"He has put him there to spend his money, to lose what good qualities
he has, and to gain nothing useful in return. If men had made no more
progress in the common arts of life than they have in education, we
should at this moment be dividing our food with our fingers, and
drinking out of the palms of our hands."

It was just as bad when a lady sent her son to his own University.--

"I feel for her about her son at Oxford, knowing, as I do, that the
only consequences of a University education are the growth of vice and
the waste of money."

In 1792 Sydney Smith took his degree,[5] and now the question of a
profession had to be faced and decided. It was necessary that he should
begin to make money at once, for the pecuniary resources of the family,
narrow at the beat, were now severely taxed by his mother's failing health
and by the cost of starting his brothers in the world. At Oxford, he had
dabbled in medicine and anatomy, and had attended the lectures of Dr.,
afterwards Sir Christopher, Pegge,[6] who recommended him to become a
doctor. His father wished to send him as a super-cargo to China! His own
strong preference was for the Bar, but his father, who had already brought
up one son to that profession and found it more expensive than profitable,
looked very unfavourably on the design; and under paternal pressure the
wittiest Englishman of his generation determined to seek Holy Orders, or,
to use his own old-fashioned phrase, to "enter the Church." He assumed the
sacred character without enthusiasm, and looked back on its adoption with
regret. "The law," he said in after life, "is decidedly the best profession
for a young man if he has anything in him. In the Church a man is thrown
into life with his hands tied, and bid to swim; he does well if he keeps