say that he has given us a new work. Whatever could wound anybody's feelings had been omitted; in other words, a very large proportion of whatever could throw light on the secret history of parties and public men in Lord Chesterfield's timevery many letters entirely-the most striking paragraphs of half the rest. The lacunae are now filled up as far as was possible-and the whole illustrated by notes, which we recommend to the study of all who may be tempted to undertake tasks of this description; for they are brief and clear-and wherever a judgment was called for, convey that of a sagacious mind in language as terse as the great kinsman himself could have employed. Lord Mahon has also collected and arranged the various letters that had more recently emerged in the Suffolk correspondence, the Marchmont Papers, Coxe's ponderous compilations, and elsewhere. We are, however, we must confess, somewhat surprised that his diligence has not brought out more of absolute novelty in this way. Mr. George Berkely, we know, had kept carefully some specimens of Chesterfield's epistolary vein, even of the boyish Cambridge time. The writer attained extraordinary repute in his earliest manhood, and he lived to the edge of eighty in the enjoyment of all but unrivalled admiration. With such social connexions and predilections, such literary habits and facility, his correspondence must have been vast-and even now we can have

Two scions of the old knightly house of Stanhope were raised to the peerage of James I. The elder (and only surviving) branch was advanced to the earldom of Chesterfield by Charles I., in whose cause its zeal and sufferings were conspicuous. Two of its cadets earned early in the next century by great public services the separate earldoms of Stanhope and Harrington; and in the former of these junior lines the succession of remarkable abilities has ever since been uninterrupted—a circumstance perhaps unique. We believe, taking the blood together, not one race in Great Britain has produced within the last two hundred and fifty years so many persons of real and deserved eminence; but still for the brilliant variety of his talents and attainments, the general splendor of his career, influence and fame, the fourth Earl of Chesterfield remains the facilè princeps of his house and name. Either as statesman or diplomatist, or orator, he stood below no contemporary who never held the prime management of a great party, and below but two of those who ruled the empire. As the ornament and oracle of the world of fashion, the model of taste and wit, and all per-seen but a very insignificant fragment of it. Where sonal graces and accomplishments, his supremacy was undisputed; but it is to his connexion with the literature and literary men of his age that he owes mainly the permanence as well as the prominence of his celebrity. He survives among us, and will survive, by reason of his connexion with Pope, Gay, Atterbury, Arbuthnot, Swift, Voltaire, Johnson; and (though we are far from undervaluing others of his writings) because his letters on the education of his son are in point of style a finished and classical work, contain instructions for the conduct of life that will never be obsolete, and constitute some of our most curious materials for estimating the moral tone of aristocratic society during a long and important period of English history.

These famous letters were published the year after his death, and have since gone through many editions; but it cannot be said that until now they had received even a decent measure of editorial care. Lord Mahon has (with a few trivial and proper omissions in the earlier part of the series) reproduced them entire, and for the first time filled up names left in blauk, and explained hints and allusions which the lapse of another generation would have condemned to hopeless obscurity. As the original editrix was actuated solely by motives of pecuniary interest, no addition to the text could be expected-she, we may be sure, printed every scrap that had been preserved. They are now, however incorporated with a more general correspondence which had been originally dealt with in a widely different manner. Bishop Chenevix and Mr. Dayrolles were friends of Chesterfield, and men of character and honor. In whatever they communicated to the public they had a just regard for the claims both of the dead and the living: if they erred at all, it was on the side of over-delicacy accordingly, the mutilations were severe; and as respects this, the larger share of his materials, when we compare Lord Mahon's copy with what we had had before, it is hardly too much to

is it? Even in those comparatively careless days, who could have burnt a letter of Lord Chesterfield's? We have no doubt that in the repositories of those who represent his various political and fashionable associates, innumerable relics must still be lying disinterred. Lord Mahon tells us that he inquired in vain at Bretby; but it was not there that we should have expected to find much

Lord Chesterfield was the last man to keep copies of his own letters-we should greatly doubt whether he ever wrote anything twice over in his life. But we are not told of any researches in places which we should have conjectured to be among the likeliest for discovery-at Castle Ashby, for instance, at Stanmer, at Clumber, or Longleat, or Hagley. Among his closest connexions was that with Mr. Waller, the last male representative of the poet, himself a man of extensive acquirements, an elegant scholar, through life a student. Where are the Waller MSS.? Has Mr. Upcott no information of their fate? Then, is there not reason to suppose that a very considerable body of Chesterfield papers exist in the Castle of Dublin? The earl's brief vice-royalty is on the whole the most honorable feature in his history. Some inedited letters or despatches of that date were quoted with effect a few years ago in the house of lords by the Marquis of Normanby; but though the noble editor's attention was thus directed to the point, the result is nil. He states that his applications were received with the anticipated courtesy both by Lord Normanby and by the present lord-lieutenant: but that in neither case were the desired documents placed at his disposal. Cosas de España:-we think it highly improbable that a trip to Dublin (within the last twelve months at all events) could have failed of its reward. But as no man ever devoted himself to the ladies with more zeal, or carried to the grave with him the reputation of more triumphant success in the quest of their favor, nothing certainly strikes us as stranger in this case than that so few speci

mens should have yet come out of the earl's cor- | heresies; but we believe he in this matter allowed respondence with the fair sex. That he hardly himself to be mystified by the eternal malice of spent a morning between his 20th and his 50th Horace Walpole, who hated Chesterfield with a year without penning some effusion of gallantry-perfect hatred, as son, as partisan, as rival witnulla dies sine lineû-we may assume as not less hated him as a substantive magnate, as far above certain than his regular observance of the toilette. the gossip of coats and crests as above accumulatThat letters of this class should not have been ing tea-pots and smelling-bottles-hated him even forthcoming at an earlier period, no one can be in his vices, not because they were vices, but besurprised-but we can scarcely think the heirs, cause they were manlier vices than his own. We or even the heiresses of the beauties concerned, infer from Lord Mahon's preface that Mr. Evelyn would feel any hesitation in now producing the Shirley is in possession of various things hitherto evidence of their appreciation by that peerless inedited; and if among these be any more characKnight of the Garter. Did the adorable Lady ters equal to those of Pope, Bolingbroke, Pulteney, Fanny Shirley, for example-of his devotion to Chatham, Newcastle and Bute or to that now for whom, the first time printed of Arbuthnot-the public would be very grateful for them. But at any rate Chesterfield's miscellaneous works have long been out of print; and his speeches, his political tracts, his essays on the follies and affectations of his day, his songs and metrical jeux d'esprit, all need and are well entitled to revision and illustration of the same kind that Lord Mahon has now bestowed on the gathered specimens of his Correspondence.*

"In that eternal whisper which begun

Prefixed to this collection is a sketch of the life and character of Chesterfield, extracted nearly ver batim from the third volume of Lord Mahon's History of England, with some additional matter explanatory of his immediate task and objects. The sketch is a very excellent one-concise yet com

Ten years ago, and never will be done," we have hardly any record but in this couplet of Hanbury Williams, and one or two not always decent songs by Chesterfield himself-did she preserve none of her worshipper's epistles? Did Madame de Monconseil destroy all but the evidently interrupted as well as mutilated series with which it was left for Lord Mahon to connect her name? We have no doubt the reception of these volumes will be such as to encourage further investigation not only in England and Ireland, but also in France, Italy, Germany, and Holland. No Englishman of the time had more intimate connex-prehensive, and in a style highly graceful. As a ions with foreign courts or with foreign literati. He was as much at home in France as Bolingbroke or Horace Walpole-as familiar with Germany as Sir C. H. Williams; he knew Italy well; and had a more thorough acquaintance with Holland than any other first-rate Englishman subsequent to Sir William Temple. Equally admired by Voltaire and Frederick of Prussia, (who used to call him L'homme d'Angleterre,) he contrived to keep quite clear of their feuds, and was cultivated and confided in by both to the last. But indeed if no man was more feared and dreaded for satiric wit than Chesterfield, and if, as we believe, no man ever paid dearer for the indulgence of that faculty in its results to his political ambition, it must be allowed that no great wit ever passed through the world with so few social quarrels. We may be sure he practised diligently the precept so often inculcated on his son-Be always ready to embrace any man whom you don't feel entitled or disposed to knock down."

chapter in a history, a preface to a series of letters, or, we may venture to say, as an article in a Review, nothing could be better. But if Lord Mahon should, as we hope he will, undertake a general edition of Chesterfield's works, we trust he will accompany it with a complete biography. Dr. Maty's is a wretched performance; it is true he did not live to correct it finally for the press; but at any rate he wrote so close on the time, and so entirely under the directions of the earl's widow, that it was impossible for him, even had his abilities been much greater than they were, to produce a satisfactory life of Lord Chesterfield. He is evidently in leading-strings where his pace is best, and then it is stiff and pompous to a most doctorial degree of absurdity. Wherever there was a point

*Of Chesterfield's lighter Essays, one of the best is that on the dress of women. Two classes are thus neatly disposed of Of the plain we read- Their dress must not rise above plain humble prose; any attempts beyond it amount at best to the mock-heroic, and excite laughter. An ugly woman should by We may also, we think, consider ourselves as all means avoid any ornament that may draw eyes upon her which she will entertain so ill. But if she endeavors, by dint of having a claim on Lord Mahon for a fuller collec- dress, to cram her deformity down mankind, the insolence of the tion than has as yet appeared of his celebrated re- undertaking is resented; and when a Gorgon curls her snakes to lation's miscellaneous works, both in prose and in charm the town, she would have no reason to complain of some avenging Perseus. Ugly women, who may more properly be verse. We know that some "Dialogues of the called a third sex than a part of the fair one, should publicly reDead" remain in manuscript, and have heard them nounce all thoughts of their persons, and turn their minds another way; they should endeavor to be honest good-humored highly commended by a most excellent judge. gentlemen: they may amuse themselves with field sports, and a They were, we suppose, inspired by his propensity cheerful glass; and, if they could get into Parliament. I should, for quizzing his solemn friend Lyttleton, and with-how a woman shall know she is ugly, and take her measures acfor my own part, have no objection to it. Should I be asked held from the press in tenderness to the respecta-cordingly. I answer that, in order to judge right, she must not ble victim. Several light pieces of verse, commonly ascribed to his pen, are only to be found in magazines of his day, or in books of elegant extracts. Others inserted as his by Maty, or Maty's successor in the confidence of Lady Chesterfield, are now known not to be his; though we can see not the least reason for supposing with Sir Egerton Brydges, (Collins Peerage, vol. iii.,) that the earl himself ever claimed in any sort the parentage of a stanza that did not belong to him. Sir Egerton, no doubt, disliked Lord Chesterfield for his sneers at the bibliomania, to say nothing of worse

believe her eyes, but her ears, and if they have not heard very warm addresses and applications. she may depend upon it, it was the deformity, and not the severity of her countenance that prevented them.

"There is another sort who may most properly be styled old offenders. These are exceedingly numerous: witness all the public places. I have often observed septuagenary great-grandmothers adorned, as they thought, with all the colors of the rainbow, while in reality they looked more like the decayed worms in the midst of their own silks. Nay, I have seen them proudly display withered necks, shrivelled and decayed like their mar had visited these forty years. The utmost indulgence I can alriage settlements, and which no hand but the cold hand of time low here is extreme cleanliness, that they may not offend more senses than the sight; but for the dress, it must be confined to the clergy and the tristibus."-Miscellaneous Works, vol. ii., pp. 48, 49.

of real delicacy or difficulty, he either flounders that we think the editor of the "Suffolk Letters " through a splash of unintelligible verbosity, or disproved it in the most conclusive manner more skips the whole matter with the lugubrious smirk than twenty years ago. But so difficult it is to of a German dancing-master. Not one of the ques- dislodge a fiction, however flagrant, which flatters tions that have in the sequel given rise to serious the ordinary mediocrity of our race, by representdebate is clearly propounded-far less have we an ing the acknowledged master in any department opinion on it, expressed with manly directness one of life to have been foiled in his own craft, when way or another. This is the led-chaplain style of practising it, as he supposed, with the utmost rememoir-less detestable only than that (now more finement of adroitness. That Chesterfield should in vogue) of the valet de chambre. Unfortunately not have understood the interior of the court of it so happens that Lord Mahon's sketch, having George II.-that it should have been his fate to be been originally drawn up for the purposes of a gen- dismissed from that court in 1732, and to have reeral history, omits entirely what are now for the mained in ignorance of the cause of his dismissal, majority of readers the most interesting of the till forty years afterwards Horace Walpole cleared vexed topics alluded to. We will instance the up the mystery by recalling and explaining a gautheory, gravely transmuted into solemn fact by cherie and a betise of Chesterfield's own-commitArchdeacon Coxe, that Chesterfield missed the fa- ted when the earl was in the thirty-eighth year of vor of George II., because he sought it by courting his age, and in the meridian of his courtly skill and Lady Suffolk instead of the queen; and the whole diplomatic celebrity-the heaviest of archdeacons story of his connexion with Dr. Johnson, the Bos- never chuckled over a more palpable mare's nest; wellian impression as to which is still so prevalent but how he came to imbed it in the stiff clay of his as to have inspired perhaps the most popular pic- own historic text without having taken the slightture in the Royal Academy's exhibition of May, est trouble to compare the charmingly precise and 1845. Lord Mahon is by talents and opportunities particular anecdote of a Horace Walpole with the better qualified than any other man in England to dates of about the most prominent events in Lord write a worthy life of Lord Chesterfield. It is Chesterfield's public career, is a specimen of inwanted and we shall be extremely sorry for his competency for the study of affairs such as Clarsake and our own if he does not supply this blank. endon himself could hardly have prognosticated for We hear with pleasure that his lordship is again in a cathedral close. Lord Chesterfield and Mrs. office for our experience is all in favor of Chester- Howard were intimately acquainted long before field's dictum-"the men who go through most the lady attracted the notice of Queen Caroline or business have most leisure." of George II. Their friendship continued all through the time when the lady's favor was at its height; and it was during that very time that Chesterfield occupied in succession all the distinguished offices in the family of George II. as Prince of Wales. On the opening of his reign Chesterfield-anno ætat. 32!-had the garter, and became at once Lord Steward of the Household and Ambassador to the Hague. Chesterfield remained at the Hague four years, till 1732, by which time it was well known to him, and to all Mrs. Howard's friends, that her influence had waned to a shadow. Immediately on his return to England he joined the parties who had coalesced for the overthrow of Sir R. Walpole. He engaged forthwith in the literary warfare against the minister, in which his wit and sarcasm rendered him most formidably efficient; and he was dismissed from his place in the household the instant that he threw off the mask, and took part in the parliamentary opposition to Walpole's great Excise Bill. He was dismissed on the second day after that bill was withdrawn; and on the same grounds as were dismissed at the same time from their places in the household, the Duke of Montrose, Lords Stair, Marchmont, and Burlington nay, so unbridled was Sir R. Walpole's resentment of that opposition, that he at the same moment deprived Lord Clinton not only of his place in the household, but of the lord-lieutenancy of Devonshire; and both the Duke of Bolton and Lord Cobham of their regiments in the army. This was the mysterious dismissal of April, 1732, which Horace Walpole expounded to Lord Chesterfield in 1771! As to Mrs. Howard, she became Countess of Suffolk in 1731-from the hour when that event had set her at ease in money matters, we see by her letters that she was well disposed to retire from court-but she did not leave it till 1735-three years after that dismissal of Chesterfield, to which Archdeacon Coxe represents her ladyship's retirement as the ominous preliminary!

Meanwhile, with his present preface before us, there would be considerable imprudence in atempting another sketch of the earl's life on the scale suitable for this journal. We shall, therefore, venture merely on a few sentences with reference to one or two of the circumstances that seem to be, even now, most commonly misapprehended or misrepresented. And first, let us take Walpole's story about Lady Suffolk, and its adoption by worthy Mr. Coxe. The archdeacon, in his Memoirs of Sir Robert Walpole, says :

"Lord Chesterfield had requested the queen to speak to the king for some small favor; the queen promised, but forgot it: a few days afterwards, recollecting her promise, she expressed regret at her forgetfulness, and added that she would certainly mention it that day. Chesterfield replied that her majesty need not give herself that trouble, for Lady Suffolk had spoken to the king. The queen made no reply: but on seeing the king, told him that she had long promised to mention a trifling request to his majesty, but it was needless, because Lord Chesterfield had just informed her that she had been anticipated by Lady Suffolk. The king, who always preserved great decorum with the queen, and was very unwilling to have it supposed that the favorite interfered, was extremely displeased with both Lord Chesterfield and his mistress; the consequence was, that in a short time Lady Suffolk went to Bath for her health, to return no more to court: Chesterfield was dismissed from his office-and never heard the reason till two years before his death; when he was informed by the late Earl of Orford (Hor. Walpole) that his disgrace was owing to his having offended the queen by paying court to Lady Suffolk."-Vol. ii., p. 283. (Edit. 1816.)

This story (embalmed of course in Walpole's own Memoirs of George II., which Coxe had not then seen) has since been repeated in we know not how many books and essays; and yet we must say

To conclude-Chesterfield's letters to the lady herself contain the clearest evidence that he all along completely understood the predominant influence of Queen Caroline.* And Lord Mahon has now, for the first time, printed a very curious fragment on the character of Lady Suffolk by Chesterfield, (vol. ii., p. 440,) which, if more proof were wanted, distinctly proves the same thing.

his birth was great and illustrious; there are some few such in the august Germanic body. This prince made him promise, that whenever he should return to England, he would make him a visit in his principality. Accordingly, about two years ago, he waited upon his serene highness; who, being apprised a little beforehand of his arrival, resolved to receive him with all possible marks of honor and distinction. My friend was not a little surprised to find himself conducted to the palace through a lane of soldiers resting their firelocks, and the drums beating a march. His highness, who observed his surprise, after the first compliments, spoke very gravely to him thus :

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6

We have been much obliged to the notes of the editor of the "Suffolk Papers." He is, however, mistaken in saying, (vol. ii., p. 85,) that Chesterfield never appeared at the court of George II. after the dismissal of April 13, 1732. Fourteen years, indeed, passed before he repeated the visit which immediately followed the withdrawal of his "I do not wonder that you, who are well inwhite wand; nor is it difficult to account for this, formed of the narrowness both of my territories without any sort of reference to the supposed hos- and my fortune, should be astonished at the numtility of Queen Caroline-who died in 1737. For ber of my standing forces; but I must acquaint some years previous to the death of George I., you, that the present critical situation of my affairs Chesterfield had been the favorite among many would not allow me to remain defenceless, while suitors for the hand of his majesty's daughter by all my neighbors were arming around me. There the Duchess of Kendal-Melosina de Schullen- is not a prince near me that has not made an augburg, created in her own right Countess of Wal-mentation in his forces, some of four, some of singham, and considered, as long as her father eight, and some even of twelve men; so that you lived, as likely to turn out one of the wealthiest must be sensible that it would have been consistheiresses in the kingdom. George I. opposed him- ent neither with my honor nor safety, not to have self to the young lady's inclinations in consequence increased mine. I have therefore augmented my of Chesterfield's notorious addiction to gambling. army up to forty effective men, from but eight-andShe took her own way, as ladies generally do, as twenty that they were before; but in order not to soon as circumstances permitted. Chesterfield's overburden my subjects with taxes, nor oppress dismissal from court had followed, as we have seen, them by the quartering and insolence of my troops, almost immediately on his return from a four years' as well as to remove the least suspicion of my deresidence in Holland-and within a few months signing anything against their liberties, to tell you more Lady Walsingham became Lady Chester- the plain truth, my men are of wax, and exercise field. Chesterfield's house in Grosvenor Square by clock-work. You may easily perceive,' added was next door to the Duchess of Kendal's, and he, that if I were in any real danger, my forty from this time he was domesticated with the mo- men of wax are just as good a security to me as if ther as well as the daughter. The ancient mis- they were of the best flesh and blood in Christentress suggested and stimulated legal measures re- dom: as for the dignity and show, they answer specting a will of George I., which George II. is those purposes full as well; and in the mean time said to have suppressed and destroyed, and by they cost me so little, that our dinner will be much which, as the duchess alleged, the late king had the better for it.' made a splendid provision for Lady Walsingham; -and at last, rather than submit to a judicial examination of the affair, George II. compromised the suit by a payment of £20,000 to the Earl and Countess of Chesterfield. These things were not likely to smooth the way for the ex-lord steward back to St. James'-they would be of themselves sufficient to account for his continued exclusion. But this was not all for during both the later years of Walpole, and under Walpole's immediate successors too, Chesterfield's wit was turned to no point more assiduously than that of ridiculing and disparaging the precious electorate and all its concerns. German connexions and subsidies-Ger- "I therefore humbly propose, that, from and man powers and principalities—were his perpetual after the 25th day of March next, 1736, the presbutt; nay, the military, and martinet, and army-ent numerous and expensive army be totally distailor propensities of George II. were exposed by this" wit among lords" and "lord among wits," as mercilessly as the innocent farming of George III. ever was by Peter Pindar. As his miscellaneous pieces, especially political, are now in few hands, we are not unwilling to give a specimen of his vein in this way, in the heyday of his vigor, and we submit part of one paper in Fog's Journal, (the Continuation of Mist's,) January 17, 1736

“My friend ****, having resided some time at a very considerable court in Germany, had there contracted an intimacy with a German prince, whose dominions and revenues were as small as

*See e. g. "Suffolk Letters," vol. ii., p. 84.

"My friend respectfully signified to him his sincere approbation of his wise and prudent measures, and assures me that he had never in his life seen finer bodies of men, better-sized, nor more warlike countenances.

"The ingenious contrivance of this wise and warlike potentate struck me immediately, as a hint that might be greatly improved to the public advantage. I have turned it every way in my thoughts with the utmost care, and shall now present it to my readers, willing however to receive any further lights and assistance from those who are more skilled in military matters than I am.

banded, the commission officers excepted; and that proper persons be authorized to contract with Mrs. Salmon, for raising the same number of men in the best of wax. The said persons be likewise authorized to treat with that ingenious mechanic, Myn Heer Von Pinchbeck, for the clock-work necessary for the said number of land forces.

"Infinite pains have been taken of late, but alas in vain, to bring up our present army to the nicety and perfection of a waxen one; it has proved impossible to get such numbers of men, all of the same height, the same make, with their own hair, timing exactly together the several motions of their exercise, and, above all, with a certain military fierceness that is not natural to British coun

ERTIES OF WAX.

tenances even some very considerable officers | first rank, if happily turned to mechanics, have have been cashiered for wanting SOME OF THE PROP- employed their whole lives in the incatenation of fleas, or the curious sculpture of cherry-stones; but none, that I have heard of, ever deviated into an attempt at wit. Nay, due care is taken even in the education of their princes, that they may be fit for something, for they are always instructed in some other trade besides that of government; so that, if their genius does not lead them to be able princes, it is ten to one but they are excellent turn

"By my scheme all these inconveniences will be entirely removed; the men will be all of the same size, and, if thought necessary, of the same features and complexion; the requisite degree of fierceness may be given them by the proper application of whiskers, scars, and such like indications of courage, according to the taste of their respective officers; and their exercise will, by the skillers." and care of Myn Heer Von Pinchbeck, be in the In a graver sheet of the same paper, (January, highest German taste, and may possibly arrive at 1739,) after much laudation of Hanover, we are the one motion, that great desideratum in our dis-told-cipline. The whole, thus ordered, must certainly furnish a more delightful spectacle than any hitherto exhibited, to such as are curious of reviews and military exercitations. But give me leave to say too, that an army thus constituted will be very far from being without its terror, and will doubtless strike all the fear that is consistent with the liberties of a free people.

"There cannot be a stronger instance of the advantages arising to a country from a wise and a frugal administration, than the great improvements of that electorate, under the successive government of his late and his present majesty. The whole revenues of the electorate, at the time of his late majesty's accession to the throne of these realms, did not amount to more than £300,000 a year; and yet soon afterwards the considerable

the electorate, notwithstanding that the expenses for the current service of the year equal, at least the revenue of Hanover, yet, by a prudent and frugal management, a million sterling at least has been laid out, over and above, in new acquisitions."

"Our British monarchs in the Tower are never beheld but with the profoundest respect and rever-purchases of Bremen and Verden were made for ence; and that bold and manly representation of above £500,000 sterling. Not long after this, the Henry VIII. never fails to raise the strongest im- number of troops in the electorate was raised much ages of one kind or another in its beholders. above what it was before thought able to maintain, My readers will observe, that I only propose a and has continued ever since upon that high estabreduction of the private men, for, upon many ac-lishment. Since his present majesty's accession to counts, I would by no means touch the commissions of the officers. As they are all in parliament, I might be suspected of political views, which I protest I have not. I would therefore desire that the present set of officers may keep the keys, to wind up their several regiments, troops, or companies; and that a master-key to the whole army be lodged in the hands of the general-in-chief for the time being, or, in default of such, in the hands of the prime minister. I would further provide, that, in the disbanding the present army, an exact account should be taken of every soldier's right of voting in elections; and that the like number of votes, and for the same places, shall be reserved to every regiment, troop, or company, of this new army; these votes to be given collectively by the officers of the said regiment, troop, or company, in as free and uninfluenced a manner as hath at any time been practised within these last twenty years.

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The players who get their parts by heart, and are to stimulate but for three hours, have a regard, in choosing those parts, to the natural bent of their genius. Penkethman never acted Cato; nor Booth, Scrub; and I would much rather be an excellent shoemaker than a ridiculous and inept minister of state. I greatly admire our industrious neighbors, the Germans, for many things; but for nothing more than their steady adherence to the voice of Nature; they indefatigably pursue the way she has chalked out to them, and never deviate into any irregularities of character. Thus many of the

* A firm of woollen-drapers in the Strand; the first of them was grandfather to Sir Horace Mann, the correspondent of Horace Walpole-who, by the way, in the "Memoirs of George III.," just published (vol. iv., p. 19,) expressly calls Mann his

cousin.

Small wonder that Chesterfield gained nothing by the downfall of Walpole, though no one had labored for that downfall with more persevering energy both of voice and pen. Small wonder that even in the second of the succeeding cabinets he found no place; it was more than sufficient that his friends should be able to nominate him for another mission to the Hague, and for the lieutenancy of Ireland, which he was allowed to hold with his embassy. He performed his Dutch business (as on the former occasion) with admirable skill-and repaired to the seat of his viceroyalty on the rumor of invasion in the autumn of 1745-but still without ever being admitted to the presence of his sovereign. It was the consummate prudence, firmness, and even now astonishing success of his brief Irish administration-his success in keeping Ireland perfectly tranquil all through the Jacobite insurrection-nay, in producing and maintaining, at such a juncture, a more general appearance of good will towards the English government than has ever since, we believe, been exhibited there during even so short a space as eight months together-it was this great service-especially as contrasted with the offence of his anti-Carteret friends in threatening a sirike at the very crisis of the rebellion-it was this that finally subdued the very excusable antipathy and jealousy of George II. The earl's gracious reception on his return to London, and the familiarity of the subsequent intercourse between him and the king, being narrated fully by Dr. Maty, besides being embellish

*It would seem that the "Memoirs of George II." had opened the eyes of Mr. Coxe; for in his later publication on the Pelham ministry, (vol. i., p. 346,) when he narrates these transactions, he does not recur to Horace Walpole's story about Lady Suffolk, but justly describes George II. as having, until 1746, "fostered a strong resentment against Chesterfield for his former virulent invectives against Hanoverian predilections.