“My old friends were glad to see me; some were turned Methodists, some had lost their teeth, some had grown very fat, some were dying, and, alas! many were dead. But the world is a coarse enough place; so I talked away, comforted some, praised others, kissed some old ladies, and passed a very riotous week.”[35] He writes to Moore, the poet: “DEAR MOORE: I have a breakfast of philosophers at ten, punctually, to-morrow--‘muffins and metaphysics, crumpets and contradiction.’ Will you come?” When Mrs. Smith is ailing at her new home in Somersetshire he says: “Mrs. S---- has eight distinct illnesses, and I have nine. We take something every hour, and pass the mixture between us.” One part of his suffering comes of hay fever, as to which he says: “Light, dust, contradiction--the sight of a dissenter--anything sets me sneezing; and if I begin sneezing at twelve, I don’t leave off till two, and am heard distinctly in Taunton (when the wind sets that way), a distance of six miles.” This does not show quite so large a reserve and continence of speech as we naturally look for in the clerical profession; but this, and other such do, I think, set the Rev. Sydney Smith before us, with his witty proclivities, and his unreserve, and his spirit of frolic, as no citations from his moral and intellectual philosophy could ever do. And I easily figure to myself this portly, well-preserved gentleman of St. Paul’s, fighting the weaknesses of the gout with a gold-headed cane, and picking his way of an afternoon along the pavements of Piccadilly, with eye as bright as a bird’s, and beak as sharp as a bird’s--regaling himself with the thought of the dinner for which he is booked, and of the brilliant talkers he is to encounter, with the old parry and thrust, at Rogers’s rooms, or under the noble ceiling of Holland House. _A Highlander._ Another writer--whose sympathies from the beginning were with the Liberalism of the _Edinburgh Review_ (though not a contributor till some years after its establishment) was Sir James Mackintosh.[36] A Highlander by birth--he was at Aberdeen University--afterwards in Edinboro’, where he studied medicine, and getting his Doctorate, set up in London--eking out a support, which his medical practice did not bring, by writing for the papers.