In his assiduous court to all whom he believed to possess influence, even his sagacity could not save him from betraying himself to the most inexperienced eyes. When one of the pages about the court found himself more than once made the object of unusual attention by the Earl, the boy could not help, at last, intimating to him his suspicion that he had been mistaken for M. Louis, a youth who passed for the King's son by Lady Yarmouth. His suspicion was well founded, and the misdirected civility, thus known to be hollow, had done his lordship harm instead of good. Thus we may see that he who learns to be civil to his neighbor solely for the use he may make of his friendship can never become less than a selfish hypocrite, whom the first accident that unmasks him will render contemptible.

The cultivation of a general spirit of benevolence and charity is a far better foundation for refinement of manners, because it imposes no task of insincerity. It is rather unusual, we know, to go to the Scriptures for any rule of fashionable life, and it may from some expose us to the charge of writing sermon-fashion; but we must say that we have never understood the reason why it was necessary to go further for the very highest theory of good breeding than the broad principle laid down in the Holy Book, of doing unto others as you would they should do unto you. To be sure, we should be prevented by it from saying flattering falsehoods, merely for the sake of deluding our neighbor's vanity; yet, on the other hand, we might be allowed the pleasure of using the truth to encourage and sustain his virtuous exertion. How much may be done in this way few people entirely understand; or how many young hearts yearn for a word of judicious consolation, under the inevitable morti

fications and chill produced on first entering into the conflicts of the world. To them, flattery is rank poison, while discriminating praise serves as the breath of life. But there is a higher reason why the Christian precept is a more perfect rule of manners. It forbids one from committing wrong or injustice of any kind. Had his lordship followed it he would have been saved from many mortifications, the consequence of such injustice. It would have held him back from the cold-blooded undertaking of seducing a weak woman, merely because it had come to his ears that she expressed a very natural indignation at his licentious habits, and from the equally cruel endeavor to train up the offspring of that connection to a place it was impossible for him to reach, except through the possession of a character and abilities as much above those of his father as that father's were above the level of the generality of men of his time.

Lord Chesterfield has much to answer for on many accounts, but most especially on this, that he formed a school, the members of which, while committing the most immoral acts, have kept each other in countenance by quoting his specious maxims in their defense. We do not mean to say that vicious and plausible men of fashion did not exist before his day. Such persons have always been found in every cultivated society. What we do mean is, that he laid down a code of rules which gained immediate currency in that society, whereby great latitude was, almost by consent, conceded to certain kinds of vice. According to him, it is a perfectly gentlemanly proceeding to corrupt another man's wife, and much more advisable, as it saves the personal risk attending general licentiousness. Yet no consideration is given to the inevitable effects that follow upon the happiness

of families and the peace of society itself. And generally it is, according to him, perfectly allowable to disregard the rights or feelings of the rest of the world, provided appearances be preserved, and a smile be kept upon the face which meditates a wrong.

Let us now consider one of the cases in which, as it appears to us, his lordship fully exemplified the tendencies of his nature. He had married a woman whom he did not love, and he was not so fortunate as to have children by her, which might have awakened some interest in her welfare. On the other hand, it happened that he had a son by one Mrs. Du Bouchet, a Frenchwoman, already alluded to, and this son he determined to make the subject of a grand experiment. His own theory was that differences of character depend more upon education than upon nature; so he resolved to spare no pains in making at all hazards this unfortunate subject fill up his beau-idéal of a man. In order to do this, he willfully overlooked the enormous difficulty before him, at the very outset, of making an illegitimate son play a first part in the history of such a country as Great Britain. Nor was this all. He neglected to consider the extent of the trial he was preparing for the poor young man. Who shall say how much of the awkwardness and bashfulness for which his father perpetually reproached him might have been owing to an impression, early received, of inequality with those immediately around him? Who that knows boys, and especially English boys, can fail to understand how soon the smallest difference of condition makes itself felt among them, to the depression of those who are suspected of laboring under a disadvantage? How Mr. Stanhope was made to feel this in later life, both at Brussels

and in the fruitless effort to get the appointment of minister at Venice, we see and know, from the letters before us. It may be very well for his lordship to glide over such mortifications lightly, and call them inevitable evils, to be remedied only by greater exertions; but his duty was not the less plain to reflect, before he forced a young man into such a situation, how apt it is to break down the spirit and disable it from ever entering upon the exertions required. How few men in Great Britain have made head against such an early disadvantage! Is it, then, to be wondered at, that Stanhope, who had not elements of character strong enough to succeed, even without it, should have failed so entirely while under its influence? The fault surely was not so much in him as in his father's heartless error of judgment in educating him. Neither is this all the penalty which the poor young man has been compelled to pay. Not only has the record of his failure to be a great man been made up against him on the book of history, but his memory is destined for ever to be associated with the evidence of the labor and pains expended in vain upon him to produce any extraordinary result whatever. As a matter of common justice, the readers of the present collection should have seen a few of Mr. Stanhope's own letters, at least sufficient to give them an opportunity to judge him fairly. As it is now, his reputation fluctuates between those who call him a stupid booby and those who describe him as a dull pedant, while still a third party do not let him off even so easily as that. Yet, admitting all that may be said against him, who is most in fault for it? Is it to be supposed that the young man was worse, in any respect, than ten thousand people of his own or of any age, who live out their appointed number of

days, respectable citizens, and who go to their graves deeply regretted by the usual circle of afflicted relations? Why is it, then, that he should be singled out for everlasting infamy, as a dunce and a cub, or as

"Base, degenerate, meanly bad,"

because his father chose in his person to immortalize his own crime, and his unfeeling ambition of making an experiment, against the success of which the chances were as a thousand to one?

A common remark is also that, if Lord Chesterfield found his son a dull scholar in the "graces," he proved rather too apt in the acquisition of hypocrisy. Mr. Stanhope died, leaving his father no legacy but a wife and two children, of whose very existence he had not had the slightest hint. That under these circumstances he did not at once renounce them, thus visiting upon the third generation the sins of the second and the first, has been in some quarters regarded as praiseworthy. But let us examine this act a little more narrowly. These children were at least legitimate. They had no share in the failure of their father to be what he was never made for. That father had been put by no act of his own into a situation to which he was not adequate, and had been deprived of all opportunity to gain any other. How could his lordship have done less than he did? How could he avoid giving to the victims of his delusion at least the means of escaping from its worst consequences? We do not perceive that he attempted anything more than this. The boys were taken care of and put to school, and, for aught we know of them, acted in life about as well as the average of their neighbors; but the dream of