It appears that I was not incapable of appreciating a good sermon when I heard one, for I read of the impression produced upon me by an "admirable sermon preached by Mr. Smith" (it must have been Sydney, I take it) in the Temple Church. The preacher quoted largely from Jeremy Taylor, "giving the passages with an excellence of enunciation and expression which impressed them on my mind in a manner which will not allow me to forget them." Alack! I _have_ forgotten every word of them! I remember, however, perfectly well, without any reference to my diary, hearing--it must have been much about the same time--Sydney Smith preach a sermon at St. Paul's, which much impressed me. He took for his text, "Knowledge and wisdom shall be the stability of thy times" (I write from memory--the memory of half a century ago--but I think the words ran thus). Of course the gist of his discourse may be readily imagined. But the manner of the preacher remains more vividly present to my mind than his words. He spoke with extreme rapidity, and had the special gift of combining extreme rapidity of utterance with very perfect clearness. His manner, I remember thinking, was unlike any that I had ever witnessed in the pulpit, and appeared to me to resemble rather that of a very earnest speaker at the hustings than the usual pulpit style. His sentences seemed to run downhill, with continually increasing speed till they came to a full stop at the bottom. It was, I think, the only sermon I ever heard which I wished longer. He carried me with him completely, for the century was in those days, like me, young. But if I were to hear a similarly fervid discourse now on the same subject, I should surely desire some clearer setting forth of the difference between "knowledge" and "wisdom." It was about this time, _i.e._, in the year 1839, that my mother, who had been led, by I forget what special circumstances, to take a great interest in the then hoped-for factory legislation, and in Lord Shaftesbury's efforts in that direction, determined to write a novel on the subject with the hope of doing something towards attracting the public mind to the question, and to visit Lancashire for the purpose of obtaining accurate information and local details. The novel was written, published in the then newly-invented fashion of monthly numbers, and called _Michael Armstrong_. The publisher, Mr. Colburn, paid a long price for it, and did not complain of the result. But it never became one of the more popular among my mother's novels, sharing, I suppose, the fate of most novels written for some purpose other than that of amusing their readers. Novel readers are exceedingly quick to smell the rhubarb under the jam in the dose offered to them, and set themselves against the undesired preachment, as obstinately as the naughtiest little boy who ever refused to be physicked with nastiness for his good.