wanting historians who dispute the whole story of Harold having fallen on the field of battle. "Years afterward," we are told by one of the most curiously learned of English scholars, "when the Norman yoke pressed heavily upon the English, and the battle of Hastings had become a tale of sorrow, which old men narrated by the light of the embers until warned to silence by the sullen tolling of the curfew," there was an ancient anchorite, maimed, and scarred, and blind of an eye, who led a life of penitence and seclusion in a cell near the Abbey of St. John at Chester. This holy man was once visited by Henry I., who held a long and secret discourse with him, and on his death-bed he declared to the attendant monks that he was Harold.* * According to this account, he had been secretly conveyed from the field of battle to a castle, and thence to this sanctuary; and the finding and burying of his corpse by the tender Editha is supposed to have been a pious fraud. The monks of Waltham, however, stood up stoutly for the authenticity of their royal relics. They showed a tomb inclosing a moldering skeleton, the bones of which still bore the marks of wounds received in battle, while the sepulchre bore the effigies of the monarch, and this brief but pathetic epitaph, "Hic jacet Harold infelix."

For a long time after the eventful battle of the Conquest it is said that traces of blood might be seen upon the field, and, in particular, upon the hills to the southwest of Hastings, whenever a light rain moistened the soil. It is probable they were discolorations of the soil, where heaps of the slain had been buried. We have ourselves seen broad

*Palgrave," History of England," cap. xv.

and dark patches on the hillside of Waterloo, where thousands of the dead lay moldering in one common grave, and where, for several years after the battle, the rank green corn refused to ripen, though all the other part of the hill was covered with a golden harvest.

William the Conqueror, in fulfillment of a vow, caused a monastic pile to be erected on the field, which, in commemoration of the event, was called the Abbey of Battle." The architects complained that there were no springs of water on the site. "Work on! work on!" replied he jovially; "if God but grant me life, there shall flow more good wine among the holy friars of this convent than there does clear water in the best monastery of Christendom."

The abbey was richly endowed, and invested with archiepiscopal jurisdiction. In its archives was deposited a roll bearing the names of the followers of William, among whom he had shared the conquered land. The grand altar was placed on the very spot where the banner of the hapless Harold had been unfurled, and here prayers were perpetually to be offered up for the repose of all who had fallen in the contest." All this pomp and solemnity," adds Mr. Palgrave, "has passed away like a dream! The perpetual prayer has ceased for ever; the roll of battle is rent; the escutcheons of the Norman lineages are trodden in the dust. A dark and reedy pool marks where the abbey once reared its stately towers, and nothing but the foundations of the choir remain for the gaze of the idle visitor, and the instruction of the moping antiquary."*

*Palgrave, "History of England," cap. xv.

THE EARL OF CHESTERFIELD. *

A CENTURY has rolled away since Lord Chesterfield reached his highest point of worldly elevation, and now comes a republication of his letters, in a collective form, to press upon us the question, how his reputation stands the wear of time. It is not often that a nobleman born leaves much trace of his existence, out of the pages of a peeragebook. Still more rarely is it that he exerts a decided influence over the generations that come after him. Chesterfield is, then, an exception to the general rule. Although one of the genuine aristocracy, owing his title to no modern creation, he made himself a reputation which few of his countrymen equaled in his own day; and, which is perhaps more remarkable, he left his mark upon the mind and manners of the English race so deep, that it will be long before it is entirely effaced. No man ever put into more attractive shape the maxims of a worldly, epicurean philosophy. No. man ever furnished, in his own person, a more dazzling specimen of the theory which he recommended. If Cicero came more nearly than any person ever did, to the image of

* The Letters of Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield; including numerous Letters now first published from the Original Manuscripts. Edited, with Notes, by Lord Mahon. London: Richard Bentley. 1845. 4 vols. 8vo.

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the perfect orator which he described, Chesterfield is universally considered as having equally sustained his own idea of the perfect gentleman. Notwithstanding his character has been often discussed, and not long ago in this journal, we will not omit the present opportunity of noticing it once more. Lord Mahon has done for us what has never been done before, in placing the whole man most distinctly in our view. The applause of an admiring circle, and the censure of malignant enemies, of his own day, will now pass for exactly what they are worth. It has been the lot of few distinguished persons to be stripped so bare to the public gaze after death. And, strangely enough, this has happened to him, of all others, who spent his life in labors to appear other than he was. The man who systematically wore a mask better than his natural face while on earth, has been doomed by the avarice of an ungrateful woman to hold up a glass magnifying every deformity of his mind to the observation of the most distant posterity. Such is the first moral which we draw from the history of the Earl of Chesterfield.

Let us, then, proceed to look at this figure more in detail. Here is a man who, without being ambitious in the highest sense of that term, was nevertheless an eager aspirant for distinction in more than one field of exertion. He aimed to be a statesman, an orator, a scholar, and a gentleman-in brief, a sort of model man, yet "hackneyed in the ways of the world." And it must be conceded, too, that if his success was not entirely equal to his own expectations, it was nevertheless very far beyond the average of that of men in general. The reasons why it was not greater we intend to try to explain in the present article. If we can make it appear that they come directly from the theory of

conduct which he maintained, we hope to be not without success in checking the tendency of some minds to be misled by his example. If we can show by the example of Lord Chesterfield himself that the foundation upon which he built his own edifice, which he also earnestly recommends to be adopted by his son, is, in itself, so insecure as not to be worthy of reliance; and, still more, if we can prove that it creates the difficulties which beyond a certain point render further progress next to impracticable, it may be that we shall turn the direction of some aspirants for distinction to other and better sources of knowledge of the paths of life.

To illustrate our idea, it will be necessary to assume that the lessons which he taught in his letters to his son were those upon which he practiced himself. That this is not in itself an unreasonable inference can be shown by many passages in which the writer refers directly to his own case as a practical illustration of the value of his maxims. The spirit of his teaching is all conveyed in this tone: "See what I did. Go thou and do likewise; better, if possiblebut still after my model." In this there was no undue vanity or self-conceit. Lord Chesterfield knew that he possessed qualities which entitled him to claim a good share of worldly applause, and he also knew the labor it had cost him to make all those qualities as effective as possible. He had a right, from what he found he could do, to infer that others could succeed even better than he, if they would only take the pains which he had done. No other course than his seems to have occurred to his mind as likely to insure success. It is, then, proper to review his life by the light which he himself has furnished, and to trace the causes of his suc