It appears to us that Sidney Smith is most perfectly at home--most entirely in his element--when discussing the "active powers" of man, or those impulses in which originate the practical business of life. Scarcely, if at all, secondary in point of excellence to his remarks on these topics, are those which he makes on the sublime and beautiful (a fact for which many will not be prepared), and on wit and humor (which every body will have expected). The least conclusive and satisfactory of his discussions are those which relate to the intellectual powers, or the anatomy of mind. With reference to this part of the course, however, it must be kept in remembrance that here, more than in the other two departments, he was fettered by the necessity of being popular in his language, and brief and striking in his illustrations, in order to keep within the range of the understandings and intellects of his auditory. These earlier lectures, too, survive in a more fragmentary and dilapidated condition than the rest. And after all, even where we seem to miss a sufficiently extensive and intimate acquaintance with the greatest and best writers on the subjects handled, or a sufficiently subtle and precise phraseology, we always find the redeeming qualities of lively and original conception, of witty and forcible illustration, and of sound manly sense most felicitously expressed. In the general tone and tendency of the lectures there is something Socratic. There is the pervading common sense and practical turn of mind which characterized the Greek philosopher. There is the liberal tolerance, and the moral intrepidity. There is the amusement always insinuating or enforcing instruction. There is the conversational tone, and adaptation to the tastes and habits of the social circle. We feel that we are listening to a man who moves habitually in what is called the best society, who can relish and add a finishing grace to the pleasures of those portions of the community, but who retains unsophisticated his estimate of higher and more important matters, and whose incessant aim is to engraft a better and worthier tone of thought and aspiration upon the predominating frivolity of his associates. Nothing can be more graceful or charming than the way in which Sydney accommodates himself to the habitual language and thoughts of his brilliant auditory; nothing more manly or strengthening than the sound practical lessons he reads to them. Such a manual should now be invaluable to our aristocracy. Let them thoroughly embue themselves with its precepts, and do their best to act as largely as possible upon its suggestions. They can have no better chance of maintaining their position in the front of English society.