Chesterfield knew how to avail himself of this advantage. He, who as a member of the lower house had made little impression as a speaker, was listened to as a peer with the most profound attention and delight. Yet, although his altered position in this regard had thus materially contributed to enlarge the sphere of his influence, the accession of George the Second was not attended with the results which perhaps he had a right to expect. The reasons for this must in a degree be left to conjecture. So far from there being any manifestation of gratitude for past sacrifices, on the part of the sovereign, it is very certain that Chesterfield was a marked object of dislike, whilst the Duke of Newcastle, the very person about whom the original quarrel arose, managed to establish himself as a favorite during the king's life. And here again we find an opportunity to observe the fallacy of the theory, that a cultivation of external graces and an elaborate effort to please every body is the surest road to worldly elevation. His Lordship had probably not been wanting in his efforts to conciliate the good-will of those whom he considered most likely to produce an effect upon his success; but he doubtless overshot his mark, as worldly people are apt to do. One of his maxims, which he most earnestly presses upon his son, is that every person, whatever may be his situation about a court, may have some means of influence upon one's fortune, and is therefore worth pleasing.

"Merit at courts, without favor," he says, "will do little or nothing; favor without merit will do a good deal; but favor and merit together will do every thing. Favor at courts depends upon so many, such trifling, such unexpected and unforeseen events, that a good courtier must attend to every circumstance, however little, that either does or can happen; he must have no absences, no distractions; he must not say, 'I did not mind it! who would have thought it?' He ought both to have minded and to have thought it. A chambermaid has sometimes caused revolutions in courts, which have produced others in kingdoms. Were I to make my way to favor in a court, I would neither wilfully, nor by negligence, give a dog or a cat there reason to dislike me." Vol. 11., p. 267.

Nothwithstanding all this, the converse of the proposition is sometimes true, that there is quite as much risk of injury from a mistake in paying court to the wrong persons, as in not paying it to the right ones. Without having any posi

tive authority for affirming it to be true, we are yet strongly inclined to the opinion that this was the rock upon which Chesterfield found himself wrecked. It was in his character to suppose that the mistress must have some influence over the king's actions. Such is the lesson uniformly taught in the experience of the French monarchy, a history that had not been lost upon the observing nobleman. The idea, that the mistress should have none and the queen all power, was an anomaly reserved for the age of George the Second. It is very certain that Chesterfield did take pains always to maintain a friendly and intimate relation with Lady Suffolk, even before the accession of the king. And his own sketch of that lady, long afterwards written, whilst it admits her want of influence, betrays the fact that he was himself privy to some of the instances in which her endeavours to exercise it had proved vain. Is it, then, unreasonable to infer, from our general knowledge of the man and the ordinary springs of his action, that he bought his own experience of its extent ? Sir Robert Walpole was a coarse and ill-bred person in comparison, and yet he gained a complete victory over his rival by neglecting the wrong and going at once to the right source of power. When the question was in agitation, at the commencement of the reign, what the provision in the civil list for the queen should be, and Sir Spencer Compton, the locum tenens of first minister proposed only £ 50,000, it is said that Walpole came forward with an offer to double it. From that moment to the end of Caroline's life, vehement as was the opposition against him, no person, and least of all Chesterfield, was able to shake this minister in the possession of the royal confidence. Such was the result of the second effort to curry favor by the cultivation of superior graces.

Still another illustration of the insecurity of the Chesterfield theory to obtain the end proposed is to be found in different portions of his history relating to this same period. George the First came over from Hanover without his wife, and with two or three mistresses, a sketch of whom is now printed for the first time among the characters which his Lordship has admirably described. Of these mistresses, the most noted was the Duchess of Kendall, with whom the monarch is described as passing most of his time, and who had all influence over him, though she was very little above an idiot. Such is Chesterfield's own account of a person with

whom he nevertheless preferred above all others to form intimate relations. This lady brought with her to England a young female, whom she chose to call her niece, Melusina de Schulemburg, but whom the ill-natured world, and Chesterfield doubtless among the rest, presumed to regard as her daughter by the king. Not long after her migration, this young lady was created Countess of Walsingham in her own right, and the belief was general that she would prove the heiress of a large property. To her, then, Lord Chesterfield decided to pay his addresses, and solicit her hand in marriage. Was his motive love? Who that reads any of his productions could ever suspect such a thing? Was it pride, to seek to connect his ancient line with a person of suspected legitimacy? But if not love nor pride, what could have been his reason but the hope of securing the ear of the sovereign through the person described by him as almost an idiot, namely, the Duchess of Kendall? If such were his object, it is easy to comprehend the cause of the feeble gratitude manifested by George the Second upon his accession. For all the expectations of Melusina de Schulemburg, which may justly be supposed to have also weighed in the balance with Chesterfield, were unquestionably regarded by the heir-apparent as likely to deduct just so much money from his own legitimate patrimony. In point of fact, the very first act of the new sovereign was to destroy that will of his father upon which the lady's hopes depended.

Yet so little did these courtly arts avail in favor of his Lordship, that even George the First refused to consent to this marriage. The reason assigned was his addiction to the vice of gaming, a vice of which the king probably foresaw the effect upon any provision which he might be likely to make for his daughter. Yet Lord Chesterfield did not on this account relax in his suit. The lady, captivated by his manners and his reputation, persisted in adhering to the object of her choice. But the marriage did not take place until some time after the death of the old king, and when, as a connection, it had become of little value. In the interval, Chesterfield, being too important a person to be entirely neglected, had been removed from the stage of domestic contention by an appointment as envoy to Holland, receiving soon afterwards the office of high steward of the king's household. The policy of Walpole was to put him out of sight and out of

reach. Chesterfield, flattering himself upon his possession of peculiar qualifications for diplomacy, eagerly embraced the offer thus made, and acquitted himself, it must be admitted, with great credit. But whilst doing so, he let slip the best opportunity he ever had of gaining the supreme power at home. The four years spent by him in Holland had been sedulously employed by Walpole to confirm his master's habits of dependence upon himself. So fixed had they become, that a desperate push made by Townshend to unseat him, most probably with the connivance of Chesterfield, ended only in the disgrace of the contrivers. Townshend resigned, and no avenue remained open for his friend but to join in opposition, in which, upon his return home, his Lordship accordingly embarked.

It cannot, then, be denied, that up to this time reliance upon courtiers' arts had been productive to his Lordship of little beyond successive disappointments. He had not only failed to be first, but he had seen those preferred to him who were weak in the points in which he was strong and upon which he most relied. In despair, he now for the first time changed his course, and determined to trust to his general abilities more than to his address. He came back from Holland only to throw his weight into the scale against a favorite measure, and one severely testing the popularity of the minister. Sir Robert Walpole was not a man to forgive opposition, so he punished the votes of Chesterfield and of his connections upon the excise bill by immediate removal from their posts. From this date, until the minister fell, an open and active war was carried on between them. Chesterfield proved an active and efficient party leader, not merely as a speaker in the House of Lords, but as a writer and the contriver of political combinations. Most particularly was there one topic, not often touched in vain with the British public, upon which he lavished his ample stores of wit, as the elder Pitt exhausted upon it the whole artillery of invective. This topic was the royal predilection for Hanover, and its effects upon the foreign policy of the minister. Ridicule is, of all modes of attack, that least readily forgiven, particularly when directed by an inferior. George the Second, incapable of wit himself, relished it little in others, but least of all in Chesterfield. Probably no man in the kingdom was so cordially hated by him at this time; and to crown all, the marriage long talked of with

Melusina de Schulemburg was just then decided upon, with intimations that not even royalty itself should be a protection against a scrutinizing inquiry after the suppressed will. George is said to have prudently compromised that matter by the payment of twenty thousand pounds, though he could scarcely have felt much softened by receiving this additional evidence of his Lordship's good-will. It betrayed something of the cat disposition, after long courting the monarch, thus to threaten him with his claws. Yet, after all, we very much doubt whether the hostility did not advance his prospects much faster than the smooth and fair seeming. There was manliness about it, and manliness is of all qualities the most indispensable to the success of a politician. When Sir Robert Walpole was at last hunted down, and arrangements were entered into for the purpose of reconstructing an administration out of the heterogeneous materials which had only coalesced to effect his overthrow, there were but two persons designated by the monarch as utterly inadmissible to his cabinet. Those two were William Pitt and Lord Chesterfield. so far was this exclusion from proving an insurmountable barrier to either, that the former actually forced his way into it soon after, on his own terms, and the latter obtained, by his steady opposition, a degree of public consideration which ultimately secured to him all the posts of influence which he ever acquired.

Yet

In the mean time, however, the political career of his Lordship, if it kept him out of office, was not without some solid compensation. Sarah, the old Duchess of Marlborough, had not ceased to take an active interest in public affairs, though she no longer wielded the power of her earlier days. Her hatred of Sir Robert Walpole had been intense, and proportionate was her gratitude to those who distinguished themselves in violent opposition to him. To William Pitt she left, by her will, the sum of ten thousand pounds sterling; whilst to Lord Chesterfield she gave, in the same instrument, her best and largest diamond ring, twenty thousand pounds in cash, and the reversion of her Wimbledon estate in failure of the Spencer family. With this support, he could well spare two years more in opposition to the ill-assorted combination, which, at the expense of the popular favor, had succeeded to Walpole's power. But when at last this fell to pieces, and a new arrangement took place, which ended in what was then