on both sides. I see no glory in losing life or fortune by being the dupe of either, and very much applaud the conduct which could preserve an universal esteem amidst the fury of opposite parties. We are obliged to act vigorously, where action can do any good; but in a storm, when it is impossible to work with success, the best hands and ablest pilots may laudably gain the shore if they can. Atticus could be a friend to men, without awaking their resentment, and be satisfied with his own virtue without seeking popular fame: he had the reward of his wisdom in his tranquillity, and will ever stand among the few examples of true philosophy, either ancient or modern.

You must forgive this tedious dissertation. I hope you read in the same spirit I write, and take as proofs of affection whatever is sent you by your truly affectionate mother,

M. WORTLEY.

CXXXIV.

From the year 1739 to the year 1761 Lady Wortley Montagu resided in Italy, keeping up a continual correspondence with her daughter and other friends in England. To this period belong some of the most charming of her letters. They are less ambitious and elaborate than her more celebrated letters written during Mr. Wortley's Embassy.

The graceful cynicism of Horace and Pope has perhaps never been more successfully reproduced in prose than in the following letter.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to her Daughter, the Countess

of Bute.

Lovere: September 30, 1757. My dear Child,-Lord Bute has been so obliging as to let me know your safe delivery, and the birth of another daughter: may she be as meritorious in your eyes as you are in mine! I can wish nothing better to you both, though I have some reproaches to make you.

Daughter! daughter! don't call names; you you are always abusing my pleasures, which is what no mortal will bear. Trash, lumber, sad stuff, are the titles you give to my favourite amusement. If I called a white staff a stick of wood, a gold key gilded brass, and the ensigns of illustrious orders coloured strings, this may be philosophically true, but would be very ill received. We

have all our playthings; happy are they that can be contented with those they can obtain: those hours are spent in the wisest manner, that can easiest shade the ills of life, and are the least productive of ill consequences. I think my time better employed in reading the adventures of imaginary people, than the Duchess of Marlborough, who passed the latter years of her life in paddling with her will, and contriving schemes of plaguing some, and extracting praise from others, to no purpose; eternally disappointed and eternally fretting. The active scenes are over at my age. I indulge, with all the art I can, my taste for reading. If I would confine it to valuable books, they are almost as rare as valuable men. I must be content with what I can find. As I approach a second childhood, I endeavour to enter into the pleasures of it. Your youngest son is, perhaps, at this very moment riding on a poker, with great delight, not at all regretting that it is not a gold one, and much less wishing it an Arabian horse, which he could not know how to manage. I am reading an idle tale, not expecting wit or truth in it, and am very glad it is not metaphysics to puzzle my judgment, or history to mislead my opinion: he fortifies his health by exercise; I calm my cares by oblivion. The methods may appear low to busy people; but, if he improves his strength and I forget my infirmities, we both attain very desirable ends.

I have not heard of your father of a long time. I hope he is well, because you do not mention him.

I am ever dear child,

Your most affectionate mother,

M. WORTLEY.

CXXXV.

The letters of the Earl of Chesterfield to his son (nearly 400 in number) extend over a period of thirty years. The earliest date is 1738; the last epistle was written on Oct. 17, 1768. The following month Philip Stanhope died; his father survived him by nearly five years. In 1774, the son's widow-Mrs. Eugenia Stanhope-published the correspondence, but the letters were never intended for publication. Lord Macaulay, writing to Mr. Napier in 1833, remarked: When I said that Lord Chesterfield had lost by the publication of his letters, I of course considered that he had much to lose; that he has left an immense reputation, founded on the testimony of all

his contemporaries of all parties, for wit, taste, and eloquence;
that what remains of his Parliamentary oratory is superior to
anything of that time that has come down to us, except a little
of Pitt's. The utmost that can be said of the letters is that
they are the letters of a cleverish man; and there are not many
which are entitled even to that praise. I think he would have
stood higher if we had been left to judge of his powers as we
judge of those of Chatham, Mansfield, and Lord Townsend, and
many others only by tradition, and by fragments of speeches
preserved in Parliamentary reports.'

The Earl of Chesterfield to his Son, Philip Stanhope, Esq.
London November 24, 1747.

Dear Boy,-As often as I write to you (and that you know is pretty often) so often am I in doubt whether it is to any purpose, and whether it is not labour and paper lost. This entirely depends upon the degree of reason and reflection which you are master of, or think proper to exert. If you give yourself time to think, and have sense enough to think right, two reflections must necessarily occur to you; the one is, that I have a great deal of experience and that you have none; the other is, that I am the only man living who cannot have, directly or indirectly, any interest concerning you, but your own. From which two undeniable principles, the obvious and necessary conclusion is, that you ought, for your own sake, to attend to and follow my advice.

If, by the application which I recommend to you, you acquire great knowledge, you alone are the gainer; I pay for it. If you should deserve either a good or a bad character, mine will be exactly what it is now, and will neither be the better in the first case, nor the worse in the latter. You alone will be the gainer or the loser.

Whatever your pleasures may be, I neither can nor shall envy you them, as old people are sometimes suspected, by young people, to do; and I shall only lament, if they should prove such as are unbecoming a man of honour, or below a man of sense. But you will be the real sufferer, if they are such. As therefore it is plain that I have no other motive than that of affection in whatever I say to you, you ought to look upon me as your best, and for some years to come, your only friend.

True friendship requires certain proportions of age and manners, and can never subsist where they are extremely different, except in the relations of parent and child; where affection on one

side, and regard on the other, make up the difference. The friendship which you may contract with people of your own age, may be sincere, may be warm; but must be for some time reciprocally unprofitable, as there can be no experience on either side.

:

The young leading the young, is like the blind leading the blind; they will both fall into the ditch.' The only sure guide is he who has often gone the road which you want to go. Let me be that guide who have gone all roads; and who can consequently point out to you the best. If you ask me why I went any of the bad roads myself, I will answer you very truly, that is for want of a good guide; ill example invited me one way, and a good guide was wanting to show me a better. But if anybody, capable of advising me, had taken the same pains with me, which I have taken, and will continue to take with you, I should have avoided many follies and inconveniences, which undirected youth ran me into. My father was neither able nor desirous to advise me; which is what I hope you cannot say of yours. You see that I make use only of the word advise; because I would much rather have the assent of your reason to my advice, than the submission of your will to my authority. This, I persuade myself, will happen, from that degree of sense which I think you have; and therefore I will go on advising, and with hopes of success. You are now settled for some time at Leipsic: the principal object of your stay there is the knowledge of books and sciences; which if you do not, by attention and application, make yourself master of while you are there, you will be ignorant of them all the rest of your life and take my word for it a life of ignorance is not only a very contemptible, but a very tiresome one. Redouble your attention, then, to Mr Harte, in your private studies of the Literæ Humaniores, especially Greek. State your difficulties whenever you have any; do not suppress them either from mistaken shame, lazy indifference or in order to have done the sooner. Do the same with Professor Mascow, or any other professor.

When you have thus usefully employed your mornings, you may with a safe conscience divert yourself in the evenings, and make those evenings very useful too, by passing them in good company, and, by observation and attention, learning as much of the world as Leipsic can teach you. You will observe and imitate the manners of the people of the best fashion there; not that they

are (it may be) the best manners in the world; but because they are the best manners of the place where you are, to which a man of sense always conforms. The nature of things is always and everywhere the same: but the modes of them vary, more or less in every country; and an easy and genteel conformity to them, or rather the assuming of them at proper times and in proper places, is what particularly constitutes a man of the world, and a wellbred man.

will

Here is advice enough I think, and too much it may be you think, for one letter: if you follow it, you will get knowledge, character and pleasure by it; if you do not, I only lose operam et oleum, which, in all events, I do not grudge you.

I send you by a person who sets out this day for Leipsic, a small packet containing some valuable things which you left behind; to which I have added, by way of New Year's gift, a very pretty tooth-pick case: and, by the way, pray take care of your teeth, and keep them extremely clean. I bave likewise sent you the Greek roots lately translated into English from the French of the Port Royal. Inform yourself what the Port Royal is. To conclude, with a quibble: I hope you will not only feed upon the Greek roots, but likewise digest them perfectly.

Adieu.

CXXXVI.

The Earl of Chesterfield to his Son.

London: December 18, 1747.

Dear Boy,-As two mails are now due from Holland I have no letters of your's or Mr Harte's to acknowledge, so that this letter is the effect of that scribendi cacoethes, which my fears, my hopes, and my doubts concerning you, give me. When I have wrote you a very long letter upon any subject, it is no sooner gone but I think I have omitted something in it which might be of use to you, and then I prepare the supplement for the next post; or else some new subject occurs to me, upon which I fancy I can give you some information, or point out some rules, which may be advantageous to you. This sets me to writing again, though God knows whether to any purpose or not a few years more can only ascertain that. But, whatever my success may be my anxiety