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sure you, in forming that friendship with which I am, my dear lord, your most faithful humble servant, &c.

LETTER XXVII.

LORD CHESTERFIELD TO DR. R. C

London, July 14, 1752.

MY DEAR LORD, I KNOW the gentleness, the humanity, and the tenderness of your nature too well to doubt of your grief, and I know the object of it* too well to blame it; no, in such cases it is a commendable, not a blameable passion, and is always inseparable from a heart that is capable of friendship or love. I therefore offer you no trite and always unavailing arguments of consolation; but as any strong and prevailing passion is apt to make us neglect or forget for the time our most important duties, I must remind you of two in particular, the neglect of which would render your grief, instead of pious, criminal: I mean your duty to your children as a father, and to your diocese as a bishop. Your care of your children must be doubled, in order to repair as fast as possible their loss; and the public trust of your flock must not suffer from a personal and private concern. These incumbent and necessary duties will sometimes suspend, and at last mitigate, that grief, which I confess mere reason would not: they are equally moral and Christian duties, which I am sure no consideration

The death of Mrs. Chevenix, the bishop's wife.

upon earth will ever make you neglect. May your assiduous discharge of them insensibly lessen that affliction, which, if indulged, would prove as fatal to you and your family, as it must be vain and unavailing to her whose loss you justly lament! I am with the greatest truth and affection, my dear lord, your most faithful friend and servant, &c.

LETTER XXVIII.

LORD CHESTERFIELD TO SOLOMON DAYROLLES, ESQ.

London, Sept. 15, 1752.

DEAR DAYROLLES, IN the first place I make my compliments to my god-son, who, I hope, sucks and sleeps heartily, and evacuates properly, which is all that can yet be desired, or expected from him. Though you, like a prudent father, I find, carry your thoughts a great deal further, and are already forming the plan of his education, you have still time to consider of it, but yet not so much as people commonly think; for I am very sure, that children are capable of a certain degree of education long before they are commonly thought to be so. At a year and a half old, I am persuaded that a child might be made to comprehend the injustice of torturing flies and strangling birds; whereas, they are com monly encouraged in both, and their hearts hardened by habit. There is another thing, which, as your family is, I suppose, constituted, may be taught him very early, and save him trouble and you expense: I mean languages. You have cer

tainly some French servants, men or maids, in your house. Let them be chiefly about him, when he is six or seven months older, and speak nothing but French to him, while you and madame Dayrolles speak nothing to him but English; by which means those two languages will be equally familiar to him. By the time that he is three years old, he will be too heavy and too active for a maid to carry, or to follow him; and one of your footmen must necessarily be appointed to attend him. Let that footman be a Saxon, who speaks nothing but German, and who will, of course, teach him German without any trouble. A Saxon footman costs no more than one of any other country, and you have two or three years to provide yourself with one upon a vacancy. German will, I fear, be always a useful language for an Englishman to know, and it is a very difficult one to learn any other way than by habit. Some silly people will, I am sure, tell you, that you will confound the poor child so with these different languages, that he will jumble them all together and speak no one well; and this will be true for five or six years; but then he will separate them of himself, and speak them all perfectly. This plan, I am sure, is a right one for the first seven years; and before the expiration of that time we will think further.

I leave my hermitage at Blackheath next week for Bath, where I am to bathe and pump my head ; but I doubt it is with deaf people as with poets, when the head must be pumped, little good comes of it. However, I will try every thing, just as I

take a chance in every lottery, not expecting the great prize, but only to be within the possibility of having it. My compliments to madame Dayrolles. Adieu, mon cher enfant.

LETTER XXIX.

LORD CHESTERFIELD TO SOLOMON DAYROLLES,ESQ.

Bath, Oct. 18, 1752.

DEAR DAYROLLES, YOUR last letter of the 6th, and my last of the 10th, crossed one another somewhere upon the road, for I received yours four days after I had sent mine. I think I rather gain ground by the waters and other medicines; but, if I do, it is but slowly, and by inches. I hear the person who sits or stands near me, and who directs his voice in a straight line to me; but I hear no part of a mixed conversation, and consequently am no part of society. However, I bear my misfortune better than I believe most other people would; whether from reason, philosophy, or constitution, I will not pretend to decide. If I have no very cheerful, at least I have no melancholy, moments. Books employ most of my hours agreeably; and some few objects, within my own narrow circle, excite my attention enough to preserve me from ennui.

The chief of those objects is now with you; and I am very glad that he is, because I expect, from your friendship, a true and confidential account of him. You will have time to analize him; and I do beg of you to tell me the worst, as well as the best, of your discoveries. When evils are incur

able, it may be the part of one friend to conceal them from another; but at his age, when no defect can have taken so deep a root as to be immoveable, if proper care be taken, the friendly part is rather to tell me his defects than his perfections. I promise you, upon my honour, the most inviolable secresy. Among the defects, that possibly he may have, I know one that I am sure he has; it is, indeed, a negative fault, a fault of omission; but still it is a very great fault, with regard to the world. He wants that engaging address, those pleasing manners, those little attentions, that air, that abord, and those graces, which all conspire to make that first advantageous impression upon people's minds which is of such infinite use through the whole course of life. It is a sort of magie power, which prepossesses one at first sight in favour of that person, makes one wish to be acquainted with him, and partial to all he says and does. I will maintain it to be more useful in business than in love. This most necessary varnish we want too much: pray recommend it strongly.

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As for my god-son, who, I assure you, without compliment, enjoys my next warmest wishes, you go a little too fast, and think too far beforehand. No plan can possibly be now laid down for the second seven years. His own natural turn and temper must be first discovered, and your then situation will and ought to decide his destination. But I will add one consideration with regard to these first seven years. It is this:-Pray let my god-son never know what a blow or a whipping is, unless for those things for which, were he a man, he would

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