCCLXXVI. He came to the bar almost totally unknown, and was destitute of any advantages of person, voice, or manner. His soul, however, was noble, his feelings were refined and exalted; and, when he departed from the scene of intense excitement and rivalry into which his lot had been cast, those who had enjoyed the best opportunities for forming a true judgment of him, knew not whether more to admire his moral excellence or his intellectual eminence, which shone the more brightly for the sensitive modesty which enshrouded them. Many have expressed surprise and regret that so interesting a character should fade from the public eye, without any attempt having been made by his friends to give a full account of his character and career. I was one of his very earliest friends; witnessed the whole of his professional career, shared his hopes and fears, and, with two or three others, attended upon him affectionately to the very last. During the year which has since elapsed, I have reflected much upon his character, and had many opportunities for ascertaining the respect with which his memory is cherished in the highest quarters. I shall endeavour, therefore, though with great misgivings as to my competency for the task, to present to the reader an impartial account of my gifted friend: no one else, with one exception, having, up to this time, undertaken the task. * John William Smith, the eldest of eight children, was of a highly respectable family: his father having died in 1835, Vice-treasurer and Paymastergeneral of the Forces in Ireland. Both his parents were Irish-his mother having been a Miss Connor, the sister of a late Master in Chancery, in Ireland. They lived, however, in London, where the subject of this memoir was born, in Chapel Street, Belgrave Square, on the 23d January, 1809. From the earliest period at which note could be taken of their manifestation, he evinced the possession of superior mental endow ments. No one is less disposed than the writer of this memoir, to set a high value upon precocious intellectual development. Observatum fere est, says Quinctilian, in his passionate lamentation for the death of his gifted son, celerius occidere festinatam maturitatem. † The maturity, however, of John William Smith, far more than realised his early promise, and renders doubly interesting any well-authenticated account, and such I have succeeded in obtaining, of his early childhood. When advanced not far from infancy, he appears to have been characterised by a kind of quaint thoughtfulness, quick observation, and a predilection for intellectual amusements. He was always eager to have poetry read to him, and soon exhibited proofs of that prodigious memory, by which he was all his life pre-eminently distinguished, and which has often made the ablest of his friends imagine that with him, forgetting was a thing impossible. Before he knew a single letter of the alphabet, which he learnt far earlier, moreover, than most children, he would take into his hand his little pictured story-book, which had been perhaps only once, or possibly twice, read over to him, and pretend to read aloud out of it: those overlooking him scarcely crediting the fact of his really being unable to tell one letter from the other; for he repeated the letterpress verbatim, from beginning to end. This feat has been repeatedly witnessed before he had reached his third year. To all the friends of Mr. Smith in afterlife, this circumstance is easily credible: for the quickness of his memory was equalled by its tenacity, and both appeared to us almost unequalled. When three years old, he read with the greatest facility all such books as are usually put into the hands of children; and his delight was to act, in the evening, the fable which he had read in the morning — and a reader insatiate he even then appeared to be. Between his third and sixth year, he had read, effectually, many books of See an eloquent but brief sketch, of W. Smith, in the Law Magazine for February 1846, by Mr. Phillimore, of the Oxford Circuit, one of his most accomplished friends. + Lib. vi. pro m history, especially those of Greece, Rome, England, and France; acquiring with facility what he retained with the utmost fidelity. He seems to have been, at this time, conscious of possessing a strong memory, and pleased at testing it. When not five years old, he one day put the parts of a dissected map, consisting of a hundred pieces, into his father's pocket, and then called for them again one by one, without having made a single mistake, till he had finished putting them together on the carpet. At this early period, also, he displayed another first-rate mental quality, namely, the power of abstraction-one by which he was eminently distinguished throughout his subsequent life. When a very young child, he was frequently observed exercising this rare power lost to all around him, and evidently intent upon some one object, to the exclusion of all others. Thus, for instance, he would often be occupied with a play of Shakspeare, while sitting in the corner of the drawingroom, in which were many persons engaged in conversation, or otherwise doing what would have effectu. ally interrupted one who was not similarly endowed with himself. One of his brothers often played at chess with him, with closed folding doors between them, the former moving the chess-men for both, and the latter calling out the moves, without ever making an erroneous one, and frequently winning the game. His partiality to poetry, from almost his infancy, has been already noticed: and it is to be added, that he was equally fond of reading and writing verses. One of his relatives has at this moment in her possession a "Poem" from his pen, in pencilled printed characters, before he had learned, though he learned very early, to write, entitled, "The Mariner's Return." Till very recently, also, the same lady possessed another curious relic of this precocious child,-namely, a prose story; the hero of which was a peasant boy, whom he took through almost all the countries of Europe, and through many vicissitudes, finally exalting him to the post of Prime Minister to Henry VIII. The knowledge of geography and history displayed in this performance, is declared by those who have read it, to be truly wonderful. Shortly after he had reached his eighth year, he was sent to a school at Isleworth, kept by a Dr. Greenlaw, and remained there four years. I have heard him frequently describe his first arrival at the school, and several incidents attending it, in such a manner as showed him then to have had great shrewdness and keenness of observation. One, in particular, struck me at the time as illustrative of his stern sense of right, and habits of reflection, at that very early period. "I remember," said he, "that soon after I had got to school, a big boy called me aside, and told me very seriously that I must prepare for a terrible flogging on Saturday morning, and that however well I behaved, it would signify nothing, for it was an old custom at the school to flog a little boy on his first Saturday, before the whole school, by way of example, and to make him behave well. I was horribly frightened at this; but the first thing that struck me, and kept me awake a good while thinking of it, was, how very unjust a thing it was to do this; and I thought so much of this, that I do believe I was at length far more angry than frightened. Of course, when Saturday came, I found it had been all a joke only; but I always thought it a very disagreeable and improper joke." I have several times heard Mr. Smith mention this little circumstance, and I have above given many of his own expressions. He used to proceed to describe the reasonings which he had held in his own mind upon this subject, all which, he said, he vividly recollected; and it was certainly both curious and interesting to hear how he puzzled himself in trying to find out "reasons why it might be right to flog him under these circumstances." Dr. Greenlaw was not slow in discovering the extraordinary abilities of the little new-comer, and used to describe them in glowing terms to his father; but would add that, much as he admired the child's talent and diligence, he entertained a still higher opinion of the little fellow's perfect modesty, his seeming unconsciousness of his mental superiority over his companions, his honesty and simplicity of |