THE LIFE OF
tion to the inhabitants, heading the subscription to the starving Irish with a donation of £5. In the same year he gave £10 to the Middlesex Hospital.
'It was not till he reached his sixty-eighth year that Mr. Smith retired from the premises and the sphere he had so long adorned. He then gave up the business to his sons, and retired with his wife to a pleasant residence on Stamford Hill.
He retained his superior faculties to the last; for, at the time when there was so much stir about the Nineveh Marbles, he went, though very infirm, to see them, and, with his usual sound sense, remarked that they did not answer his expectations: as there was so much marble in the country, and also Derbyshire spar, he wondered that Government had not new articles manufactured, instead of sending abroad for old things which were cracked already.
At the age of seventy Mr. Smith died, universally respected, and was buried in the cemetery at Kensall Green.
'And is this all?' cries the indignant reader.
All? I am amazed at your asking such a question! I should have thought you had had enough of it! Yes, it is all; and to tell you a secret, which, of course, I would not proclaim to the world, I should not be in the least surprised if your biography, up to the present date, is not one bit better worth writing.
What have you done, I should like to know? and what are you, and what have you been, that is better worth recording than the sayings and doings recorded here? You think yourself superior? Well, you may be, certainly; and to reflect that you are, is a comfort-
