faults, yet a fault nobly repaired, or repented of, adds to the respect and interest which a character inspires. By her showing, then, Mr. Sydney Smith was by nature quick and hasty, but always struggled against the failing, and made many regulations to avoid exciting any such emotions; and when he did give way, it often excited his biographer’s admiration to see him gradually subduing his chafed spirit, and to observe his dissatisfaction with himself till he had humbled himself and made his peace, it mattered not with whom, groom or child. “He could not bear the reproaches of his own heart.” So Mr. Henry Rogers observes of Locke, and his success, by dint of “immense pains” taken, in subjugating his choleric propensity, that his anxiety for its complete subjugation appears in his never being so angry with another as he always was with himself—for being angry. Those who are conversant with the journal and letters of Dr. Chalmers, may remember how often that good man takes himself to task for infirmities of temper, and how strenuously he resolves to strive to keep down every tendency to irritation when in company, to “try to maintain a vigorous contest with this unfortunate peculiarity of my temper,” to “school down every irritable feeling;” and how remorsefully he records such instances as getting “into a violent passion with Sandy,” and getting “ruffled with Jane,” in a manner and to a degree “quite unchristian.” Passages abound such as, “Now is the time for reflecting on the evils of intemperate passion;” “erred egregiously this evening in venting my indignation;” “I may at least ward off the assaults of anger;” “erred in betraying my anger to my servant and wife;” “constant visitations of indignancy; this exceedingly wrong: there is not a greater foe to spirituality than wrath.” “O my God, deliver me from all rancour and much irritableness,”[41] etc., etc. “Here,” to apply the lines of Wordsworth’s son-in-law,— “Here was a temper less by nature tuned Than harmonized by discipline to rule, And by religion sanctified to peace.”