On the 3rd of June Sydney wrote:--
"We are going through our usual course of jokes and dinners. One
advantage of the country is that a joke once established is good for
ever; it is like the stuff which is denominated _everlasting_, and
used as pantaloons by careful parents for their children."
In the following autumn the Smiths paid a flying visit to France, The
crossing from Dover was terrific; but Sydney comforted himself with the
reflection that, "as I had so little life to lose, it was of little
consequence whether I was drowned, or died, like a resident clergyman, from
indigestion."
France gave him the same pleasure as it had always given him.--
"Paris is very full. I look at it with some attention, as I am not
sure I may not end my days in it. I suspect the fifth act of life
should be in great cities: it is there, in the long death of old age,
that a man most forgets himself and his infirmities."
"I care very little about dinners, but I shall not easily forget a
_matelote_ at the Rochers de Cancale, an almond tart at Montreuil, or
a _poulet a la Tartare_ at Grignon's, These are impressions which no
changes in future life can obliterate."
Before the year ended, he was established in London. The remaining ten
years of his life saw him, in spite of some bodily infirmities, at the
summit of his social fame.
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