To the hostelry, thus well victualled, and called by its owner "The Rector's Head," many interesting visitors found their way. Lord and Lady Holland, Miss Fox, Miss Vernon, Sir James Mackintosh, Sir Humphry Davy, Samuel Rogers, Dr. and Mrs. Marcet, and Francis Jeffrey were among the earliest guests. "Mrs. Sydney was dreadfully alarmed about her side-dishes the first time Luttrell[73] paid us a visit, and grew pale as the covers were lifted; but they stood the test. Luttrell tasted and praised."
The neighbours of whom the Smiths saw most were Lord and Lady Carlisle,[74] who drove over from Castle Howard[75] in a coach-and-four with outriders, and were upset in a ploughed field; their son and daughter-in-law, Lord and Lady Georgiana Morpeth, who with their children made "no mean part of the population of Yorkshire"; and the Archbishop of York, who became one of the Smiths' kindest and most faithful friends. Every year Sydney paid a visit to London, receiving the warmest of welcomes from all his old associates. In 1821 he revisited his friends at Edinburgh, and going or coming he visited Lord Grey at Howick, Lord Tankerville at Chillingham, Lord Lauderdale at Dunbar, and Mr. Lambton, afterwards Lord Durham, at Lambton. At Chillingham he duly admired the beef supplied by the famous herd of wild cattle, but he admired still more the magnificent novelty of gas at Lambton.--
"What use of wealth so luxurious and delightful as to light your house with gas? What folly to have a diamond necklace or a Correggio, and not to light your house with gas! The splendour and glory of Lambton Hall make all other houses mean. How pitiful to submit to a farthing-candle existence, when science puts such intense gratification within your reach! Dear lady, spend all your fortune in a gas-apparatus. Better to eat dry bread by the splendour of gas, than to dine on wild beef with wax candles!"
Another friend whom the Smiths visited regularly was Mr., afterwards Sir George, Philips, an opulent cotton-spinner of Manchester. Once, when staying with Philips, Sydney undertook to preach a Charity Sermon in Prestwich Church, and with reference to this he wrote in the previous week; "I desire to make three or four hundred weavers cry, which it is impossible to do since the late rise in cottons."