luted when devoted to the service of sin, become ennobled and sanctified when directed, by one whose constraining motive is the love of Christ, towards a good object. Let not the Christian, then, think "scorn of the pleasant land." That land is the field of ancient and modern literature—of philosophy, in almost all its departments of the arts of reasoning and persuasion. Every part of it may be cultivated with advantage, as the Land of Canaan when bestowed upon God's peculiar people. They were not commanded to let it lie waste, as incurably polluted by the abominations of its first inhabitants; but to cultivate it, and dwell in it, living in obedience to the divine laws, and dedicating its choicest fruits to the Lord their God.

DIFFERENT ASPECTS OF A LIBERAL EDUCATION.

LORD CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS TO HIS SON.

PHILIP DORMER STANHOPE, fourth Earl of Chesterfield, was born in London, September 22, 1694. Having graduated at Cambridge, he made the tour of Europe in 1714. In 1715 he was appointed a gentleman of the bed-chamber of the Prince of Wales, and was elected to Parliament, where he signalized his entrance by his graceful elocution. On the death of his father, in 1726, he passed into the House of Lords. In 1728 he was made Special Ambassador to Holland; and, on his return, George II. appointed him Lord Steward of the Household; and, in 1745, he was made Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, where he inaugurated a policy of conciliation which made his administration very popular. He accepted the office of Principal Secretary of State in April. 1746, which he resigned in 1748.

Lord Chesterfield was intimate with Pope, Swift, Voltaire, Montesquieu, and other literary men of his time. His intercourse with Dr. Johnson, which was at no time intimate, was abruptly closed by the well-known indignant letter from the lexicographer, on the appearance of a patronizing notice of his great work in the world, of November 22, 1754, and which has outlived much of the literature of that day.

"Seven years, my lord, have now passed since I waited in your outward room, or was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been pushing on my work through difficulties, of which it is useless to complain, and have brought it at last to the verge of publication, without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favor... The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labors, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it.

Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to any faVorer of learning, I shall not be disappointed, though I should conclude it, if less be possible with life."

Chesterfield's reputation as an author is founded chiefly on his Letters to his Son, which appeared in 1774, after his death; and, although written for a special purpose, and without reference to publication, and published without reference to his ultimate judgment as to special suggestions, they have been widely read, and have exerted a wide and deep influence on the aims and details of liberal

culture.

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 lie was without à 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 may 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, 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 Freach lady (Mdine. 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 Boling, broke, 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 tries 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 weakness 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 temperament, from which it would, at any expense, form a masterpiece accom