PROFESSOR SMVTHE AND HIS OPINIONS. 161 



breeches, and white cotton stockings, powdered, with round shoul- 

 ders, and rather a stoop in his gait yes, he that is striding away 

 before us on the Trumpington Walk, with his hands behind him 

 his master's gown curiously tucked up into a roll, and most uncere- 

 moniously disposed of, as if it fettered the motions of the wearer, and 

 was an appendage he would gladly dispense with there goes the 

 boast of Peter-House, totally abstracted from the present, and revel- 

 ling in recollections of the past. 



" It is difficult, where there is so much that is admirable, to select 

 specimens of excellence. But his lecture on the Flight to Varennes 

 on Maria Theresa on the American War on the unfortunate 

 Antoinette and Frederick the Great, are those which are least likely 

 to fade from the recollection of his hearers. 



" His voice is peculiar. Your first impressions of it are unfavour- 

 able; that it is harsh, wiry, thin, and inharmonious. Yet, so com- 

 pletely does he identify himself with his subject, that those passages 

 which require irony or pathos ; lofty indignation, or winning in- 

 treaty; cutting rebuke, or generous pity; are delivered with a truth, 

 a fire, a force, and feeling, which set criticism at defiance. Those 

 who have observed him narrowly, will have noted two peculiarities 

 in his utterance of the words " squadron" and " bosom." Instead of 

 the generally received pronunciation, he sounds them as if written 

 " squaydron" and " biissum." 



" The following insulated passages are not hazarded with the inten- 

 tion of giving an adequate and complete idea of Professor Smythe's 

 lectures. I am thorougly sensible of the vanity of such an attempt. 

 But they may convey some idea. 



" The passages, as they appear here, were taken down in a note-book 

 in the lecture-room. The little given is, I believe, accurate. Those 

 best acquainted with his lectures, will be the first to admit the diffi- 

 culty of doing them justice. As one attempts to follow him, passage 

 after passage presents itself, of such exquisite beauty and brilliancy; 

 bursts of the purest pathos follow each other in such rapid succes- 

 sion, that you forget or abandon your intention, and throw down 

 your pencil in despair : 



Louis XIV. " He was in some respects unfortunate. He became a 

 ruler of the earth when quite an infant. His education was neglected. 

 His ruling passion was vanity the mere love of praise. He was an actor. 

 He was eternally uneasy and anxious for an audience. He was incessantly 

 desirous to exhibit. At his levees in his drawing-room on his terrace 

 at his meals he was ever acting the grand posture-maker of Europe. 

 Throughout the whole of the royal day he had his exits and his entrances. 

 It was for ever a drama, and the hero of the piece was Louis. Even at the 

 chapel it was the ' grand moriarque ' at his devotions. No ideas, however 

 overwhelming no apprehension of the sanctity of the Being he was address- 

 ing, seems for one instant to have banished from his view, the tinsel trum- 

 pery of human grandeur. 



" Out of forty-nine years, these bounded his reign he had twenty-nine 

 years of war. One million of men were sacrificed. A succession of battles 

 was to be fought, attended with the most frightful carnage : the tender were 

 to mourn, and the brave were to die ; that Louis might be called ' Great !' 

 At the close of his life, when the pageantry of power was about to cease for 



M.-M. No. 86. O 



