This sermon was published by request, and the preacher apologized in the preface for "sending to the press such plain rudiments of common charity and common sense."
The beginning of 1829 was darkened by what Sydney Smith called "the first great misfortune of his life." On the 14th of April, his eldest son Douglas died, after a long illness, in his twenty-fifth year. His health had always been delicate, but, in spite of repeated illnesses, he had become Captain of the King's Scholars at Westminster,[96] and a Student of Christ Church. His epitaph says--"His life was blameless. His death was the first sorrow he ever occasioned his parents, but it was deep and lasting." On the 29th of April his father wrote--"Time and the necessary exertions of life will restore me;" but four months later the note is changed.--
"I never suspected how children weave themselves about the heart. My son had that quality which is longest remembered by those who remain behind--a deep and earnest affection and respect for his parents. God save you from similar distress!"
"I did not know I had cared so much for anybody; but the habit of providing for human beings, and watching over them for so many years, generates a fund of affection, of the magnitude of which I was not aware"
Sixteen years later, when he lay dying and half-conscious, the cry "Douglas, Douglas!" was constantly on his lips.
The prebendal stall at Bristol carried with it the incumbency of Halberton, near Tiverton; and Sydney Smith exchanged the living of Foston for that of Combe Florey in Somerset, which could be held conjointly with Halberton. On the 14th of July 1829 he wrote from the "Sacred Valley of Flowers," as he loved to call it:--
"I am extremely pleased with Combe Florey, and pronounce it to be a very pretty place in a very beautiful country. The house I shall make decently convenient."
"I need not say how my climate is improved. The neighbourhood much the same as all other neighbourhoods. Red wine and white, soup and fish, commonplace dulness and prejudice, bad wit and good-nature. I am, after my manner, making my place perfect, and have twenty-eight people constantly at work."
"I am going on fighting with bricklayers and carpenters, and shall ultimately make a very pretty place and a very good house." "I continue to be delighted with the country. My parsonage will be perfection. The harvest is got in without any rain. The Cider is such an enormous crop, that it is sold at ten shillings a hogshead; so that a human creature may lose his reason for a penny."