178 SMITH [WILLIAM.] before this migration. From being the idol of Lendon society to being the pastor of a country parish with no educated neighbour within 7 miles was a violent change ; but Sydney Smith accommodated himself cheerfully to his new circumstances, and won the hearts of his parishioners as quickly as he had conquered a wider world. Not the least entertaining chapter in his daughter's biography of him is the account of his Yorkshire life. An interest- ing contrast might be drawn between it and Carlyle's life in somewhat similar circumstances at Craigenputtock. Sydney Smith's life at Foston, with its cheerful energy and ingenuity, its vigorous jesting at difficulties and eccen- tric ways of conquering them, is of much better example, and moralists might do worse than put the story into form for general edification. 1 Sydney Smith, after twenty years' service in Yorkshire, obtained preferment at last from a Tory minister, Lord Lyndhurst, Avho presented him with a canonry in Bristol cathedral in 1828, and afterwards enabled him to exchange Foston for the living of Combe Florey near Taunton. From this time he discontinued writing for the Edinburgh Revieio on the ground that it was more becoming in a dignitary of the church to put his name to what he wrote. It was expected that when the Whigs came into power Sydney Smith would be made a bishop. There was nothing in his writings, as in the case of Swift, to stand in the way, for with all his humour and high spirits he had always, as he said himself, fashioned his manners and conversation so as not to bring discredit on his reverend profession. He had been most sedulous as a parochial clergyman. Still, though he was not without warm friends at head- quarters, the opposition was too strong for them. One of the first things that Lord Grey said on entering Downing Street was, "Now I shall be able to do something for Sydney Smith " ; but he was not able to do more than appoint him to a prebendal stall at St Paul's in exchange for the one of inferior value he held at Bristol. Lord Melbourne is reported to have said that there was nothing he more regretted than the not having made Sydney Smith a bishop. Some surprise must be felt now that Sydney Smith's reputation as a humourist and wit should have caused any hesitation about elevating him to the episcopal dignity, and perhaps he was right in thinking that the real obstacle lay in his being known as " a high-spirited, honest, uncompromising man, whom all the bench of bishops could not turn upon vital questions." With characteristic philosophy, when he saw that the promotion was doubt- ful, he made his position certain by resolving not to be a bishop and definitely forbidding his friends to intercede for him. This loss and the much more painful loss of his eldest son did not destroy the cheerfulness of his later life. He retained his high spirits, his wit, practical energy, and powers of argumentative ridicule to the last. His Letters to Archdeacon Singleton on the Ecclesiastical Commission (1837), and his Petition and Letters on the repudiation of debts by the State of Pennsylvania (1843), are as bright and trenchant as his best contributions to the Edinburgh Review. Smith died in London on 22d February 1845. Lady Holland's Memoir of her father, containing such specimens of his table talk as give one some idea of his charm and worth as a mirthful companion and philosopher, is one of the most interest- ing of biographies. A cheap edition of his Works was published in 1869. (W. M.) SMITH, SIR THOMAS (1512-1577), the contemporary and friend of Sir John Cheke, was born at Saffron -Walden in Essex in 1512. He became a fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge, in 1531, and was afterwards appointed to read the public Greek lecture, in the discharge of which function 1 See Lady Holland's Memoir, chaps, v., vi. Lady Holland, Sydney Smith's eldest daughter, was the wife of Sir Henry Holland, the famous physician, not of 'Lord Holland, as is sometimes absurdly stated. he first introduced the new Greek pronunciation, which soon became universal in England. After studying in France and Italy and taking a degree in law at Padua, he was appointed first regius professor of civil law in Cambridge in 1542. During Somerset's protectorate he entered public life and was sent as ambassador first to Brussels and after- wards to France. In 1548 he was made a secretary of state and knighted. On the accession of Mary he was deprived of all his offices, but in the succeeding reign was frequently employed in public affairs. He died in 1577. His best-known work, entitled De Republics Anglorum : the Maner of Government or Politic of the Rcalme of England, was pub- lished posthumously in 1583, and passed through many editions. His epistle to Gardiner, De recta et cmcndata linguee Grsecse, pro- nunciatione,a.5 printed at Paris in 1568 ; the same volume includes his dialogue De recta ct emcndata linguas Anglicanse, scriptione. SMITH, WILLIAM (1769-1839), called "the father of English geology," and among his acquaintances " Stratum Smith," will be generally remembered as the framer and author of the first complete geological map of England and Wales, and as the discoverer of the principle of the identifi- cation of strata by their included organic remains. He was born at Churchill in Oxfordshire on 23d March 1769. De- prived of his father, an ingenious mechanic, before he was eight years old, he depended upon his father's eldest brother, who was but little pleased with his nephew's love of collecting " pundribs" (Terebratufse) and " pound-stones " or " quoit-stones " (large Echinites, frequently employed as a pound weight by dairywomen), and had no sympathy with his propensity for carving sundials on the soft brown " oven-stone " of his neighbourhood. William became a mineral surveyor and civil engineer. In the former capa- city he traversed the Oolitic lands of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire, the Lias clays and red marls of Warwick- shire, and other districts, studying their varieties of strata and soils. In 1791 he surveyed an estate in Somersetshire and observed the strata of the district. In 1793 he executed the surveys and completed the levellings for the line of a proposed canal, in the course of which he confirmed a previous supposition, that the strata lying above the coal were not horizontal, but inclined in one direction to the eastwards so as to terminate successively at the surface, and to resemble on a large scale the ordinary disposition of the slices of bread and butter on a breakfast plate an illustration which he was wont to use on all occasions. On being appointed engineer to the Somerset Coal Canal in 1794, he was deputed to make a tour of observation with relation to inland navigation. During this tour, which occupied nearly two months, and extended over 900 miles, he carefully examined the geological structure of the country, and corroborated his preconceived generaliza- tion of a settled order of succession in the several strata, a continuity of range at the surface, and a general declina- tion eastwards. Five years subsequently he prepared a tabular view of the Order of the Strata, and their embedded Organic Remains, in the neighbourhood of Bath, examined and proved prior to 1799. From this period to 1812 he was completing and arranging the data for his large Geological Map of England and Wales, with part of Scot- land, which appeared in 1815, in fifteen sheets, engraved on a scale of 5 miles to 1 inch. The map was reduced to smaller form in 1819; and from this date to 1822 separate county geological maps were published in succes- sive years, the whole constituting a Geological Atlas of England and Wales. In January 1831 the Geological Society of London conferred on Smith the first Wollaston medal ; and the Government, at the request of several English geologists, conferred upon him a life-pension of 100 per annum. The degree of LL.D. he received from Dublin, at the meeting of the British Association in that city in 1835. At such meetings he was nearly always
