"Never did anybody to my mind
look more like a High Churchman, as he walked up the aisle to the
altar--there was an air of so much proud dignity in his appearance."
Perhaps this account of Sydney Smith's relations with St. Paul's Cathedral
cannot be better concluded than with some extracts from the noble sermon
which he preached there on the occasion of Queen Victoria's accession. It
is a remarkably fine instance of his rhetorical manner. It reveals an
ardent and sagacious patriotism. It breathes a spirit of fatherly interest
which excellently becomes a minister of religion, glancing, from the close
of a long life spent in public affairs, at the possibilities, at once awful
and splendid, which lay before the Girl-Queen.
The preacher, in his opening paragraphs, briefly announces his theme. His
starting-point is the death of the King.--
"From the throne to the tomb--wealth, splendour, flattery, all gone!
The look of favour--the voice of power, no more;--the deserted
palace--the wretched monarch on his funeral bier--the mourners
ready--the dismal march of death prepared. Who are we, and what are
we? and for what has God made us? and why are we doomed to thus frail
and unquiet existence? Who does not feel all this? in whose heart does
it not provoke appeal to, and dependence on, God? before whose eyes
does it not bring the folly and the nothingness of all things human?"
He pauses to pay a tribute to the honesty and patriotism of William IV.
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