They lived in different spheres, corresponding to the difference in
their genius. Sydney Smith had the more versatile and fruitful mind.
With restless energy he supported various characters, being equally
famous as a wit, Whig, Edinburgh reviewer, eloquent preacher, brilliant
man of society, and canon of Saint Paul's. His biographer well describes
him as a rough rider of subjects, and with surpassing good sense he
overran every problem with which the public mind was occupied. He was a
reformer, but it was after the English and not the French fashion. He
had unbounded respect for existing human blessings, believed in things
substantially as they were, and couldn't have been persuaded to try an
experiment that had much of hazard in it. A Frenchman is always at
home amid earthquakes and volcanoes and hurricanes, and the immediate
prospect of an end to everything that is and a beginning of something
the like of which never has been. The spirit of the great French
Revolution was to exterminate all the results of time up to that point,
and, having made a clear field, to begin over again.
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