William Smith

“ So gentle and patient, and withal so distinguished and successful a follower of science under difficulties, perhaps cannot be found in the entire history of biography.
The career of William Smith, the father of English geology, though perhaps less known, is not less interesting and instructive as an example of patient and laborious effort, and the diligent cultivation of opportunities. He was born in 1769, the son of a yeoman farmer at Churchill, in Oxfordshire. ”

“ The interesting thing about William Smith’s own literary enthusiasms is his love of eighteenth-century romanticism. In a thoroughly romantic temper he made himself a retreat by the falls of the Schuylkill, which he describes under the guise of Theodore, the Hermit, in his American Magazine, noting “the singular gloom of its situation,” hidden by “a romantic tuft of trees,” and made more lonely by surrounding waters. He could soon announce in his magazine that he had almost too many poems to draw from. ”

“ His store was the post-office, and there was a corner in it where the gold-diggers could write their letters and read the Silver Creek Herald and the Silver Creek Mercury. He had planned roads, and had some idea of using his influence for the laying-out of a township by the Government. In his way, William Smith was a small Moses; with room and opportunity and a thousand men at his back he could have laid the solid foundation of a great nation. ”

“ Henry Smith, Professor of Geometry, the wittiest, most learned, and most genial of Irishmen, said of a well-known man of science—"His only fault is that he sometimes forgets that he is the Editor, not the Author, of Nature." A great lawyer who is now a great judge, and has, with good reason, the very highest opinion of himself, stood as a Liberal at the General Election of 1880. His Tory opponents set on foot a rumour that he was an Atheist, and when Henry Smith heard it he said, "Now, that's really too bad, for--- is a man who reluctantly acknowledges the existence of a Superior Being." ”

“ It is, in my judgment, that Sydney Smith was a patriot of the noblest and purest type; a genuinely religious man according to his light and opportunity; and the happy possessor of a rich and singular talent which he employed through a long life in the willing service of the helpless, the persecuted, and the poor. To use his own fine phrase, the interests of humanity "got into his heart and circulated with his blood." ”

“ If it seems still more surprising that Smith's associates placed so little restraint on his business schemes, it must be remembered that none of his early colaborers—Rigdon, Harris, Cowdery, and the rest—was a better business man than he, and that he absolutely brooked no interference. It was Smith who decided every important step, as, for instance, the land purchases in and around Nauvoo; and men who would let him originate were compelled to let him carry out. We have seen how useless better business men like the Laws found it to argue with him on any practical question. ”

“ Too crowded either to advance or to retreat, their oars broken or impeded by collision with one another, their fleet lay like an inert and lifeless mass upon the water, and fell an easy prey to the Greeks. ”

“ William Henry Smith is a liberal Conservative in politics, an active member of the London School Board, a magistrate for the county of Herts, and a member of the Council of King's College. An able and ready debater, in the House of Commons his speeches are always listened to with marked attention, and his opinions carry great weight with them. ”

“ And Chloris if these weeping truce-men may
One spark of pity from thine eyes obtain,
In recompense of their sad heavy lay,
Poor Corin shall thy faithful friend remain;
And what I say I ever will approve,
No joy may be comparèd to thy love! ”

“ Three nymphs more fairer than those beautys three
Which did appear to Paris on mount Ide.
Coming more near, my goddess I there see;
For she the field-nymphs oftentimes doth haunt,
To hunt with them the fierce and savage boar;
And having sported virelays they chaunt,
Whilst I unhappy helpless cares deplore. ”

“ And now one nation speaks forth the word which all are struggling to utter, and soon every eye is turned upon France,—the theatre on which the new act in the drama of human history is to be acted; where freedom and right are once more to become realities; where man, no longer a mere appendage to the soil, is to start forth on a new career of activity and honour, and show the world the spectacle of an ennobled and regenerated race. ”

“ His troubles and differences were always with those above him, never with those under his command.
As is frequently the fate of the strong man gifted with an analytical mind, and an outspoken contempt of pretense and sham, it was Smith's misfortune upon more than one occasion to arouse the animosity and opposition of those having higher rank than himself. Direct and vigorous in his methods, and confident of the rectitude of his purposes, he never hesitated to give his views to such as he believed to be entitled to them, without reference to whether they would be well received or not. ”

“ What has the future in store for the Negro? If social equality must be resolutely denied him forever, if he is to be treated as an outcast and a pariah because of his race and the weight of inheritance which he can never shake off from his shoulders, what hope remains? Where are the blessings of freedom? Is, then, emancipation but an apple of Sodom, turning to ashes on his lips? ”

“ The enslaved of all nations rouse themselves at the shout of deliverance; the patriot’s heart throbs higher at the cry; the poet dreams of a new golden age; the philosopher looks with eager eye for the solution of the mighty problem of human destiny. All, alas! are doomed to disappointment; and over the grave where their hopes lie buried, a lesson of fearful significance stands inscribed in characters of desolation and blood, proclaiming to all ages that where the law of liberty is not written upon the soul, outward freedom is a mockery and unchecked power a curse. ”

“ And yet my Chloris draws her angry breath;
My hopes still hoping hopeless now repine,
For living she doth add to me but death.
Thy Phinis, dying, lovèd thee full dear;
My Chloris, living, hates poor Corin's love,
Thus doth my woe as great as thine appear,
Though sundry accents both our sorrows move.
Thy swan-like songs did show thy dying anguish;
These weeping truce-men show I living languish.
XV
These weeping truce-men show I living languish,
My woeful wailings tells my discontent;
Yet Chloris nought esteemeth of mine anguish,
My thrilling throbs her heart cannot relent. ”

“ But enough has been quoted to show that Sydney Smith, so far as he was in any sense concerned with philosophy, was a sworn foe to mysticism and ideality, and a worshipper of Baconian common-sense even in the sphere of mind and soul.
He was never tired of poking fun at his philosophical friends in Edinburgh. When sending some Scotch grouse to Lady Holland, he said—"I take the liberty to send you two brace of grouse—curious, because killed by a Scotch metaphysician: in other and better language, they are mere ideas, shot by other ideas, out of a pure intellectual notion called a gun." ”

“ Has it just happened that, in all quarters of the world and under all climatic and topographic conditions, East and West, North and South, beneath the tropics and within the frozen circles, by the sea and amid the mountains, in snow, in sand, in forest—that everywhere and everywhen the Caucasian has manifested the same all-conquering, overmastering qualities—not always good or kind or just, but always strong, always striving, always victorious? ”

“ But the spirit of Fichte’s philosophy is a proud and bold spirit, for which the domain of human knowledge, even in its widest extent, is too narrow; which opens up new paths at every step it takes; which struggles with language in order to wrest from it words enough for its wealth of thought; which does not lead us, but seizes and hurries us along, and whose finger cannot touch an object without bruising it to dust. ”

“ How glad am I to think that I give myself to one who can take me with these faults; who has wisdom and strength enough to love me with them all,—to help me to overcome them, so that I may one day appear with her, purified from all blemish, before Him who created us for each other!—Never have I been more sincerely penetrated by this feeling of my weakness, than since I received thy last letter, which reminds me of the poverty of all that I have said to thee ”

“ All day sad sighing Corin you shall see,
All night he spends in tears and exclamation.
Thus still I live although I take no rest,
But living look as one that is a-dying;
Thus my sad soul with care and grief oppressed,
Seems as a ghost to Styx and Lethe flying. ”

“ Such a mouthpiece of God can always enlighten his followers provided he can find speech, and Smith was not slow of utterance. While in jail in Liberty he had advised a committee which was sent to him from Illinois to sell all the lands in Missouri, and in a letter to the Saints, written while a prisoner, he spoke favorably of Galland's offer, saying, "The Saints ought to lay hold of every door that shall seem to be opened unto them to obtain foothold on the earth." ”

“ If then the Afro-American race stands even now at the entrance of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, what shall we say, what shall we do? Shall we weep and wail and gnash our teeth? Shall we lift up the trump of indignation against such red-handed iniquity? Shall we cry out to Heaven and to Congress against the crime of the centuries? We think that a much calmer and milder mood may well become us before such a thanatopsis. Why should the spectacle of a racial diminuendo so arouse or revolt us? Surely it is something neither unique nor uncommon. All that breathe will share their destiny. ”

“ His fancy is not flowing, but it is energetic and mighty;—his pictures are not charming, but they are bold and massive. He penetrates to the innermost depths of his subject, and moves about in the ideal world with an ease and confidence which proclaim that he not only dwells in that invisible land, but rules there. ”

“ More than a fair crop, like all other unfair operations, implies unfairness somewhere. If it be in the voiceless woes of the slave, the master is sadly the loser in the end. He who retains his steward with a view to extra crops by such means, may be likened to a barbarian king in Africa, but does not deserve to be ranked among masters in civilized life. All masters, I should think, owe it to themselves and to their slaves to give a great deal of personal attention to their farms. ”

“ The popular clamour against the Government of Great Britain was now at its height. The very name of England was such a by-word, that even immigrants learnt to evade a direct confession that that was their native land,—unless it so happened that the vengeful Pitt, by the advice and verdict of twelve good men and true, had been the cause of expatriation. The marble statue of Chatham had been hanged and afterwards beheaded, and the effigies of King George II. had been solemnly desecrated. The name of George III. was seldom heard in Philadelphia without being graced by some contumelious epithet. ”

“ Was of that nymph fair Syrinx coy disdained?
The world's great light which comforteth each thing,
All comfortless for Daphne's sake remained.
If gods can find no help to heal the sore
Made by love's shafts, which pointed are with fire,
Unhappy Corin, then thy chance deplore,
Sith they despair by wanting their desire.
I am not Pan though I a shepherd be,
Yet is my love as fair as Syrinx was.
My songs cannot with Phœbus' tunes agree,
Yet Chloris' doth his Daphne's far surpass.
How much more fair by so much more unkind,
Than Syrinx coy, or Daphne, I her find! ”

“ When I was a very little boy, I was, in the barley-sowing season, going along by the side of a field, near Waverley Abbey; the primroses and blue-bells bespangling the banks on both sides of me; a thousand linnets singing in a spreading oak over my head; while the jingle of the traces, and the whistling of the plough-boys saluted my ear from over the hedge; and, as it were to snatch me from the enchantment, the hounds, at that instant, having started a hare in the hanger on the other side of the field, came up scampering over it in full cry, taking me after them many a mile. ”

“ It is this immediate jewel of her soul that the South watches with such a dragon eye, that she guards with more than vestal vigilance, with a circle of perpetual fire. The blood thereof is the life thereof; he who would defile it would stab her in her heart of heart, and she springs to repulse him with the fiercest instinct of self-preservation. ”

“ To spare the life of an enemy in war, make him a prisoner, guard him as such, or make him labor as a slave for his support, is an advance of civilization. To continue to put the enemy to death to the end of the war, is the necessary condition of a state of war in uncivilized life. Such was the known condition of all the African population south of Egypt and the States of Barbary. Did not their condition appeal, as it still does, to the benevolence of the civilized world? ”

“ On 31 May 1850 Smith inspected the 1st battalion of the rifle brigade prior to its departure for England, and issued a very complimentary and characteristic general order. During this year there were warnings of a Kaffir rising. Smith summoned a meeting of chiefs, and went to King William's Town. The head chief, Sandili, refused to attend, and was deposed on 30 Oct., when Smith returned to Capetown. Sandili's deposition had no effect, and Smith had scarcely reached Capetown when he received accounts which made him hasten back to the frontier with all available troops. ”