cess to the fact that he remained in office so short a time. Experience teaches us, that it is seldom in the first, or even the second, year of a popular administration that it is most likely to have its strength put to the test. There must be

time for discontent to find channels by which to vent itself, time for combinations to be formed, time for affecting the public mind. Those interested in deep settled abuses do not take much alarm, so long as remedies are only talked of. Nothing more was attempted by Chesterfield. It cannot therefore be said, that the intricate problem of Irish government has been solved, in opposition to the conjoined experience of all other lords lieutenant, solely because his Lordship succeeded in carrying it on acceptably for the space of eight months. Even in the midst of the praise which we would willingly accord to him for what he did or intended to do in this situation, some qualification must be made, as we now and then catch a glimpse of the principles upon which he acted. For an illustration, we must cite his reliance upon the gavel act to effect the decline of the Catholic faith. Now the gavel act proposed neither more nor less than to bribe the members of a family, with their own money, to sacrifice one another by betraying their religious faith. If the estate of a Papist was to be divided among his nearest relations, this law prescribed that they should share and share alike, unless some one of them would declare himself a convert to Protestantism, in which case he might take the whole. Such was the law which Lord Chesterfield, in a letter to a bishop of the church, recommended should be strictly adhered to. And the most remarkable circumstance about it is, that it does not seem to have entered into his conception what kind of public and private morality he was encouraging. To him, religion was merely a respectable and conservative civil institution. A conversion from one mode of faith to another was of little moment to him, who viewed them all with equal indifference.

It remains to us only to consider his Lordship's character as a writer. This will rest in the main upon those letters to his son, which he wrote in confidence and without any expectation of their ever coming before the public. Besides these, there are, however, a considerable number of essays, furnished for political and literary journals, from which we can gather a correct idea of his polished, as the others give one of

his unguarded style. The essays are remarkable for grace and a species of gentlemanly humor very much in keeping with the idea we have of their author. We might point out as examples the papers on duelling, on pride of birth, and ladies' fashions. Although it is difficult by an extract to give a full idea of them, yet we will venture upon the close of the Essay on Duelling, not only on account of its irony, but of

the more valuable truth which lies concealed beneath it.

"There is one reason, indeed, which makes me suspect that a DUEL may not always be the infallible criterion of veracity; and that is, that the combatants very rarely meet upon equal terms. I beg leave to state a case, which may very probably and not even unfrequently happen, and which yet is not provided for, nor even mentioned, in the INSTITUTES of HONor.

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"A very lean, slender, active young fellow of great HONOR, weighing perhaps not quite twelve stone, and who has, from his youth, taken lessons of HOMICIDE from a murder master, has, or thinks he has, a point of honor to discuss with an unwieldy, fat, middle-aged gentleman of nice HONOR likewise, weighing fourand-twenty stone, and who in his youth may not possibly have had the same commendable application to the noble science of HOMICIDE. The lean gentleman sends a very civil letter to the fat one, inviting him to come and be killed by him the next morning in Hyde Park. Should the fat gentleman accept this invitation, and waddle to the place appointed, he goes to inevitable slaughter. Now, upon this state of the case, might not the fat gentleman, consistent with the rules of HONOR, return the following answer to the invitation of the lean one?

“SIR, I find by your letter that you do me the justice to believe that I have the true notions of honor that become a gentleman; and I hope I shall never give you reason to change your opinion. As I entertain the same opinion of you, I must suppose that you will not desire that we should meet upon unequal terms, which must be the case were we to meet to-morrow. At present I unfortunately weigh four-and-twenty stone, and I guess that you do not exceed twelve. From this circumstance singly, I am doubly the mark that you are; but besides this, you are active, and I am unwieldy. I therefore propose to you, that, from this day forwards, we severally endeavour, by all possible means, you to fatten and I to waste, till we can meet at the medium of eighteen stone. I will lose no time on my part, being impatient to prove to you that I am not quite unworthy of the good opinion which you are pleased to express of,

Sir, your very humble servant.

"P. S. I believe it may not be amiss for us to communicate to each other, from time to time, our gradations of increase or decrease towards the desired medium, in which, I presume, two or three pounds more or less, on either side, ought not to be considered "

Yet, though his essays are all of them pleasing specimens of delicate humor, they would not of themselves have redeemed his memory from oblivion. For this he is indebted entirely to the letters to his son, which, as specimens of a particular style of writing, though not always perfectly correct, are not exceeded in their way by any thing in the language. Their principal merits are their perspicuity and elegance, without a shadow of affectation. In them will be found a great sum of worldly wisdom upon the minor morals, conveyed in the most direct and intelligible shape. Even Dr. Johnson admitted their merit, although he very justly put his seal of reprobation on their tendency. We cannot, for instance, too highly approve of a passage like the following upon the employment of time.

"You have, it is true, a great deal of time before you; but in this period of your life, one hour usefully employed may be worth more than four-and-twenty hereafter; a minute is precious to you now, whole days may possibly not be so forty years hence. Whatever time you allow, or can snatch, for serious reading (I say snatch, because company and a knowledge of the world is now your chief object), employ it in the reading of some one book, and that a good one, till you have finished it; and do not distract your mind with various matters at the same time. In this light I would recommend to you to read tout de suite Grotius de Jure Belli et Pacis, translated by Barbeyrac, and Puffendorf's Jus Gentium, translated by the same hand. For accidental quarters of hours, read works of invention, wit, and humor, of the best, and not of trivial authors, either ancient or modern.

"Whatever business you have, do it the first moment you can; never by halves, but finish it without interruption, if possible. Business must not be sauntered and trifled with; and you must not say to it, as Felix did to Paul, ‘At a more convenient season I will speak to thee.' The most convenient season for business is the first; but study and business, in some measure, point out their own times to a man of sense; time is much oftener squandered away in the wrong choice and improper methods of amusement and pleasures.

"Many people think that they are in pleasures, provided they are neither in study nor in business. Nothing like it; they are

doing nothing, and might just as well be asleep. They contract habitudes from laziness, and they only frequent those places where they are free from all restraints and attentions. Be upon your guard against this idle profusion of time; and let every place you go to be either the scene of quick and lively pleasures, or the school of your improvements; let every company you go into either gratify your senses, extend your knowledge, or refine your manners. Have some decent object of gallantry in view at some places; frequent others, where people of wit and taste assemble; get into others, where people of superior rank and dignity command respect and attention from the rest of the company; but pray frequent no neutral places, from mere idleness and indolence. Nothing forms a young man so much as being used to keep respectable and superior company, where a constant regard and attention is necessary. It is true, this is at first a disagreeable state of restraint; but it soon grows habitual, and consequently easy; and you are amply paid for it by the improvement you make, and the credit it gives you. What you said some time ago was very true, concerning le Palais Royal; to one of your age the situation is disagreeable enough; you cannot expect to be much taken notice of; but all that time you can take notice of others; observe their manners, decipher their characters, and insensibly you will become one of the company." — Vol. 11., pp. 227, 228.

There is not in this extract, it is true, any intimation of the higher purposes for which time should be improved. The idea, as usual with his Lordship, is limited within narrow and selfish bounds; yet, so far as it goes, it is sound and well conveyed. No man had a greater contempt than he for the vagabond fops who have since affected to quote him as authority for their idleness and their indifference. He understood the truth of the maxim, that a man, in order to make himself respectable, must try to be employed. Neither did he imagine, like many of his rank in England, that a title and wealth excused him from the duty of exertion in something more respectable than the mere search after pleasure. His great defect was, that he did not rest his notions of that duty upon a basis sufficiently broad. They all come back to the benefit to be gained in some form or other of personal advantage. They looked forth neither upon society, nor upon one's country, nor upon one's God. They were of a kind which wither under the approach of age. Thus it happened to himself, that at fifty-four he retreated from the public ser

vice, not again to return to it, though invited more than once. He retired to cultivate cabbages and pine-apples, and to wear out the patience of both medical men and quacks in unavailing experiments to remedy the infirmities of his constitution. There is no cheerfulness nor dignity in the scene of his old age. His views of life are narrow, cold, and gloomy. So early as 1755, or nearly twenty years before his end, he indulges in the following strain of reflection, when addressing his friend, the Bishop of Waterford.

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I

My deafness grows gradually worse, which in my mind implies a total one, before it be long. In this unhappy situation, which I have reason to suppose will every day grow worse, I still keep up my spirits tolerably; that is, I am free from melancholy, which, I think, is all that can be expected. This I impute to that degree of philosophy which I have acquired by long experience of the world. I have enjoyed all its pleasures, and consequently know their futility, and do not regret their loss. appraise them at their real value, which in truth is very low; whereas those who have not experienced always overrate them. They only see their gay outside, and are dazzled with their glare; but I have been behind the scenes. It is a common notion, and like many common ones a very false one, that those who have led a life of pleasure and business can never be easy in retirement; whereas I am persuaded that they are the only people who can, if they have any sense and reflection. They can look back, oculo irretorto, upon what they from knowledge despise; others have always a hankering after what they are not acquainted with. I look upon all that has passed as one of those romantic dreams that opium commonly occasions, and I do by no means desire to repeat the nauseous dose for the sake of the fugitive dream. When I say that I have no regret, I do not mean that I have no remorse; for a life of either business, or still more, pleasure, never was nor never will be a state of innocence. But God, who knows the strength of human passions and the weakness of human reason, will, it is to be hoped, rather mercifully pardon, than justly punish, acknowledged errors."Vol. IV., pp. 149, 150.

This letter was written to one of those whom his Lordship somewhere else is pleased to designate as a species of constables" appointed by the sovereign power of a country to keep up decency and decorum in the church." This may account for the unusual approximation to a religious feeling which we find in the extract. Yet what does this