Earls."[26] And even the imperious mistress[27] of the house found her
match in Sydney Smith, who only made fun of her foibles, and repaid her
insolence with raillery. Referring to this period, when he had long
outlived it, he said:--

"I well remember, when Mrs. Sydney and I were young, in London, with
no other equipage than my umbrella, when we went out to dinner in a
hackney coach (a vehicle, by the bye, now become almost matter of
history), when the rattling step was let down, and the proud, powdered
red-plushes grinned, and her gown was fringed with straw, how the iron
entered into my soul."

One of the most useful friends whom the Smiths discovered in London was Mr.
Thomas Bernard,[28] afterwards a baronet of good estate in Buckinghamshire,
and a zealous worker in all kinds of social and educational reform. Mr.
Bernard was Treasurer of the Royal Institution in Albemarle Street, which
had been founded in 1799; and, with the laudable desire of putting a few
pounds into a friend's pocket, he suggested that Sydney Smith should be
invited to lecture before the Institution. The invitation was cordially
given and gratefully accepted. The lecturer chose "Moral Philosophy" for
his subject, and the Introductory Lecture, in which he defined his terms,
was delivered on the 10th of November 1804. The second and third lectures
dealt with the History of Moral Philosophy; the fourth, with the Powers of
External Perception; the fifth, with Conception; the sixth, with Memory;
the seventh, with Imagination; the eighth, with Reason and Judgment; and
the ninth, with the Conduct of the Understanding.

These lectures were treated by the author as forming one course, their
general subject being "The Understanding." In February 1805 he wrote to his
friend Jeffrey:--"I got through my first course I think creditably; whether