ed with some lively caricatures by Horace Wal-so many affairs, he answered, “Because I never pole, we are somewhat surprised that the truth of put off till to-morrow what I can do to-day." the case should have escaped the sharp-sighted Chesterfield was also the first to introduce at Dubeditor of the Suffolk Correspondence. lin-long as it had reigned in London-the prinChesterfield now exchanged his lord lieutenancy ciple of impartial justice. It is no doubt much for the office of secretary of state in England-a easier to rule in Ireland on one exclusive principle change alike unfortunate for himself, for his sove- or on another. It is very easy, as was formerly reign, and, we are most seriously persuaded, for the case, to choose the great Protestant families the permanent interests of the empire. He came for Managers,' to see only through their eyes, to take part in an administration with the heads of and to hear only through their ears; it is very which he never cordially agreed on the main ques-easy, according to the modern fashion, to become tion of their foreign policy; and a variety of col- the tool and champion of Roman Catholic agilisions, the details of which are no longer of tators; but to hold the balance even between both; general interest, produced his resignation of the to protect the establishment, yet never wound seals in 1748-which proved to be his final retire- religious liberty; to repress the lawlessness, yet ment from official life-he being at that time only not chill the affections, of that turbulent but warmin the fifty-fourth year of his age, and in the full hearted people; to be the arbiter, not the slave, possession of talents and experience such as no of parties: this is the true object worthy that a contemporary surpassed. Had he continued in statesman should strive for, and fit only for the Ireland for but a few years more-heartily ani- ablest to attain! I came determined,' writes mated as he was with an interest in the country, a Chesterfield many years afterwards, to proscribe warm love of the people, a thorough conviction no set of persons whatever, and determined to be that a course of steady impartial government, a governed by none. Had the Papists made any fixed discountenancing of jobs of every sort and attempt to put themselves above the law, I should kind, and the cordial promotion of national indus- have taken good care to have quelled them again. try in all departments-the whole administration It was said that my lenity to the Papists had conducted on the principle of fostering whatever wrought no alteration either in their religious or was at once Irish and good, and of discouraging their political sentiments. I did not expect that it whatever needlessly irritated the prejudices of a would; but surely that was no reason for cruelty naturally generous and affectionate race of men- towards them.' Yet Chesterfield did not harshly had Lord Chesterfield been allowed to remain in censure, even where he strongly disapproved; but Dublin for ten years in place of eight months, we often conveyed a keen reproof beneath a goodthink it almost impossible that he should not have humored jest. Thus, being informed by some exaccomplished more for the civilization of the asperated zealot that his coachman was a Roman people, the improvement of the country's re- Catholic, and went every Sunday to mass-Does sources, and the obliteration of its long-descended he, indeed?' replied the lord lieutenant, I will feuds and bitternesses, than could have been looked take good care that he shall never drive me there!' for from twenty years of any lord lieutenant since When he first arrived at Dublin, a dangerous rethe revolution. It was a grievous blunder that bellion was bursting forth in the sister kingdom, removed from Ireland, which needed a first-rate and threatened to extend itself to a country where man, a first-rate man for whom the first place was so many held the faith of the young Pretender. not open in England, and who could nowhere be With a weak and wavering, or a fierce and headsatisfied long to fill any place but the first. long lord lieutenant-with a Grafton or a Strafford We cannot refuse ourselves a quotation from Lord Mahon : there might soon have been another Papist army at the Boyne. But so able were the measures of "Chesterfield's second embassy to Holland, in Chesterfield; so clearly did he impress upon the 1745, confirmed and renewed the praises he had public mind that his moderation was not weakness, acquired by the first. So high did his reputation nor his clemency cowardice; but that, to quote his stand at this period, that Sir Watkin Wynn, own expression, his hand should be as heavy as though neither his partisan nor personal friend, Cromwell's upon them if they once forced him to once in the house of commons reversed in his favor raise it ;'-so well did he know how to scare the Clarendon's character of Hampden, saying that timid, while conciliating the generous, that this Lord Chesterfield had a head to contrive, a tongue alarming period passed over with a degree of tranto persuade, and a hand to execute, any worthy quillity such as Ireland has not often displayed action. At home his career, though never, as I even in orderly and settled times. This just and think, inspired by a high and pervading patriotism, wise-wise because just-administration has not deserves the praise of humane, and liberal, and failed to reward him with its meed of fame; his far-sighted policy. Thus, after the rebellion, while authority has, I find, been appealed to even by all his colleagues thought only of measures of those who, as I conceive, depart most widely from repression-the dungeon or the scaffold-disarm-his maxims; and his name, I am assured, lives in ing acts and abolition acts-we find that Chesterfield was for schools and villages to civilize the Highlands.' But undoubtedly the most brilliant and useful part of his career was his lord lieutenancy of Ireland. It was he who first, since the revolution, made that office a post of active exertion. Only a few years before, the Duke of Shrewsbury had given as a reason for accepting it, that it was a place where a man had business enough to hinder him from falling asleep, and not enough to keep him awake! Chesterfield, on the contrary, left nothing undone, nor for others to do. Being once asked how he was able to go through the honored remembrance of the Irish people, as, perhaps, next to Ormond, the best and worthiest in their long vice-regal line."-Vol. i., pp. 9–11. This eloquent passage is now reproduced exactly as it first appeared in 1839. We cannot read it over without again expressing our hope that Lord Mahon may yet expand and illustrate its statements. There are some apparent inconsistencies in Chesterfield's language, and conduct too, as to the Irish Romanists, on which Burke has left us a fierce commentary in the letter to Sir H. Langrishe, but as to which we think it probable the archives of Dublin Castle might yet furnish a vindication. To these points Lord Mahon makes pamphlet is given to Lord Marchmont, who, no allusion; and, as matters stand, they are suf- Horace adds, had nearly lost his own place in conficiently puzzling. We think even here he might sequence. To this piece of evidence we can ophave said more on the good effects in Ireland of pose the opinion of Horace Walpole himself at a what was precisely the source of his chief difficul- later date; for in his "Memoirs of George II." he ties and disasters in his political career at home. expressly calls it "Chesterfield's book"—and, The wit of the viceroy had a thousand charms for moreover, we have now before us the copy of the the Irish, and no terrors. He was not afraid of "Apology" sold at the Strawberry Hill Auction, joking with anybody he could give and take with and on its title-page in Horace's autograph are equal readiness; and even what to us now-a-days these words-" Lord Chesterfield's.". It is possiseem very indecorous jokes, to have come from a ble, however, that Lord Mahon placed more reman of his years, to say nothing of his station, liance on Chesterfield's own disclaimer at the time were enjoyed and reciprocated at Dublin with most to Mr. Dayrolles, viz., "Upon my word and honor, unceremonious glee. Lord Mahon does not for- so far am I from having any hand directly or indiget the remarkable fact that during the whole of rectly in it, that I do not so much as guess the his lieutenancy, as also while secretary of state author, though I have done all I could to fish him afterwards, the earl had resolution to abstain out." (April 8, 1748.) But, in the first place, wholly from the gaming-table, though it is well the very formality and solemnity of this disclaimer, known that he reäppeared at White's the very addressed to his intimate friend the resident at the evening he resigned the seals. It is proper to add Hague, would to us have seemed very suspicious; that he exerted himself in every way, by precept for it is clear, from not a few passages (now first and by example, and with considerable success, to published) in his correspondence with this very put down the habits of deep drinking in Irish gentleman, that Chesterfield had no faith in the society; and no lieutenant could have had a post-office. He says to Dayrolles shortly before chance of success in that direction unless one dis- his resignation, (January, 1748,) “Write to me posed and qualified to enter freely into all the un- from time to time as usual-but remember I shall brutal parts of convivial enjoyment-one capable be no longer master of the post-therefore let no of reconciling even George Faulkener by copious- letter that comes by it contain anything but what ness of merriment to scant of claret. We fear he will bear an opening previous to mine," (vol. iii., set a bad enough example as to some other mat- p. 238,) and in April, after he had resigned, he ters, but even this promoted his popularity with says, "Don't send me the name in a letter by the high and low. We fear also that Lord Chester- post, for I know that most letters to and from me field's patronage of the Roman Catholics (such as are opened," [ibid., p. 257.] We put Chesterthat was a much nearer approach to patronage, field's denial to Dayrolles, in a word, on the same at all events, than they had experienced since foot with Swift's denial of his concern in Gulliver 1688) had its root, partly at least, in his general to Pope and Arbuthnot, and account for it in the indifference to religion; but on that subject we shall say something by-and-by. Meantime he condensed much wisdom into his parting sentence to the Bishop of Waterford-"Be more afraid of Poverty than of the Pope." same way. Secondly, it is impossible to read the pamphlet and believe that Lord Chesterfield read it without a suspicion who wrote it. It could have come from no man but one intimately conversant with the interior state of the cabinet, and with the Chesterfield resigned the seals in 1748-and secret occurrences of Chesterfield's own vexed whoever was the penman of the once celebrated career as secretary. We have no doubt the tract entitled "An Apology for a late Resigna- pamphlet was dictated by Chesterfield, and think it tion," we have no doubt that it states truly the most likely that Mallet, not Marchmont, held the ground of his retirement-namely, his aversion to pen. Some few inelegancies in the language are the war and his resentment of his cousin New-probably marks of Mallet's hand-but these, and castle's interference with the proper patronage of even certain inflated compliments to Lord Chesterhis office. That he at the time meant his retire- field's wit, may have been studiously introduced ment to be final, Lord Mahon seems to believe by the master himself-parts of his blind. fully-but here we cannot agree with the editor. On his resignation, George II. offered him a We consider it much more probable that he would dukedom; but Chesterfield, whom so many think have been very willing to take office again-upon of as a perfect peacock of vanity, declined that disthe great changes produced by the death of Pel-tinction. He did not approve of Lord Johns and ham especially-but for the sad, to him of all men Lord Charleses. the most grievous, infirmity of deafness, whichwithin but a few years after 1748-though it might not materially interfere with his efficiency as a parliamentary orator,* must have unfitted him for watching and participating in the tide of debate, as would have been expected from an official leader in the house of lords. As to the authorship of the "Apology," Coxe, on the authority of Bishop Douglas, ascribes it to Mallet (Life of Lord Walpole, vol. ii., p. 206.) Lord Mahon (vol. iii., p. 254) does not allude to this claim, but seems to attach more weight to a letter of Horace Walpole to Sir H. Mann, (December, 1748,) where the Even Horace Walpole admits to Mann, in December, 1743, that the finest speech he ever heard was one of Chesterfield's Horace had heard, when he wrote this, his own father, and Pul teney, and Carteret, and Wyndham, and Mansfield, and Chatham. During his brief tenure of the seals as secretary occurred that address and dedication to him of the plan or prospectus of the English Dictionary with which Boswell's narrative still connects in the popular mind impressions bitterly adverse and (we think) quite unjust to Lord Chesterfield. We fancy few take the trouble to reflect on the actual positions of the earl and Johnson in November, 1747. Samuel Johnson was anno ætat. 38, not our and Boswell's Dr. Johnson. Boswell himself never saw him till sixteen years later. Visiting London in 1760 he had a glimpse of a chance through-Derrick the poet, but that failed. In 1761 he had another glimpse through-Sheridan the elocutionist, but that failed. In May, 1763, his hopes were crowned-by an introduction in the back shop of Tom Davies! But what had excited even Boswell's nervous curiosity even in 1760?— con was really entitled to Between 1747 and then Johnson had shot up to a giant In 1747 he had published nothing that we now value him for except his " London," and his Life of Savage. By 1760 he was the Doctor, the author of the Rambler and the Adventurer, of Rasselas, and of the Dictionary, &c., &c.; and even then we see what were the sort of channels through which a gentleman of birth, fortune, and talents, an enthusiastic admirer of his works twice failed, and ultimately succeeded, in getting access to his society. In 1747 Chesterfield was fiftythree, and secretary of state. Johnson's good friend, Dodsley, the bookseller, suggested that it would be well to address the plan to the brilliant and literary minister-but Dodsley had no acquaint-quaintance of a literary man fifteen years his ance with my lord, and Johnson waited on him in person with his prospectus, whereupon he had patched sundry elaborate eulogies of the patron in fore-phrases most magniloquent, which he must have concocted with some twinges of conscience, as Chesterfield, though a scholar and a wit, was at least as well known as a gambler, a voluptuary, an infidel-and a whig. We need not repeat the immortalized grievances of his alleged receptionhe had the secretary's approval of the plan, but what his friend Tyers calls the "substantial proofs of approbation," were limited to one donation of ten guineas-and Samuel Johnson, beside being actually kept waiting one day for some time in the secretary's antechamber, had the mortification to see Colley Cibber come out as he was invited to walk in. Kept waiting!-Samuel Johnson had not had much experience of Whitehall. Only ten guineas! He had received no more for his "London" he got but fifteen in 1748 for his "Vanity of Human Wishes." "Sir," said he to Boswell in reference to another yet later payment-" Ten pounds were to me at that time a great sum. junior, and known to none of his friends-or, if Boswell falls back on the mere furthering of the approved prospectus, were Johnson's own public proceedings during the interval such as would naturally inspire confidence in his industrious prosecution of the gigantic labor of the programined Dictionary. As to Johnson, we have already mentioned that during those eight years he was before the world as author of an uninterrupted series of important writings, none of them in any way connected with the Dictionary; some of them, ("Rasselas" and the "Imitation of Juvenal," especially,) such as a man like Chesterfield might naturally enough think little likely to proceed from a diligent lexicographer's desk; each of them and all in their sequence and patent results such as must be supposed to operate largely for the pecuniary benefit of the author, and the encouragement of his booksellers as to whatever else he might have in hand. But what was the bodily condition of Lord Chesterfield during these eight years when Johnson was keeping himself before the world as novelist, biographer, essayist, and poet, though all the while guiding, directing, and animating the corps of humble scribes associated with him in the unseen toils of the Dictionary? One would have thought that everybody must have read at least Voltaire's tale, "Les Oreilles du Comte de Chesterfield." Mr. Croker says: "Why was it expected that Lord Chesterfield should cultivate Johnson's private acquaintance? That he did not do so was a loss to his lordship; and the amour propre of Johnson might be (as, indeed, it probably was) offended at that neglect, but surely it was no ground for the kind of charge which is made against his lordship. "The neglect lasted, it is charged, from 1718 to 1755; the following extracts of his private letters to his most intimate friends will prove that during that period Lord Chesterfield may be excused for not cultivating Johnson's society Boswell could not deny that when, after an interval of eight years, Johnson's Dictionary was at last published, Chesterfield recommended it promptly and efficaciously by two papers in "The World" but he calls this a courtly device" to cover the "neglect" of the intervening years, and ascribes Johnson's famous letter to indignation mainly at this " courtly device." Imprimis, the plan or prospectus was admirably written, but still it was only a plan. Its writer was known to Chesterfield merely as a clever Grub-street author-the companion of the Savages-the hack of Cave and Dodsley. How could he be sure that the plan would ever be executed? Are either earls as earls, or earls as secretaries of state, expected now-were they really expected then-to provide "substantially" for the support of any stranger who announces a great literary work while he shall be composing the work-a work which possibly he may have no serious intention to compose -a work which very possibly he may never be able to complete, (for the cleverest do not always calculate exactly the quid valeant humeri)—a work, finally, which if composed and completed well, is sure to turn out highly profitable to somebody-be.' but not assuredly to the earl or the secretary! Secundo, notwithstanding Johnson's sonorous puffs of the earl's taste and genius, his plan was without question addressed to the earl because he was the secretary. Now he ceased to be the secretary very soon after the plan was submitted to him-in about four months after that awful waiting in the salle des pas perdus; and might he not be excused if he put the same construction on the puffs that we do, and considered that if the announced lexi "20th January, 1749.- My old disorder in my head hindered me from acknowledging your former letters.' "30th June, 1752.-'I am here in my hermitage, very deaf, and consequently alone; but I am less dejected than most people in my situation would "11th Nov., 1752.- The waters have done my head some good, but not enough to refit me for social life.' "16th Feb., 1753.-'I grow deafer, and consequently more "isolé" from society every day.' 10th Oct., 1753. I belong no more to social life, which, when I quitted busy public life, I flattered myself would be the comfort of my declining age.' 16th Nov., 1753.-I give up all hopes of cure. 66 7th Feb., 1754.- At my age, and with my shattered constitution, freedom from pain is the best I can expect.' 1st March, 1754.-I am too much isolé, too much secluded either from the busy or the beau monde, to give you any account of either.' I know my place, and form my plan accord-| but still Johnson, a lover of wit, had no objection ingly, for I strike society out of it.' to a lord. Boswell once dined with him at a duke's table, and candidly allows that he never saw him so courteous or more brilliant. On the whole, therefore, we think it probable that if any such common friend as Topham Beauclerk, or Wyndham, had brought them together in after days, we should have had the record of another scene as edifying as the one when John Wilkes squeezed the lemon on the doctor's roast veal, and gave him a bit more of the kidney. In that case even Chesterfield's infirmity could hardly have been an obstacle-for surely, if ever voice was deafnessproof, it was Samuel Johnson's. "25th Sept., 1754. In truth, all the infirmities of an age still more advanced than mine crowd upon me. In this situation you will easily suppose that I have no pleasant hours.' 10th July, 1755.- My deafness is extremely increased, and daily increasing, and cuts me wholly off from the society of others, and my other complaints deny me the society of myself.' Johnson, perhaps, knew nothing of all this, and imagined that Lord Chesterfield declined his acquaintance on some opinion derogatory to his personal pretensions."-Croker's Boswell, vol. i., P. 245. 66 Boswell's editor has been equally successful in clearing up the history of the famous Letter itself. Chesterfield showed it at the time to some of his friends-nay, kept it openly on his table, and took a pleasure, as it seemed to them (though Boswell considers this another "courtly device,") in pointing out the skilfulness of some of its vituperative turns and phrases. Johnson, on the other hand, to his credit be it said, seems to have repented of his violence very soon after it was committed. He never made a show of the letter. Importunate curiosity and adulation, and the doctor's own authorly vanity, induced him near twenty years afterwards to give Bozzy a copy—but he gave it under the strictest injunctions of secrecy, and when subsequently urged by the rhinoceros-skinned recipient to withhold no longer such a masterpiece from the gaze of the world, he sternly refused, saying, "I have done the dog too much mischief already." Nothing but the inveterate mania of toadyism and lionizing could have made a gentleman born like Boswell adopt the notion that men of literary or scientific eminence have a right, merely as such, to be cultivated as private acquaintance by either secretaries of state or Earls of Chesterfield;that they or their friends for them should ever condescend to complain of what Boswell in this story over and over calls "neglect," is to our view most melancholy and most degrading. We must add, whatever were Chesterfield's faults, he had none of those which Boswell on this occasion ascribes to him—and which Boswell would have been the last to say a word about, had there still been any chance of an invitation to Chesterfield House or Blackheath-the faults which do often keep men of high rank aloof from the society of persons inferior to them only in worldly station, and consequently in the minora moralia of manner and address. 66 We have already alluded to Walpole's "Memoirs of the Last Years of George II.," as decisive of his ultimate opinion as to the substantial authorship of the "Apology" of 1748. As the passage had escaped Lord Mahon's recollection, and as it is perhaps the very chef-d'œuvre of Horace Walpole's cold deliberate malice, we may as well pause to extract it from the huge quarto in which it as yet lies entombed. It is Horace's résumé, on having to state that the alteration of the style of 1752 was adopted on the motion of Lord Chesterfield—the government shrinking from such a proposal as likely to disturb the prejudices of the old women. February, 1751.-Lord Chesterfield brought a bill into the house of lords for reforming our style according to the Gregorian_account, which had not yet been admitted into England, as if it were matter of heresy to receive a calendar amended by a pope. He had made no noise since he gave up the seals in 1748, when he published his Apology for that resignation. It was supposed to be drawn up by Lord Marchmont, under his direction, and was very well written; but to my Lord Chesterfield's great surprise, neither his book nor his retirement produced the least consequence. From that time he had lived at White's, gaming, and pronouncing witticisms among the boys of quality. He had early in his life announced his claim to wit, and the women believed in it. He had besides given himself out for a man of great intrigue, with as slender pretensions; yet the women believed in that too-one should have thought they had been more competent judges of merit in that particular! It was not his fault if he had not wit; nothing exceeded his efforts in that point: and though they were far from producing the wit, they at least amply yielded the applause he aimed at. He was so accustomed to see people laugh at the most trifling things he said, that he would be disappointed at finding nobody smile before they knew what he was going to say. His speeches were fine, but as much labored as his extempore sayings. His writings were—everybody's: that is, whatever came out good was given to him, and he was too humble ever to re** We need not repeat what has been said fuse the gift. a thousand times, that his dwelling so pertinaciously on external trifles in the letters to his son was the consequence merely of the son's peculiar position and defects. In his own person the earl was a most polished, but yet by no means a fastidious man. He could keep company with a set of Irish squireens just as pleasantly as with the élite of St. James' or Versailles. For he was a student of man-human manners were his special lifelong study-and no man ever did study manners with true delight and diligence who had the misfortune to be emasculated by over-nicety. Johnson's mere manners were certainly in general bad enough: In short, my Lord Chesterfield's being the instrument to introduce this new era into our computation of time will probably preserve his name in almanacs and chronologies, when the wit that he had but labored too much, and the gallantry that he could scarce ever execute, will be no more remembered."-Memoirs, vol. i., pp. 44-46. To balance this Strawberry-hill view of Chesterfield we consider it is only fair to subjoin the same "noble author's" character of Dr. Johnson, from the newly published and closing volumes of his "Memoirs of the First Ten Years of George III." :— 66 "With a lumber of learning and some strong | being the result of that father's own transgression. parts, Johnson was an odious and mean character And when one reflects on the mature age and latby principle a Jacobite, arrogant, self-sufficient, terly enfeebled health of the careful unwearied and overbearing by nature, ungrateful through preacher of such a code, the effect is truly most pride, and of feminine bigotry. His manners were disgusting; which feeling is not diminished by our sordid, supercilious and brutal, his style ridicu- reading, in the original preface of Mrs. Eugenia lously bombastic and vicious; and in one word, Stanhope, that Lord Chesterfield was "ever anxwith all the pedantry he had all the gigantic little-ious to fix in his son a scrupulous adherence to ness of a country schoolmaster."-Vol. iv., p. 297. the strictest morality"-that it was "his first and When Chesterfield was dead, and the letters to most indispensable object to lay a firm foundation his son published, Johnson, as everybody knows, in good principles and sound religion;"-after said they taught the morals of a strumpet and the which it is hardly worth while to quote Chestermanners of a dancing-master-but he subsequently field's own occasional injunctions, such as your admitted that "a very pretty book" might be moral character must be not only pure, but, like picked out of them. In our younger days we Cæsar's wife, unsuspected-the least blemish or remember a little book compiled in consequence speck on it is fatal ;"-or to notice the dead silence, probably of the doctor's hint-and if, as we be- from first to last, as to religion, unless we must lieve, it has fallen out of print, it is a pity that except a passage where the Old Testament is menthis should be so. The remarks on punctuality, tioned as one of the books needful for giving order, despatch, the proper use of time-on the "some notion of history"-or the many enthucheapness and vast value of civility to servants siastic eulogies of Voltaire, amidst which not one and other inferiors-and so forth-all these are syllable is ever whispered as to the infidel tendency instinct with most consummate good sense and of all the writings of the first of poets"-though knowledge of life and business, and certainly no-some caution against infidel talk in society is once thing can be more attractive than the style in introduced-on the sole ground of its not being which they are set before young readers. Lord universally acceptable. Mahon says: the same. We give Lord Chesterfield full credit for his "It is by these letters that Chesterfield's char- parental zeal and anxiety; in this respect he was acter as an author must stand or fall. Viewed as very amiable; but we are afraid he went to his compositions, they appear almost unrivalled as grave-he certainly drew up his last will-without models for a serious epistolary style; clear, elegant, ever having reflected seriously on the nature of his and terse, never straining at effect, and yet never own dealings with his son's mother, or on-to hurried into carelessness. While constantly urg- speak of nothing more serious still-the pering the same topics, so great is their variety of sonal, domestic, and social mischiefs inevitably argument and illustration, that in one sense, they consequent on the sort of conduct which his preappear always different, in another sense, always cept as well as his example held up for the imitaThey have, however, incurred strong tion of his own base-born boy. By his will he reprehension on two separate grounds: first be- leaves five hundred pounds to Madame de Bouchet cause some of their maxims are repugnant to good as some recompense for the injury he had done morals; and, secondly, as insisting too much on her." The story we believe to have been this:manners and graces, instead of more solid acquire- About a year before Chesterfield's marriage, when ments. On the first charge I have no defence to he was ambassador to Holland, he was the great offer; but the second is certainly erroneous, and lion, and moreover the Cupidon déchaîné of the arises only from the idea and expectation of finding Hague. Some of his adventures excited in a a general system of education in letters that were particular manner the horror of an accomplished intended solely for the improvement of one man. French woman of gentle birth who was living Young Stanhope was sufficiently inclined to study, there as dame de compagnie to two or three Dutch and imbued with knowledge; the difficulty lay in girls-orphans, heiresses, and beauties. Her elohis awkward address and indifference to pleasing. quent denunciations of his audacious practices, and It is against these faults, therefore, and these her obvious alarm lest any of her fair charges faults only, that Chesterfield points his battery of should happen to attract his attention, were comeloquence. Had he found his son, on the contrary, municated somehow to the dazzling ambassador; a graceful but superficial trifler, his letters would and he made a bet that he would seduce herself no doubt have urged with equal zeal how vain are first, and then the prettiest of her pupils. With all accomplishments when not supported by ster- the duenna at least he succeeded. She seems to ling information. In one word, he intended to have resided ever afterwards in or near London, in write for Mr. Philip Stanhope, and not for any the obscurest retirement and solitude-cut off forother person. And yet, even after this great de-ever from country, family, friends. Five hundred duction from general utility, it was still the opinion of a most eminent man, no friend of Chesterfield and no proficient in the graces-the opinion of Dr. Johnson, Take out the immorality, and the book should be put into the hands of every young gentleman.""-Preface, pp. 18, 19. pounds! Recompense!-Five hundred pounds from one of the wealthiest lords in England, who had no children-Philip himself had died some years before-and whose vast property was entirely at his own disposal! It is satisfactory to add that she refused the " recompense." In the magnificent These letters were addressed to a natural son- mansion which the earl erected in Audley Street, and that circumstance should be constantly kept you may still see his favorite apartments furnished in mind; it is needful to explain many things that and decorated as he left them-among the rest are said, and the only apology for many omissions; what he boasted of as "the finest room in Lonbut at the same time we must say that if any cir-don"-and perhaps even now it remains unsurcumstance could aggravate the culpability of a father's calmly and strenuously inculcating on his on the duties of seduction and intrigue, it is the t of that son's unfortunate position in the world passed-his spacious and beautiful library, looking on the finest private garden in London. The walls are covered half way up with rich and classical stores of literature; above the cases are in |