HIS OWN EDUCATION AND TRAINING.

His mother, daughter of George Savile, Marquis of Halifax, died while this son was quite young, and his education, through a neglect of the father, devolved, mainly, upon his grandmother, Lady Halifax, a woman of much sense and sensibility. Her house was the resort of the leading politicians and best company of the city, whose conversation decided the tastes of the youth, who was a nice observer of men and manners. And he owed much to a casual remark of Lord Galway, who, observing in him a strong inclination to political life, but at the same time an unconquerable taste for pleasure, with some tincture of laziness, remarked: "If you intend to be a man of business, you must be an early riser. In the distinguished posts your parts, rank, and fortune will entitle you to fill, you will be liable to have visitors at every hour of the day, and unless you will rise early, you will never have any leisure to yourself." He took the hint, and acted upon it through life.

His early instruction, till he was eighteen, was by private tutors, and his desire to excel was the spur of youthful exertion both in books and plays. In a letter to his son (then eleven), he says: 'I should have been ashamed if any boy of that age had learned his book better, or played at any game better than I did; I should not have rested a moment till I had got before him.' In 1712 (then in his eighteenth year) he entered Trinity Hall, Cambridge. In a letter to his French teacher in London he writes: 'I have passed the last week at the Bishop of Ely's, who lives fifteen miles off, and have seen more of the country than I had seen in all my life, and which is very agreeable in this neighborhood. I continue constant at my studies, which as yet are but Latin and Greek, but I shall soon commence civil law, philosophy, and mathematics. I find this college infinitely the best in the whole university, for it is the smallest, and is filled with lawyers, who have been in the world and understand life. We have but one clergyman, who is the only man in the college who gets drunk.' While at the university he paid particular attention to the great masters of oratory. In a letter to his son, he refers to this subject: 'Whenever I read pieces of eloquence, whether ancient or modern, I used to write down the shining passages, and then translate them as well and elegantly as I could; if in Latin or French, into English; if English, into French. This, which I practiced for some years, not only improved and formed my style, but imprinted in my mind and memory the best thoughts of the best authors.' In 1714 he sets out on the grand tour of Holland, France, and Italy—and as he was without a tutor, he was left to his own judgment, which proved in some respects excellent, and in others perilous. His love of shining, and his avowed principle of observing and copying the habits and manners of polite society, led him into gambling, 'which,' he remarks in a letter to his son: 'far from adorning my character, has, I am conscious, been a great blemish to it.' His introduction to the world of men and women is thus described:

At nineteen I left the University of Cambridge, where I was an absolute pedant: when I talked my best, I quoted Horace; when I aimed at being facetious, I quoted Martial; and when I had a mind to be a fine gentleman, I talked Ovid. I was convinced that none but the ancients had common sense; that the classics contained everything that was either necessary, useful, or ornamental to men; and I was not without thought of wearing the toga virilis of the Romans, instead of the vulgar and illiberal dress of the moderns. With these excellent notions, I went first to the Hague, where, by the help of several letters of recommendation, I was soon introduced into all the best company; and where I very soon discovered that I was totally mistaken in almost every one notion I had entertained. Fortunately, I had a strong desire to please (the mixed result of good-nature, and a vanity by no means blamable), and was sensible that I had nothing but the desire. I therefore resolved, if possible, to acquire the means too. I studied attentively and minutely the

dress, the air, the manner, the address, and the turn of conversation, of all those whom I found to be the people in fashion and most generally allowed to please. I imitated them as well as I could; if I heard that one man was reckoned remarkably genteel, I carefully watched his dress, motions, and attitudes, and formed my own upon them. When I heard of another, whose conversation was agreeable and engaging, I listened and attended to the turn of it. I addressed myself, thoughde très mauvaise grace,' to all the most fashionable fine ladies; confessed and laughed with them at my own awkwardness and rawness, recommending myself as an object for them to try their skill in forming. By these means and with a passionate desire for pleasing everybody, I came by degrees to please some; and I can assure you, that whatever little figure I have made in the world has been much more owing to that passionate desire I had of pleasing universally, than to any intrinsic merit, or sound knowledge, I might ever have been master of. My passion for pleasing was so strong (and I am very glad it was so), that I own to you fairly, I wished to make every woman I saw in love with me, and every man I met with admire me. Without this passion for the object, I should never have been so attentive to the means; and I own I cannot conceive how it is possible for any man of good nature and good sense to be without this passion. Does not goodnature incline us to please all those we converse with, of whatever rank or station they ma; be? And does not good-sense and common observation show of what infinite use it is to please? Oh, but one may please by the good qualities of the heart and the knowledge of the head, without the fashionable air, address, and manner, which is mere tinsel.' I deny it. A man may be esteemed and respected, but I defy him to please without them. Moreover, at your age, I would not have contented myself with barely pleasing; I wanted to shine, and to distinguish myself in the world, as a man of fashion and gallantry, as well as business. And that ambition, or vanity, call it what you please, was a right one; it hurt nobody, and made me exert whatever talents I had. It is the spring of a thousand right and good things.

To these extracts from Lord Chesterfield's own letters, written to encourage the efforts of his son to acquire the art of pleasing in society, we add passages from the graceful and, in the main, just criticisms of the eminent French essayist, C. A. Sainte-Beuve: *

In 1744, when he was only fifty years of age, his political ambition seemed, in part, to have died out, and the indifferent state of his health left him to choose a private life. And then the object of his secret ideal and his real ambition we know now. Before his marriage, he had, about the year 1732, by a French lady (Mdme. du Bouchet), whom he met in Holland, a natural son, to whom he was tenderly attached. He wrote to this son, in all sincerity, "From the first day of your life, the dearest object of mine has been to make you as perfect as the weakness of human nature will allow." Towards the education of this son all his wishes, all his affectionate and worldly predilections tended. And whether Viceroy of Ireland, or Secretary of State in London, he found time to write long letters, full of minute details, to him, to instruct him in small matters, and to perfect him in mind and manner

The Chesterfield, then, that we love especially to study, is the man of wit and experience, who knew all the affairs, and passed through all the phases of political and public life only to find out its smallest resources, and to tell us the last mot; he who, from his youth, was the friend of Pope and Bolingbroke, the introducer into England of Montesquieu and Voltaire, the correspondent of Fontenelle and Mdme. de Teucin; he whom the Academy of Inscriptions placed among its members, who united the wit of the two nations, and who, in more than one intellectual essay, but particularly in his letters to his son, shows himself to us as a moralist, as amiable as he is consummate, and one of the masters of life. It is the Rochefoucald of England of whom

•Prefixed to a late London edition of Lord Chesterfield's Letters, Sentences, and Maxims, in the Bayard Series of Pleasure Books of Literature, by Sampson Low, Son & Mariton. We can most heartily commend this beautifully printed volume as containing all there is truly valuable in the four volumes of letters.

we speak. Montesquieu, after the publication of "L'Esprit des Lois," wrote to the Abbé de Guasco, who was then in England, "Tell my Lord Chesterfield that nothing is so flattering to me as his approbation; but that, though he is reading my work for the third time, he will only be in a better position to point out to me what wants correcting and rectifying in it; nothing could be more instructive to me than his observations and his critique." It was Chesterfield who, speaking to Montesquieu, one day, of the readiness of the French for revolutions, and their impatience at slow reforms, spoke this sentence, which is a résumé of our whole history: "You French know how to make barricades, but you never raise barriers."

The letters begin with the A B C of education and instruction. Chesterfield teaches his son, in French, the rudiments of mythology and history. I do not regret the publication of these first letters. He lets slip some very excellent advice in those early pages. The little Stanhope is no more than eight years old when his father suits a little rhetoric to his juvenile understanding, and trics to show him how to use good language, and to express himself well. He especially recommends to him attention in all that he does, and he gives the word its full value. "It is attention alone," he says, "which fixes objects in the memory. There is no surer mark of a mean and meagre intellect in the world than inattention. All that is worth the trouble of doing at all, deserves to be done well, and nothing can be well done without attention." This precept he incessantly repeats, and varies the application of it as his pupil grows, and is in a condition to comprehend it to its fullest extent. Whether pleasure or study, everything one does must be well done, done entirely, and at its proper time, without allowing any distraction to intervene. "When you read Horace, pay attention to the accuracy of his thoughts, to the elegance of his diction, and to the beauty of his poetry, and do not think of the ‘De Homine et Cive' of Puffendorf; and when you read Puffendorf, do not think of Mdme. de St. Germain; nor of Puffendorf when you speak to Mdme. de St. Germain.” But this strong and easy subjugation of the order of thought to the will only belongs to great or very good intellects. M. Royer-Collard used to say that "what was most wanting in our day, was respect in the moral disposition, and attention in the intellectual." Lord Chesterfield, in a less grave manner, might have said the same thing. He was not long in finding out what was wanting in this child whom he wished to bring up; whose bringing up was, indeed, the end and aim of his life. “On sounding your character to its very depths," he said to him, "I have not, thank God, discovered any vice of heart or weak ness of head, so far; but I have discovered idleness, inattention, and indifference, which are only pardonable in the aged, who, in the decline of life, when health and spirits give way, have a sort of right to that kind of tranquility. But a young man ought to be ambitious to shine and excel." And it is precisely this sacred fire, this lightning, that makes Achilles, the Alexanders, and the Caesars to be the first in every undertaking, this motto of noble hearts and of eminent men of all kinds, that nature had primarily neglected to place in the honest but thoroughly mediocre soul of the younger Stanhope: "You appear to want," said his father, "that vivida vis animi which excites the majority of young men to please, to strive, and to outdo others." "When I was your age," he says again, "I should have been ashamed for another to know his lesson better or to have been before me in a game, and I should have had no rest till I had regained the advantage." All this little course of education by letters, offers a sort of continuous dramatic interest; we follow the efforts of a fine, distinguished, energetic nature as Lord Chesterfield's was, engaged in a contest with a disposition honest but indolent, with an easy and dilatory tem perament, from which it would, at any expense, form a masterpiece accom

plished, amiable and original, and with which it only succeeded in making a sort of estimable copy. What sustains and almost touches the reader in this strife, where so much art is used, and where the inevitable counsel is the same beneath all metamorphoses, is the true fatherly affection which animates and inspires the delicate and excellent master, as patient as he is full of vigor, lavish in resources and skill, never discouraged, untiring in sowing elegances and graces on this infertile soil. The young man is placed at the Academy, with M. de la Guérinière (not till 1751, when he was nineteen, too old to profit by such instruction); the morning he devotes to study, and the rest of the time is to be consecrated to the world. "Pleasure is now the last branch of your education," this indulgent father writes; "it will soften and polish your manners, it will incite you to seek, and finally to acquire graces." Upon this last point he is exacting, and shows no quarter. Graces, he returns continually to them, for without them all effort is vain. "If they are not natural to you, cultivate them," he cries. He indeed speaks confidently; as if, to cultivate graces, it is not necessary to have them already!

The gentle and the frivolous are perpetually mingling in these letters. Marcel, the dancing-master, is very often recommended, Montesquieu no less. The Abbé de Guasco, a sort of toady to Montesquieu, is a useful personage for introductions. "Between you and me," writes Chesterfield, "he has more knowledge than genius; but a clever man knows how to make use of everything, and every man is good for something. As to the President de Montesquieu, he is in all respects a precious acquaintance; he has genius, with the most extensive reading in the world. Drink of this fountain as much as possible."

Of authors, those whom Chesterfield particularly recommends at this time, and those whose names occur most frequently in his counsels, are La Rochefoucald and La Bruyère. "If you read some of La Rochefoucald's maxims in the morning, consider them, examine them well, and compare them with the originals you meet in the evening. Read La Bruyère in the morning, and see in the evening if his portraits are correct." But these guides, excellent as they are, have no other use by themselves than that of a map. Without personal observation and experience, they would be useless, and would even be conducive to crror, as a map might be if one thought to get from it a complete knowledge of towns and provinces. Better read one man than ten books. "The world is a country that no one has ever known by means of descriptions; each must traverse it in person to be thoroughly initiated into its ways.' Lord Chesterfield intended this beloved son for a diplomatic life; he at first found some difficulties in the way on account of his illegitimacy. To cut short these objections, he sent his son to Parliament; it was the surest method of conquering the scruples of the court. Mr. Stanhope, in his maiden speech, hesitated a moment, and was obliged to have recourse to notes. He did not make a second attempt at speaking in public. It appears that he succeeded better in diplomacy, in those second-rate places where solid merit is sufficient. He filled the post of ambassador extraordinary to the court of Dresden. But his health, always delicate, failed, and his father had the misfortune to see him die before him, when he was scarcely thirty-six years old (1768).

HINTS ON CONVERSATION.

Talk often, but never long; in that case, if you do not please, at least you are sure not to tire your hearers. Pay your own reckoning, but do not treat the whole company; this being one of the very few cases in which people do not care to be treated, every one being freely convinced that he has wherewithal to pay.

Tell stories very seldom, and absolutely never but when they are very apt, and very short. Omit every circumstance that is not material, and beware of digressions To have frequent recourse to narrative, betrays great want of imagination.

Never hold anybody by the button, or the hand, in order to be heard our; for, if people are not willing to hear you, you had much better hold your tongue than them.

Take, rather than give, the tone of the company you are in. If you have parts, you will show them, more or less, upon every subject; and if you have not, you had better talk sillily upon a subject of other people's, than of your own choosing.

Avoid, as much as you can, in mixed companies, argumentative, polemical conversations; which, though they should not, yet certainly do, indispose, for a time, the contesting parties towards each other; and if the controversy grows warm and noisy, endeavor to put an end to it by some genteel levity or Joke. I quieted such a conversation hubbub once, by representing to them that, though I was persuaded none there present would repeat, out of company, what passed in it, yet I could not answer for the discretion of the passengers on the street, who must necessarily hear all that was said.

Above all things, and upon all occasions, avoid speaking of yourself, if it be possible. Such is the natural pride and vanity of our hearts, that it perpetually breaks out, even in people of the best parts, in all the various modes and figures of the egotism.

This principle of vanity and pride is so strong in human nature, that it descends even to the lowest objects; and one often sees people angling for praise, when, admitting all they say to be truc (which, by the way, it seldom is), no just praise is to be sought. One man affirms that he has rode past an hundred miles in six hours. Probably it is a lie; but supposing it to be true, what then? Why, he is a very good post-boy, that is all. Another asserts, and probably not without oaths, that he has drank six or eight bottles of wine at a sitting. Out of charity, I will believe him a liar; for if I do not, I must think him a beast.

Always look people in the face when you speak to them; the not doing it is thought to imply conscious guilt; besides that, you lose the advantage of observing, by their countenances, what impression your discourse makes upon them. In order to know people's real sentiments, I trust much more to my eyes than to my ears; for they can say whatever they have a mind I should hear; but they can seldom help looking what they have no intention I should know.

Neither retail nor receive scandal, willingly; for though the defamation of others may for the present gratify the malignity or pride of our hearts, cool reflection will draw very disadvantageous conclusions from such a disposition; and in the case of scandal, as in that of robbery, the receiver is always thought as bad as the thief.

SELF-KNOWLEDGE AND JUDGMENT OF OTHERS.

In order to judge of the inside of others, study your own; but men in general are very much alike; and though one has one prevailing passion, and another has another, yet their operations are much the same; and whatever engages or disgusts, pleases or offends you in others, will, mutatis mutandis, engage, disgust, please, or offend others in you. Observe, with the utmost attention, all the operations of your own mind, the nature of your passions, and the various motives that determine your will, and you may, in a great degree, know all mankind. For instance, do you find yourself hurt and mortified when another makes you feel his superiority, and your own inferiority, in knowledge, parts, rank, or fortune? You will certainly take great care not to make a person, whose good will, good word, interest, esteem, or friendship you would gain, feel that superiority in you, in case you have it. If disagreeable insinuations, sly sneers, or repeated contradictions tease and irritate you, would you use them where you wished to engage and please? Surely not; and I hope you wish to engage and please almost universally. The temptation of saying a smart or witty thing, or bon mot, and the malicious applause with which it is commonly received, has made people who can say them, and, still oftener, people who think they can, but yet cannot, and yet try, more enemies, and implacable ones, too, than any one thing that I know of. When such things, then, shall happen to be said at your expense (as sometimes they certainly will), reflect seriously upon the sentiments, uneasiness, anger, and resentment which they excite in you; and consider whether it can be prudent by the same means to excite the same sentiments in others against you. It is a decided folly to lose a friend for a jest; but, in my mind, it is not a much less degree of folly to make an enemy of an indifferent and neutral person for the sake of a bon mot.