To each of the French letters, throughout the work, an English translation is annexed: in which I have endeavoured to adhere, as much as poffible, to the fenfe of the original: I wish the attempt may have proved fuccessful.

As to thofe repetitions, which fometimes occur, that many may efteem inaccuracies, and think they had been better retrenched: they are fo varied, and their fignificancy thrown into fuch, and fo many different lights, that they could not be altered without mutilating the work. In the courfe of which, the Reader will also obferve his Lordship often exprefsly declaring, that fuch repetitions are purposely intended, to inculcate his inftructions more forcibly. So good a reafon urged by the Author for ufing them, made me think it indifpenfably requifite not to deviate from the original.

The letters written from the time that Mr. Stanhope was employed as one of his Majefty's Minifters abroad, although not relative to Education, yet as they continue the series of Lord Cheflerfield's Letters to his Son, and difcover his fentiments on various interefting fubjects, of public as well as private concern, it is prefumed they cannot fail of being acceptable to the Public. To thefe are added fome few detached pieces, which the Reader will find at the end of the fecond volume. The Originals of those, as well as of all the Letters, are in my poffeffion, in the late Earl of Chesterfield's hand-writing, and fealed with his own feal.'

The foregoing advertisement exhibits fo compleat a view of the nature, defign and tendency of these Letters, that we think it altogether fuperfluous to add any thing to the account; and we fhall, therefore, proceed, without further preface, to gratify the impatience of our Readers, by a few extracts from thofe parts of the collection which, we imagine, will prove most generally acceptable to the Public.

We fhall pass over the greatest part of those letters which were written to Mafter Stanhope, while he was under the age of fifteen; fome of which, however, merit great commendation, for the happy manner in which they are adapted to the capacity: of a child, without containing any thing childish; in which respect they may be faid; in fome meafure, to refemble the li-" terary correfpondence of Count Teffin, with the Prince Royal of Sweden: and we cannot pay them an higher compliment.

As a fpecimen, however, of the eafy manner in which this, accomplished nobleman could accommodate his ftyle to the ap-. prehenfions of his young correfpondent, we fhall tranfcribe his Lordship's precepts and cautions on the fubject of Negligence. They are taken from a letter written to his fon, then in his 5th year, and on his travels abroad; it is dated at Bath, Oct. 9, 1746.

A propos of negligence; I muft fay fomething to you upon that fubject, You know I have often told you, that my affection for you was not a weak womanish one; and far from blinding me, it makes me but more quick-fighted, as to your faults: thofe it is not only my right, but

my duty to tell you of; and it is your duty and your intereft to correc them. In the ftrict forutiny which I have made into you, I have, (thank God) hitherto not difcovered any vice of the heart, or any peculiar weak: nefs of the head: but I have difcovered laziness, inattention, and in difference; faults which are only pardonable in old men, who, in the decline of life, when health and spirits fail, have a kind of claim to that fort of tranquillity. But a young man fhould be ambitious to fhine and excel; alert, active, and indefatigable in the means of doing it; and like Cæfar, Nil actum reputans, fi quid fupereffet agendum. You feem to want that vivida vis animi which fpurs and excites moft young men to pleafe, to shine, to excel. Without the defire and the pains neceffary to be confiderable, depend upon it, you never can be fo; as with, out the defire and attention neceffary to please, you never can please. Nullum numen abeft, fi fit prudentia, is unquestionably true with regard to every thing except poetry; and I am very sure that any man of Common understanding may, by proper culture, care, attention, and labour, make himself whatever he pleafes, except a good poet. Your deftination is the great and bufy world; your immediate object is the affairs, the interefts, and the hiftory, the conftitutions, the customs, and the manners of the feveral parts of Europe. In this, any man of common fenfe may, by common application, be sure to excel. Ancient and modern hiftory are by attention eafily attainable; geography and chronology the fame; none of them requiring any uncommon fhare of genius or inventi n. Speaking and writing clearly, correctly, and with eafe and grace, are certainly to be acquired by reading the best Authors with care, and by attention to the best living models, Thefe are the qualifications more particularly neceffary for you in your department, which you may be poffeffed of if you pleafe, and which, I tell you fairly, I fhall be very angry at you if you are not; because, as you have the means in your hands, it will be your own fault only.

If care and application are neceffary to the acquiring of thofe qualifications, without which you can never be confiderable nor make a figure in the world; they are not lefs necessary with regard to the leffer accomplishments which are requifite to make you agreeable and pleafing in fociety. In truth, whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well; and nothing can be done well without attention; I therefore carry the neceffity of attention down to the lowest things, even to dancing and dref. Cuftom has made dancing fometimes neceffary for a young man; therefore mind it while you learn it, that you may learn to do it well, and not be ridiculous, though in a ridiculous act. Drefs is of the fame nature; you muft dress; therefore attend to it; not in order to rival or excel a fop in it, but in order to avoid fingularity, and confequently ridicule. Take great care always to be dreffed like the reafonable people of your own age, in the place where you are; whofe drefs is never fp ken of one way or another, as either too negligent or too much studied.

What is commonly called an abfent man, is commonly either a very weak, or a very affected man; but be he which he will, he is, I am fure, a very disagreeable man in company. He fails in all the common offices of civility; he feems not to know thofe people to-day, whom yesterday

he

he appeared to live in intimacy with. He takes no part in the general converfation; but on the contrary, breaks into it from time to time, with fome start of his own, as if he waked from a dream. This (as I faid before) is a fure indication, either of a mind fo weak that it is not able to bear above one object at a time; or fo affected, that it would be fupposed to be wholly engroffed by, and directed to, fome very great and important objects. Sir Ifaac Newton, Mr. Locke, and (it may be} five or fix more, fince the creation of the world, may have had a right to abfence, from that intenfe thought which the things they were inveftigating required. But if a young man, and a man of the world, who has no fuch avocations to plead, will claim and exercise that right of absence in company, his pretended right should, in my mind, be turned into an involuntary abfence, by his perpetual exclufion out of company. However frivolous a company may be, ftill, while you are among them, do not fhew them, by your inattention, that you think them fo; but rather take their tone, and conform in fome degree to their weakness, inftead of manifefting your contempt for them. There is nothing that people bear more impatiently, or forgive lefe, than contempt; and an injury is much fooner forgotten than an infult. If therefore you would rather please than offend, rather be well than ill spoken of, rather be loved than hated, remember to have that conftant attention about you, which flatters every man's little vanity; and the want of which, by mortifying his pride, never fails to excite his refentment, or at least his ill-will. For instance; moft people (I might fay all people) have their weakneffes; they have their averfions, and their likings, to fuch or fuch things; fo that if you were to laugh at a man for his averfion to a cat, or cheefe, (which are common antipathies) or by inattention and negligence, to let them come in his way, where you could prevent it, he would, in the first cafe, think himself infulted, and in the fecond, flighted; and would remember both. Whereas your care to procure for him what he likes, and to remove from him what he hates, fhews him, that he is at least an object of your attention; flatters his vanity, and makes him poffibly more your friend, than a more important service would have done. With regard to women, attentions still below these are neceffary, and, by the custom of the world, in fome measure due, according to the laws of good breeding.'

The foregoing obfervations are equally ftriking, just, and important; for furely no weakness is more pernicious to youth than negligence and inattention! Such faults are not only a bar to all improvement, but they alfo render thofe young people who are fubject to them quite intolerable to perfons of fuperior years. In fhort, it would be doing no injuftice to these failings, were we to fet them down in the catalogue of vices.

About a year after the date of the foregoing letter, we find our noble monitor thus cautioning his young friend against the feductions of Pleasure:

Pleasure, fays Lord Chesterfield, is the rock which moft young people split upon; they launch out with crowded fails in queft of it, but without a compass to direct their courfe, or reafon fufficient to fteer the vessel; for want of which, pain and fhame, inftead of

S

Pleasure,

Pleasure, are the returns of their voyage.

to fnarl at Pleasure, like a Stoic, or to preach against it like a ParDo not think that I mean fon; no, I mean to point it out, and recommend it to you, like an Epicurean: I wish you a great deal; and my only view is to hinder you from mistaking it.

The character which moft young men first aim at is, that of a Man of Pleasure; but they generally take it upon truft; and, instead of confulting their own tafte and inclinations, they blindly adopt whatever those, with whom they chiefly converfe, are pleased to call by the name of Pleasure; and a Man of Pleafure, in the vulgar ac ceptation of that phrafe, means only, a beaftly drunkard, an aban doned whore-mafter, and a profligate fwearer and curfer. As it may be of use to you, I am not unwilling, though at the fame time ashamed, to own, that the vices of my youth proceeded much more from my filly refolution of being, what I heard called a Man of Pleasure, than from my own inclinations. I always naturally hated drinking; and yet I have often drunk, with difguft at the time, attended by great fickness the next day, only because I then confidered drinking as a necessary qualification for a fine gentleman, and a Man of Pleasure.

The fame as to gaming. I did not want money, and confequently had no occasion to play for it; but I thought Play another neceffary ingredient in the compofition of a Man of Pleasure, and accordingly I plunged into it without defire, at firft; facrificed a thousand real pleasures to it; and made myself folidly uneafy by it, for thirty the best years of my life.

I was even abfurd enough, for a little while, to fwear, by way of adorning and completing the fhining character which I affected; but this folly I foon laid afide, upon finding both the guilt and the . indecency of it.

Thus feduced by fashion, and blindly adopting nominal pleafures, I loft real ones; and my fortune impaired, and my constitution fhattered, are, I muft confefs, the juft punishment of my errors.

Take warning then by them; chufe your pleasures for yourself, and do not let them be impofed upon you. Follow nature, and not fashion: weigh the prefent enjoyment of your pleafures, against the neceffary confequences of them, and then let your own common fenfe determine your choice.

• Were I to begin the world again, with the experience which I now have of it, I would lead a life of real, not of imaginary pleafure. I would enjoy the pleasures of the table, and of wine; but ftop fhort of the pains infeparably annexed to an excess in either. I. would not, at twenty years, be a preaching miffionary of abftemioufnefs and fobriety; and I fhould let other people do as they would, without formally and fententiously rebuking them for it; but I would be moft firmly refolved, not to deftroy my own faculties and conftitution, in complaifance to thofe who have no regard to their own. I would play to give me pleasure, but not to give me pain; that is, I would play for trifles, in mixed companies, to amuse my. felf, and conform to cuftom; but I would take care not to venture for fums, which, if I won, I fhould not be the better for; but, if I loft, fhould be under a difficulty to pay; and, when paid, would

oblige

oblige me to retrench in feveral other articles. Not to mention the quarrels which deep play commonly occafions.

I would pass fome of my time in reading, and the reft in the company of people of fenfe and learning, and chiefly those above me and I would frequent the mixed companies of men and women of fashion, which though often frivolous, yet they unbend and refresh the mind, not ufelefsly, because they certainly polish and foften the manners.

Thefe would be my pleasures and amusements, if I were to live the last thirty years over again; they are rational ones; and moreover I will tell you, they are really the fashionable ones: for the others are not, in truth, the pleasures of what I call people of fashion, but of those who only call themfelves fo. Does good company care to have a man reeling drunk among them? Or to fee another tearing his hair, and blafpheming, for having loft, at play, more than he is able to pay? Or a whore-master with half a nofe, and crippled by coarfe and infamous debauchery No; thofe who practise, and much more those who brag of them, make no part of good company; and are most unwillingly, if ever, admitted into it.

A real man of fashion and pleasure obferves decency; at least, neither borrows nor affects vices; and, if he unfortunately has any, he gratifies them with choice, delicacy, and fecrecy.

I have not mentioned the pleasures of the mind, (which are the folid and permanent ones) because they do not come under the head of what people commonly call pleafures; which they feem to confine to the fenfes. The pleafure of virtue, of charity, and of learning, is true and lafting pleasure; which I hope you will be well and long acquainted with. Adien.'

This is not the frigid preaching of a cold unfeeling theorist ; it is the voice of an experienced guide, warning the unwary traveller of the precipice that lies in his path; it is the language of a true friend, who feeks not to deprive us of what we are naturally defirous to obtain, but to prevent our being missed in the pursuit of it, and like Ixion, deceived into the embraces of an empty cloud, inftead of the goddefs who is the object of our wishes-and like Ixion, too, not only cheated out of our expected happiness, but severely punished, alfo, for our infatuation.

In a letter dated in 1748, we have the following ftrictures on what may be called the abufe of laughter.

Having mentioned laughing, I must particularly warn you against it and I could heartily with, that you may often be seen to fmile, but never heard to laugh, while you live. Frequent and loud laughter is the characteristic of folly and ill manners: it is the man ner in which the mob exprefs their filly joy, at filly things and they call it being merry. In my mind, there is nothing fo illiberal, and so ill-bred, as audible laughter. True wit, or fenfe, never yet? made any body laugh; they are above it: they please the mind, and give a chearfulness to the countenance. But it is low buffoonery, or filly accidents, that always excite laughter; and that is what

people