nation of the public. His morality thus proves to be but skin deep, in fact, though he occasionally claims to show much more. We see it in the summary manner in which he despatches his orders about all the more serious parts of education. It always sounds as if he spoke thus: "As to religion and morals, a respect for the church catechism and the ten commandments, you, my son, must take it for granted that I advise all that, even though I never mention them, since my whole strength I reserve to enjoin upon you, over and over again, line upon line and precept upon precept, the necessity of always keeping in mind the graces.'

We understand, then, by the cultivation of "the graces," the adoption of a code of morals which makes the approbation of others the standard of all merit, and the advancement of one's self the end of all exertion. A man is to learn to treat his neighbour well, not because it is due to him that he should, but rather because he may himself lose something by it if he do not. His civility is the result of a calculation of profit and loss in his own mind, by which he has arrived at the conclusion, that the balance will show a net gain to himself in not being rude. Neither is it essential that this civility to others should be carried one step farther than is needful to secure the proposed object. It has its ascending scale, which is regulated by the estimation in which persons are respectively held, and consequently by the power they can wield, either to advance or to retard him. To the pauper, for example, it may be allowed to behave as roughly as possible, provided nobody is looking on, because he cannot resent it, and even if he does, his resentment will avail nothing: whilst to the prince no reasonable amount of exertion is to be spared to manifest a degree of devotion that may earn a substantial recompense from his good-will. All intermediate positions have their share of regard regulated, as the custom-house would say, by a tariff ad valorem. Neither is indulgence in all the vices forbidden by the decalogue denied by this system, provided they be not practised in a manner offensive to those who are able to compel the payment of penalty for so doing. The fault of every

action will be estimated, not by the nature of the act itself, so much as by the want of skill manifested in concealing it from the public. To be maladroit, as it is fatal to one's reputation, becomes here, as it was in Sparta, the highest crime. VOL. LXIII.- No. 132.

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tues.

Now in making such an exposition of the Chesterfield code, we do not pretend to the merit of saying any thing new ; much less do we mean to find fault with it at this time. From the day when it was first published, down to the preface of Lord Mahon to this edition, the objection has been perpetually repeated, that it converts hypocrisy into the first of virHow that may be is aside from the present purpose. The difficulties attending the system, as one of morals, all lie upon the surface. We propose to go a little around them, and maintain that even for the great end proposed to be gained by the adoption of it, worldly success, it is altogether unsafe, and not to be relied on. Even in the hands of a master like Chesterfield himself, the instruments it furnishes are not always sure in their operation. Sometimes they even turn injuriously upon him who uses them most skilfully; and when otherwise used, as they are more than half the time by those who undertake to practise with them, they are apt to be attended with an effect upon their own prospects of advancement as well as of happiness the very opposite of what they had so sanguinely anticipated. If we are in any way successful in showing this to be the case in the history of his Lordship himself, as it is now given us from his own lips, our main purpose will be fully answered.

Philip Dormer Stanhope does not seem ever to have been a young man. His letters written from Cambridge betray the acuteness and discretion of an old head.. Those addressed to his tutor, before he was of age, show that the artificial bent of his nature was even then already fixed. He devoted himself to his studies, not because he had any passion for knowledge, or any adequate idea of its uses, but because he aspired to shine by the possession of it. The consequence was early pedantry, which he got rid of only by changing the object of his aspirations. He left off quoting the classics, which he never either loved or understood, as soon as he found himself at the shrine of fashion in its citadel of Paris. The faults of the French character then became the objects of his new admiration, and so much did they find that was akin to them in his own nature, that this attachment went with him to his grave. He studied to make himself a Frenchman with as much deliberate earnestness as he had done at college to become a pedant; and his later labors were crowned with even greater success than the former ones. For the fact, that he

imitated the French so exactly in his outward manners as to be often taken by themselves for one of them, we must rely upon his affirmation alone. But there is before us another indirect proof of his proficiency, which is more convincing, even, than this. We see under his own hand how he had learned to overwhelm his tutor, M. Joubeau, with professions of attachment which he did not feel, and to promise him many future letters in that which he meant to be his last.

Let us, however, be exactly just to Lord Chesterfield. He was not insensible to the merits of the English national character, however highly he might value that of the French. His favorite idea, and that which he endeavoured to embody in the person of his son, was the union of what he deemed most valuable in each nation. This was a union which he admits he never met with anywhere in life. After such an admission, the idea ought to have occurred to him, that there might be, and probably was, an incongruity at bottom, which made the process he desired to effect impracticable. That he did not succeed with his son is well known. Probably the best example ever brought forth was himself. And what was the result? certainly not such as to make it expedient to repeat the experiment. Lord Chesterfield had wit, and knowledge, and good-breeding, and tact, and eloquence, and spirit; and yet, with the possession of all these qualities, he never secured a hundredth part of the confidence of his king or country that was enjoyed by rivals who possessed few of his accomplishments and nothing of his polish. Sir Robert Walpole was proverbially_coarse. The Duke of Newcastle was almost ridiculous. Pitt was cold and haughty and overbearing. Yet they successively controlled the government, whilst he wasted his time and pains in futile efforts to obtain it; and even at last, when it appeared within his reach, the event only proved to him most convincingly that it was his fate to clutch at the inere shadow of power, whilst the reality rested in other hands.

National character is the result of so many concurring causes, that it is difficult precisely to define how it grows up. The circumstances which immediately surround a people demand of the flexibility of the human species a certain degree of adaptation to them. To the French people, who are constitutionally ardent, impulsive, and susceptible of rapid emotions, an artificial system of manners is not without its

advantages. With them, strong habits of restraint are essential to the peace and safety, not to say the happiness, of society. If we knew that a passionate individual had forced himself to cultivate the minor graces of life because he believed that otherwise he might be liable, occasionally, to fall into extremes of treatment of those around him which would breed nothing but quarrels, and perhaps bloodshed, we should be apt to praise his resolution, even though sensible that an evil consequence might follow in his learning to be insincere. Such insincerity may be palliated so long as it is associated with the notion of regulating human passion. But when it becomes allied with coldness, when we know that the person practising it has no occasion to do so for self-control, and that he resorts to it solely for the purpose of concealing the icy condition of his own heart, making it appear warmer than it really is only to deceive us, the vice becomes in the highest degree revolting. The great body of the English race are, relatively to their continental neighbours, sluggish in their temperament, and moderate in their passions. With them, therefore, the endeavour to cultivate the graces leads to a vitiation of moral principle attended by no compensating benefit. If there be one thing for which that race is distinguished above most others, it is for its contempt of the arts of dissimulation, and its steady admiration of examples of truth and sincerity. This virtue goes a good way to compensate for the want of quick susceptibility. And so long as the experience of the world tends to show the impracticability of uniting these qualities of the respective nations, it will be better for each not to run the risk of spoiling what it has, in the vain quest of what it has not.

We have said, that, at the age of twenty, the young Lord Stanhope had already acquired the peculiar character which ever after marked him when he was known as Lord Chesterfield. His leading trait was then, as afterwards, want of a heart. From this source flowed his merits as well as his faults. Hence sprang the coolness of his judgment, and the absence of generosity. Hence arose his aversion to intemperance in drinking, the vice of warm and convivial natures,

and his passion for gaming, the tendency of the selfish and the cold. The same cause that polished his exterior effectually completed the perversion of the springs of action that were working within. It made him brilliant, but superficial,

extravagant and yet not generous, captivating and yet treacherous. It secured him hosts of admirers, but very few supporters, crowds of flatterers, and no devoted friends.

It has not often happened to a young man to start in life under fairer auspices than his Lordship. Descended from some of the best families in the United Kingdom, heir-apparent to an earldom, he came forward at the very moment when the crown had devolved upon the Brunswick family, and George the First was manifesting his gratitude to General Stanhope, the kinsman of the young nobleman, for his eminent services in bringing about that result, by placing him at the head of the government. Before the

youth was of age, the doors of the House of Commons were opened to receive him, and a place in the household of the heir to the throne was secured for his acceptance. The road to power seemed invitingly open to him. That which others toil through long years of pain to acquire, and which they gain, if at all, at so late a period in life as to make it scarce worth the struggle it has cost, appeared almost to throw itself into his hands at once. Little remained for him to do but to confirm the favorable impressions towards himself which his first address might create, and to convince the public, through his position in parliament, of the extent of his capacity to be at the head of affairs, should the time arrive that might require his services. Surely, if the cultivation of the graces, the elegance of high breeding, the fascination of external manner, were ever likely to avail for the benefit of their possessor so much as his Lordship would have had his son believe that they do, no opportunity could be more favorable to prove their efficacy than this which had arisen in his own case.

Now let us observe what the result was. Young Lord Stanhope rushed into the House of Commons, eager to exercise his carefully trained powers in the arena of debate, and to mark his devotion to the House of Hanover by supporting the strong measures devised in order to establish it upon the throne. Here, however, he soon discovered that the graces, a finished manner of delivery, and polished diction were not all that was essential to secure the affection of a popular body. While the gladiator was studying his attitudes, a much inferior combatant was at work effectually to shake his standing before the House. There was a mem