of bad taste; an opinion which we venture to say his Lordship will not have a great many at this day to join him in, whilst it gives us a pretty fair opportunity of estimating the extent of his own taste.

But if his Lordship was not himself a scholar, he certainly assumed to himself to be the patron of scholarship in others. It was to him, as such, that Dr. Johnson ventured to address his project of an English Dictionary, and not merely because his Lordship happened at the moment to be high in office. We allude to this subject the more willingly because we have lately seen some effort made to deny this, and to excuse the coldness and neglect which brought upon his Lordship the celebrated reply of the Doctor. It is pleaded in his defence, that in 1747, the date of the dedication, the Doctor was comparatively unknown; that he was himself then high in office, on which account alone the address was made to him; and that he could scarcely be expected, merely because he was an earl and secretary of state, to patronize every clever Grub Street author who might think it expedient to try to raise money out of him by a complimentary dedication. Such is the argument of one of our leading contemporary journals upon the other side of the water. It appears to us ill supported by the facts. Lord Chesterfield was not regarded as a common lord or as a common secretary of state. He had a reputation of his own for taste and discrimination upon which he piqued himself. It was upon this reputation that Dr. Johnson rested his application, without pretending to claim a knowledge of the man. It unquestionably gave him a right to hope, not that he would be made an intimate companion, but that the specimen furnished of his capacity to perform his task would from its own merit attract the great man's favorable attention, and earn his patronage. It is the peculiar province of a Mecenas to distinguish by his own sagacity the proper objects in whose favor to exert his influence, from those who are not so. Had his Lordship pretended to no reputation in this way, his neglect of Johnson would scarcely have been deemed an error. But he must be judged by the standard which he furnishes for himself. There can now be little doubt, that he did not appreciate the merit of the Doctor's proposal as he ought to have done; that he gave him ten guineas, rather to get rid of him than from any idea of encouraging the prosecution of the great literary under

taking; and that it was not until after the Doctor's reputation was firmly established, when the aid of a patron was no longer so essential as it had been, that he saw his mistake, and endeavoured to make a tardy reparation for it by publishing a couple of rather frivolous papers recommending the Dictionary in the periodical called The World. Surely, under these circumstances, the vengeance which the Doctor took was not uncalled for. He felt that his Lordship had only meted out to him the same measure which he did to every one, the same which every mere worldly man who forms himself upon his model will always do to those about him; that is, he had neglected merit whilst nobody else had found it out, and only then acknowledged it when it was no longer a secret. Dr. Johnson expressed his sense of this in a noble and dignified manner. Chesterfield felt the rebuke to be too just ever to indulge in such hollow excuses as have been lately set up in his defence. It was one of many legitimate consequences of that system of morals which makes appearances, and not the reality, the great object to be cared for.

We now come to the consideration of his Lordship's career as a statesman, and here we find very little to object to, and something positively to commend. Without possessing any great and commanding views of public policy, he nevertheless held solid and judicious ones. He was, probably more than any one of his age, the exact representative of the common sense of the people of Great Britain, which strongly relucted against the whole of the Hanoverian policy, without being able to extricate itself from it. On that subject there have always been opposite opinions, and time must yet show which of them is abstractly correct. On the one hand, it must be conceded, that, had England kept herself wholly clear from continental alliances, she would never have arrived at the high point of power and glory upon which she now stands. On the other, it is equally undeniable, that she would not have so rapidly developed the seeds of internal disorganization, under the forming process of a monstrous public debt. Lord Chesterfield had little or no adequate conception of the resources of his country, when he pronounced it on the brink of ruin in 1757, a moment at which it was just shooting up to the highest state of prosperity. "We are no longer a nation," says he;" I never yet saw so dreadful a prospect." "Ruin is so near," he writes in another place, "that, were

Machiavel at the head of affairs, he could not retrieve them." Such was the state of despondency of his Lordship, and he was by no means alone in it, at the instant when the elder Pitt was called to the helm of state, and when he proved what all this croaking was good for. But it is the nature of timid politicians to be constantly looking at the dark side of things, whilst they are in active life, and to predict irretrievable destruction, after they retire. We have had many such on this side of the Atlantic, the non-fulfilment of whose gloomy prophecies has sadly disappointed themselves and their friends. From all which experience it is safe to arrive at the conclusion, that great bodies move slowly, and that it takes a good while and a great many disasters, as well as long years of misgovernment, to crush the energies of a prosperous nation.

But it is in the administration of Irish affairs during the time his Lordship filled the post of viceroy, that he has gained his greatest reputation. So sadly had that country suffered from its connection with the neighbouring kingdom, that it hailed the accession of a man who did nothing more than abstain from wrong-doing, as if he were a saviour. Even this negative species of excellence required on his part the exercise of no small skill and discretion, as well as much firmness. These were qualities strictly within the compass of his Lordship's character. Of greatness or goodness we expect to find little. But all that worldly prudence and calm, shrewd good-sense could dictate may very naturally be inferred. The moment at which he was called to the post was a critical one. It was in the midst of the great success of the Pretender, in the year 1745. Yet not one of the many Papists who unquestionably wished well to that enterprise bestirred himself in any manner to advance it. Ireland has seldom been more tranquil than during this elsewhere turbulent year. It is due to Chesterfield that he should receive praise for having contributed to this great result. He was, besides, a steady patron of temperance, at a time when and among a people by whom that virtue was not regarded with the same favor that it now is. He was also a decided opponent to the corruptions which long prevailed in that country in the form of government jobs. All this, joined with the fascinations of his address, excited the admiration and enthusiasm of that impulsive people. But it may reasonably be doubted whether he does not owe the greater part of his apparent sucNO. 132.

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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.

"A very lean, slender, active young fellow of great HONOR, weighing perhaps not quite twelve stone, and who has, from hist 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.