be appeared to live in intimacy with. He takes no part in the general conversation; but on the contrary, breaks into it from time to time, with some 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 fe affected, that it would be fuppofed 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 intense 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 exercife that right of - abfence 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 ncthing that people bear more impatiently, or forgive lefs, than contempt; and an injury is much sooner 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 leaft his ill-will. For inftance; most 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 cheese, (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 firft cafe, think himself insulted, 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, thews 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 fervice would have done. With regard to women, attentions still below these are neceffary, and, by the cuftom 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 thefe 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 most 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 veffel; for want of which, pain and fhame, instead of

S 4

Pleasure,

Pleasure, are the returns of their voyage. Do not think that I mean to fnarl at Pleasure, like a Stoic, or to preach against it like a Parfon; no, I mean to point it out, and recommend it to you, like an Epicurean with you a great deal; and my only view is to hinder you from miflaking it.

The character which most 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 talle and inclinations, they blindly adopt whatever thofe, with whom they chiefly converfe, are pleafed to call by the name of Pleasure; and a Man of Pleasure, in the vulgar acceptation of that phrafe, means only, a beatly drunkard, an abandoned 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 afhamed, to own, that the vices of my youth proceeded much more from my filly resolution 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 ficknefs the next day, only because I then confidered drinking as a neceffary qualification for a fine gentleman, and a Man of Pleasure.

The fame as to gaming. I did not want money, and confequently had no occafion to play for it; but I thought Play another neceffary ingredient in the compofition of a Man of Pleafure, and accordingly I plunged into it without defire, at firft; facrificed a thoufand 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 conftitution hattered, are, I muft confefs, the juft punishment of my errors.

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

Were 1 to begin the world again, with the experience which I now have of it, I would lead a life of real, not of imaginarv plea fure. I would enjoy the pleasures of the table, and of wine; but top 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 most firmly refolved, not to deftroy my own faculties and conftitution, in complaifance to those who have no regard to their own. I would play to give me pleafure, but not to give me pain; that is, I would play for trifles, in mixed companies, to amufe myfelf, 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 me to retrench in feveral other articles. Not to mention the quarrels which deep play commonly occafions.

'I would pafs fome of my time in reading, and the rest in the company of people of fenfe and learning, and chiefly thofe 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 ufelessly, becaufe they certainly polith 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 more over I will tell you, they are really the fashionable ones: for the others are not, in truth, the pleafures 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-mafter with half a nofe, and crippled by coarfe and infamous debauchery? No; thofe who practife, 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 pleafures of the mind, (which are the folid and permanent ones) becaufe they do not come under the head of what people commonly call pleasures; which they seem to confine to the fenfes. The pleafure of virtue, of charity, and of learning, is true and lafting pleafure; which I hope you will be well and long acquainted with. Adieu."

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 lan guage of a true friend, who feeks not to deprive us of what we are naturally defirous to obtain, but to prevent our being misled in the purfuit 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 feverely 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 muft particularly warn you against it: and I could heartily with, that you may often be seen to fiile, but never heard to laugh, while you live. Frequent and loud laughter is the characteristic of folly and ill manners: it is the manner 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 fo 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

people of fenfe and breeding fhould fhow themselves above. A man's going to fit down, in the fuppofition that he has a chair behind him, and falling down upon his breech for want of one, fets a whole company a laughing, when all the wit in the world would not do it; a plain proof, in my mind, how low and unbecoming a thing laughter is. Not to mention the difagreeable noife that it makes, and the fhocking diftortion of the face that it occafions. Laughter is eafily reftrained, by a very little reflection; but, as it is generally connected with the idea of gaiety, people do not enough attend to its abfurdity. I am neither of a melancholy, nor a Cynical difpofi tion; and am as willing, and as apt to be pleafed as any body; but I am fure that, fince I have had the full ufe of my reason, nobody has ever heard me laugh. Many people, at firft from awkwardness and mauvaise honte, have got a very difagreeable and filly trick of laughing, whenever they speak and I know a man of very good parts, Mr. Waller, who cannot fay the commoneft thing without laughing; which makes thofe, who do not know him, take him at firft for a natural fool. This and many other very disagreeable habits, are owing to mauvaise honte at their first setting out in the world.'

Leaving our Readers to their own reflexions on this invective against laughter (which, certainly, did not spring from any fullen, four, or faturnine difpofition in the celebrated Writer) we proceed to his Lordfhip's obfervations on the weight of bistorical teftimony. Thefe are introduced by a remark or two on the circumftances which are affigned as the principal caufes of the Proteftant reformation from the errors and abuses of Popery.

After intimating that disappointment and refentment had a much larger fhare in this great event, than a religious zeal, or an abhorrence of the corruptions of the church of Rome, the noble Letter-writer thus proceeds:

Luther, an Auguftin Monk, enraged that his Order, and confequently himself, had not the exclufive privilege of felling indulgences, but that the Dominicans were let into a fhare of that profitable but infamous trade, turns reformer, and exclaims against the abuses, the corruption, and the idolatry, of the Church of Rome; which were certainly grofs enough for him to have feen long before, but which he had at least acquiefced in, till what he called the Rights, that is the profit, of his Order came to be touched. It is true, the Church of Rome furnished him ample matter for complaint and reformation, and he laid hold of it ably. This feems to me the true caufe of that great and neceffary work; but, whatever the cause was, the effect was good: and the reformation spread itself by its own truth and fitnefs; was confcientiously received by great numbers in Germany, and other countries; and was foon afterwards mixed up with the politics of Princes: and, as it always happens in religious difputes, became the fpecious covering of injuftice and ambition.

* In Letter 117, dated 1748.

• Under

Under the pretence of crushing Herefy, as it was called, the Houfe of Austria meant to extend and establish its power in the Empire: as, on the other hand, many Proteftant Princes, under the pretence of extirpating idolatry, or, at leaft, of fecuring toleration, meant only to enlarge their own dominions or privileges. Thefe views respectively, among the Chiefs on both fides, much more than true religious motives, continued what were called the Religious Wars, in Germany, almoft uninterruptedly, till the affairs of the two Religions were finally fettled by the treaty of Munster.

"Were most historical events traced up to their true caufes, I fear we should not find them much more noble, nor difinterested, than Luther's disappointed avarice; and therefore I look with fome contempt upon thofe refining and fagacious Hiftorians, who afcribe all, even the most common events, to fome deep political caufe; whereas mankind is made up of inconfiftencies, and no man acts invariably up to his predominant character. The wifeft man fometimes acts weakly, and the weakeft fometimes wifely. Our jarring paffions, our variable humours, nay our greater or leffer degree of health and fpirits, produce fuch contradictions in our conduct, that, I believe, thofe are the oftenest mistaken, who afcribe our actions to the most feemingly obvious motives: and I am convinced, that a light fupper, a good night's fleep, and a fine morning, have fometimes made a Hero, of the fame man, who, by an indigeftion, a restless night, and a rainy morning, would have proved a coward. Our beft conjectures, therefore, as to the true fprings of actions, are but very uncertain; and the actions themselves are all that we must pretend to know from Hiftory. That Cæfar was murdered by twenty-three confpirators, I make no doubt; but I very much doubt, that their love of liberty, and of their country, was their fole, or even principal motive; and I dare fay that, if the truth were known, we fhould find that many other motives, at least concurred, even in the great Brutus himself; fuch as pride, envy, perfonal pique, and difappointment. Nay, I cannot help carrying my Pyrrhonifm ftill further, and extending it often to hiftorical facts themselves, at least to moft of the circumftances with which they are related; and every day's experience confirms me in this hiftorical incredulity. Do we ever hear the most recent fact related exactly in the fame way, by the feveral people who were at the fame time eye-witneffes of it? No. One mistakes, another mifreprefents; and others warp it a little to their own turn of mind, or private views. A man, who has been concerned in a tranfaction, will not write it fairly; and a man who has not, cannot. But, notwithflanding all this uncertainty, History is not the les neceffary to be known; as the best hiftories are taken for granted, and are the frequent fubjects both of conversation and writing. Though I am convinced that Cæfar's ghoft never appeared to Brutus, yet I should be much afhamed to be ignorant of that fact, as related by the Hiftorians of thofe times. Thus the Pagan theology is univerfally received as matter for writing and converfation, though believed now by nobody; and we talk of Jupiter, Mars, Apollo, &c. as Gods, though we know, that, if they ever exifted at all, it was only as mere mortal men. This historical Pyrrhonism, then, proves nothing against the ftudy and knowledge of Hiftory;