must first make a figure there, if you would make a figure or a fortune in your country. . . . In your destination you will have frequent occasions to speak in public; to Princes and States abroad; to the House of Commons at home: judge then whether eloquence is necessary for you or not; not only common eloquence, which is rather free from faults than adorned by beauties; but the highest, the most shining degrees of eloquence. For God's sake have this object always in your view and in your thoughts. Turn your tongue early to persuasion; and let no jarring dissonant accents ever fall from it. Contract a habit of speaking well upon every occasion, and neglect yourself in no one. Eloquence and good breeding alone, with an exceeding small degree of parts and knowledge, will carry a man a great way; with your parts and knowledge, then, how far will they not carry you?"

Thus flattering, arguing, remonstrating, entreating, the anxious artist laboured at the work which he was determined to elaborate into perfection. Alas for such determinations! Had Chesterfield been working in clay or marble, his perseverance must have had its reward. But the material in which he worked was one which even genius cannot move. The boy on whom all these efforts were spent defeated them by that dumb power of human stupidity which is perhaps the most awful of all forces. Nothing could be higher than the ambition which his father entertained for him in those days of his youth, when everything might yet be hoped. That he should make a figure in Parliament was the indispensable and undoubted beginning, anxiously looked forward to, yet still a matter of course; and that being secured, everything else would naturally follow. "If to your merit and knowledge you add the art of pleasing," he writes, you may very probably come in time to be Secretary of State; but take my

66

word for it, twice your merit and knowledge without the art of pleasing would at most raise you to the important post of Resident at Hamburg or Ratisbon." The father did not know when he said these words that he was uttering an unconscious prophecy. Almost the only posts which poor Philip ever held were these two very missions which are here mentioned with contempt.

We are not told by what gradual process the statesman's high hopes were brought down to a certain satisfaction, or pretended satisfaction, with this poor level of possibility. Chesterfield is heroic in his silence; he leaves not a word behind him to express the passionate disappointment, the bitter mortification, which must have been his as he looked on the commonplace figure of which his imagination had made a hero. Neither to the young man himself, nor to any of his correspondents, does he bewail the downfall, or blame the heavy soul which thus resisted all his efforts. In the silence, amid all the gathering shadows of his own infirmities, in his deafness and seclusion and the sufferings of approaching age, the father must have taken his burden to him, and made up his mind to it with a dumb fortitude which is more noble than any speech; his patience, like his love, being half divine.

At last the moment arrived when all these anxious preparations were to come to the trial. The boy took his seat in Parliament at the age of twenty-one; and with "infinite pains" his father attempted "to prepare him for his first appearance as a speaker." "The young man seems to have succeeded tolerably well on the whole," says Dr Maty, "but on account of his shyness was obliged to stop, and, if I am not mistaken, to have recourse to his notes. Lord Chesterfield used every argument in his power to comfort him, and to inspire him with confidence and courage to make some

other attempt; but I have not heard that Mr Stanhope ever spoke again in the House."

Thus came to an end all the high expectations with which Chesterfield for twenty years had beguiled his own troubles, the tedium of declining health, of forced inactivity, and an unsuccessful public career. His son had been to mend all and create a new lustre for the fading life; and now the cherished boy had taken his first step, not within the brilliant boundaries of success, but to that flat plain of mediocrity from which no efforts could ever raise him. The event was one of as great importance in the life of Chesterfield as the loss of an empire, and his personal condition was such as to give every blow of the kind double weight; but not a moan, not a complaint, escapes from the lips of the vanquished man. He must have reconciled himself to the extinction of all his hopes with an incredible force of will, a power of self-restraint which reaches the sublime. He describes himself with pathetic playfulness as conversing with my equals the vegetables' " in his Blackheath garden immediately after. "All the infirmities of an age still more advanced than mine crowd in upon me," he says. "I must bear them as well as I can, -they are more or less the lot of humanity, and I have no claim to an exclusive privilege against them. In this situation you will easily suppose that I have no very pleasant hours; but, on the other hand, thank God," adds the indomitable soul, "I have not one melancholy one, and I rather think my philosophy increases with my infirmities." Thus he takes up his burden with a patience worthy a nobler creed. No more hope for him-no dream of tender glory in his boy. Life over, health over, the dear fiction scattered to the winds that had been his joy. But not a word breaks from the father's compressed lips-not to Dayrolles even, not

66

to Madame de Monconseil, who had shared his hopes and schemes, does he ever acknowledge that Philip has failed. Never was there a picture of proud patience, love, and self-command more complete.

Some years after, young Stanhope went to Hamburg as Resident there, a post which his father immediately, with the strange halfconscious cunning of affection, represents to himself and everybody else as for the moment exceptionally important. He afterwards went to Ratisbon, as if a certain fate had attended Chesterfield's words. A better appointment, that of Resident at Venice, of which he had been confident, was refused by the King himself, on account of his illegitimate birth— a sting which his father must have felt in all its keenness. Finally he went to Dresden, and after repeated attacks of illness died at the age of thirty-six. The fact of his failure does not diminish Chesterfield's care of him, nor make his eagerness to seize every opportunity of advancing or improving both him and his position less apparent. But the interest of the reader fails in Philip when his education is over. From the moment we ascertain how little credit he will ever do to all those pains, how little he will ever realise all those hopes, a certain anger and contempt takes possession of the spectator's mind. We are less patient with him than is his father. Indignation takes the place of forbearance. But yet the unfortunate young fellow, forced upwards to a point of attainment which nature forbade him to reach, put upon a strain to which his strength was totally unequal, is not without a certain claim upon our sympathy. No doubt his father at the last, opening his sad eyes, came to recognise the limits of nature, and suffered the last pang of paternal pride,the consent of his own judgment that nothing else was possible-the melancholy indulgence of contempt.

After Philip's death a discovery almost more miserable was made by his father. The son for whom he had done so much, and with whom he had given up, as it were, the privileges of a father, to insure perfect confidence and trust, had contracted a secret marriage, which he had not the courage, even on his deathbed, to reveal. We judge of the effect of this communication only by analogy, for Chesterfield still says not a word of his own pangs; no plaint breaks from him on his son's death, no word of reproach or unkindness disturbs the grave politeness with which he addresses the widow of whose existence he had no idea. There is something awful in the silence with which the old man shrouds his heart, that heart which had spoken so lavishly, so minutely, so tenderly in the old days. Deaf, old, feeble, racked with pain, worn out with the exquisite contrivances of suffering which are permitted to strike us, body and soul, in our most susceptible parts, not one cry still breaks from his lips. Half Christian, half Stoic, he stands alone and sees everything he had loved and trusted crumble down around him; and says nothing. It is as a polished trifler, a social philosopher, an instance of extreme cultivation, finesse, and falsehood, that the ordinary English reader looks upon Chesterfield; yet there he stands, sad as any prophet, stern as a Roman, patient as a Christian, forgiving all things, bearing all things. Strange, solemn, almost sublime ending to an unheroic life.

For at the very last of all, after all those griefs, his heart does not close up, as a heart ravaged by overmuch love might well be expected to do. He could still take thought for his heir, and put down, over again for his use, his epitome of philosophy; and the last letter we shall quote is one addressed to his grandsons, Philip's boys, born in secret, whose very being he might

have taken as an injury, had he been as worldly a man as he gave himself out to be, but whom, on the contrary, he took to his heart, and at once undertook to provide for from the moment he was aware of their existence. It is thus he writes in the last year of his life, when worn down by weakness and suffering, to these two children :—

TO CHARLES AND PHILIP STANHOPE.

"I received a few days ago two of the best written letters I ever saw in my life-the one signed Charles Stanhope, the other Philip Stanhope. As for you, Charles, I did not wonder at it, for you will take pains, and are a lover of letters; but you idle rogue, you Phil, how came you to write so well that one can almost say of you two, Et cantare pares et respondere parati? Charles will explain this Latin to you.

"I am told, Phil, that you have got a nickname at school from your intimacy with Master Strangeways, and that they called you Master Strangerways-for to be sure you are a strange boy. Is this

true?

"Tell me what you would have me bring you both froin home, and I will bring it you when I come to town. In the mean time, God bless you both!"

With this last touch of nature let us wind up the pathetic record. "Give Dayrolles a chair," were the dying man's last words, they say, and the attendant doctor calls the world to observe that "his goodbreeding quitted him only with his life." But with all deference to established prejudices, we believe our readers will conclude with us that the tender little letter above is a more true conclusion to that strange force of paternal love which lasted as long as Chesterfield's life.

We are aware that in all this we have departed entirely from the traditional usage which should have made Chesterfield's letters and his system of philosophy our subject instead of himself. These letters are within everybody's reach; but they are not so wonderful, so unique, or so manifold, as was the man.

ALL January had passed by. That thirtieth of January had come and gone which was to have made Linda Tressel a bride, and Linda was still Linda Tressel. But her troubles were not therefore over, and Peter Steinmarc was once again her suitor. It may be remembered how he had reviled her in her aunt's presence, how he had reminded her of her indiscretion, and how he had then rejected her; but, nevertheless, in the first week of February he was again her suitor.

Madame Staubach had passed a very troubled and uneasy month. Though she was minded to take her niece's part when Linda was so ungenerously attacked by the man whom she had warmed in the bosom of her family, still she was most unwilling that Linda should triumph. Her feminine instincts prompted her to take Linda's part on the spur of the moment, as similar instincts had prompted Tetchen to do the same thing; but hardly the less on that account did she feel that it was still her duty to persevere with that process of crushing by which all human vanity was to be pressed out of Linda's heart. Peter Steinmarc had misbehaved himself grossly, had appeared at that last interview in a guise which could not have made him fascinating to any young woman; but on that account the merit of submitting to him would be so much the greater. There could hardly be any moral sackcloth and ashes too coarse and too bitter for the correction of a sinful mind in this world, but for the special correction of a mind sinful as Linda's had been, marriage with such a man as Peter Steinmarc would be sackcloth and ashes of the most salutary kind. The objection which Linda would feel for the man would be the exact

antidote to the poison with which she had been infected by the influ ence of the Evil One. Madame Staubach acknowledged, when she was asked the question, that a woman should love her husband; but she would always go on to describe this required love as a feeling which should spring from a dutiful submission. She was of opinion that a virtuous child would love his parent, that a virtuous servant would love her mistress, that a virtuous woman would love her husband, even in spite of austere severity on the part of him or her who might be in authority. When, therefore, Linda would refer to what had taken place in the parlour, and would ask whether it were possible that she should love a man who had ill-used her so grossly, Madame Staubach would reply as though love and forgiveness were one and the same thing. It was Linda's duty to pardon the ill-usage and to kiss the rod that had smitten her. "I hate him so deeply that my blood curdles at the sight of him," Linda had replied. Then Madame Staubach had prayed that her niece's heart might be softened, and had called upon Linda to join her in these prayers. Poor Linda had felt herself compelled to go down upon her knees and submit herself to such prayer as well as she wasable. Could she have enfranchised her mind altogether from the trammels of belief in her aunt's peculiar religion, she might have escaped from the waters which seemed from day to day to be closing over her head; but this was not within her power. She asked herself noquestions as to the truth of these convictions. The doctrine had been taught to her from her youth upwards, and she had not realised. the fact that she possessed any

power of rejecting it. She would tell herself, and that frequently, that to her religion held out no comfort, that she was not of the elect, that manifestly she was a castaway, and that therefore there could be no reason why she should endure unnecessary torments in this life. With such impressions on her mind she had suffered her self to be taken from her aunt's house, and carried off by her lover to Augsburg. With such impressions strong upon her, she would not hesitate to declare her hatred for the man, whom, in truth, she hated with all her heart, but whom, nevertheless, she thought it was wicked to hate. She daily told herself that she was one given up by herself to Satan. But yet, when summoned to her aunt's prayers, when asked to kneel and implore her Lord and Saviour to soften her own heart, so to soften it that she might become a submissive wife to Peter Steinmarc,-she would comply, because she still believed that such were the sacrifices which a true religion demanded. But there was no comfort to her in her religion. Alas! alas! let her turn herself which way she might, there was no comfort to be found on any side.

At the end of the first week in February no renewed promise of assent had been extracted from Linda; but Peter, who was made of stuff less stern, had been gradually brought round to see that he had been wrong. Madame Staubach had, in the first instance, obtained the co-operation of Herr Molk and others of the leading city magistrates. The question of Linda's marriage had become quite a city matter. She had been indiscreet; that was acknowledged. As to the amount of her indiscretion, different people had different opinions. In the opinion of Herr Molk, that was a thing that did not signify. Linda Tressel was the daughter of a city officer who had been much respected. Her father's successor

in that office was just the man who ought to be her husband. Of course he was a little old and rusty; but then Linda had been indiscreet. Linda had not only been indiscreet, but her indiscretion had been, so to say, very public. She had run away from the city in the middle of the night with a young man,-with a young man known to be a scamp and a rebel. It must be acknowledged that indiscretion could hardly go beyond this. But then was there not the red house to make things even, and was it not acknowledged on all sides that Peter Steinmarc was very rusty? The magistrates had made up their minds that the bargain was a just one, and as it had been made, they thought that it should be carried out. When Peter complained of further indiscretion on the part of Linda, and pointed out that he was manifestly absolved from his contract by her continued misconduct, Herr Molk went to work with most demure diligence, collected all the evidence, examined all the parties, and explained to Peter that Linda had not misbehaved herself since the contract had last been ratified. "Peter, my friend," said the burgomaster, "you have no right to go back to anything,-to anything that happened before the twenty-third." The twenty-third was the day on which Peter had expressed his pardon for the great indiscretion of the elopement. "Since that time there has been no breach of trust on her part. I have examined all the parties, Peter." It was in vain that Steinmarc tried to show that he was entitled to be absolved because Linda had said that she hated him. Herr Molk did not lose above an hour or two in explaining to him that little amenities of that kind were to be held as compensated in full by the possession of the red house. And then, had it not been acknowledged that he was very rusty,-a man naturally to be hated by a young woman who