"
In 1830 he wrote to his friend Lady Holland about her son,[159] afterwards
General Fox:--
"I am very glad to see Charles in the Guards. He will now remain at
home; for I trust that there will be no more embarkation of the Guards
while I live, and that a captain of the Guards will be as ignorant of
the colour of blood as the rector of a parish. We have had important
events enough within the last twenty years. May all remaining events
be culinary, amorous, literary, or any thing but political!"
And so again, according to Lord Houghton, he said in later life:--
"I have spent enough and fought enough for other nations. I must think
a little of myself. I want to sit under my own bramble and sloe-tree
with my own great-coat and umbrella."
This is no fatty degeneration of the chivalrous spirit. It is merely the
old doctrine of Non-intervention speaking in a lighter tone.
An account of a man's personal characteristics must contain some estimate
of his aesthetic sense. This was not very strongly developed in Sydney
Smith. He admired the beauties of a smiling landscape, such as he saw in
the Vale of Taunton, and hated grimness and barrenness such as he
remembered at Harrogate. "I thought it the most heaven-forgotten country
under the sun when I saw it; there were only nine mangy fir-trees there,
and even they all leaned away from it.
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