"
While the new Rectory House at Foston was building, the Rector was wholly
engrossed in the work. "I live," he wrote, "trowel in hand. My whole soul
is filled up by lath and plaster." He laid the foundation-stone in June
1813, and took possession of the completed edifice in March 1814. "My house
was considered the ugliest in the county, but all admitted that it was one
of the most comfortable."[68] It remains to the present day pretty much as
Sydney Smith left it. A room on the ground-floor, next to the drawing-room,
served the threefold purposes of study, dispensary, and justice-room. As a
rule, he wrote his sermons and his articles for the _Edinburgh_ in the
drawing-room, not heeding the conversation of family and visitors; but in
the "study" he dosed his parishioners; and here, having been made a Justice
of the Peace, he administered mercy to poachers. He hated the Game-Laws as
they stood, and it stirred his honest wrath to reflect that "for every ten
pheasants which fluttered in the wood, one English peasant was rotting in
gaol." So strong was his belief in the contaminating effects of a
prisoner's life that he never, if he could help it, would commit a boy or
girl to gaol. He sought permission to accompany Mrs. Fry on one of her
visits to Newgate, and spoke of her ministry there as "the most solemn, the
most Christian, the most affecting, which any human eye ever
witnessed.
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