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You who in different sects were shamm'd,
And come to see each other damn'd-
(So some folk told you, but they knew
No more of Jove's designs than you)—
The world's mad business now is o'er,
And I resent these pranks no more.
—I to such blockheads set my wit!

I damn such fools!-Go, go, you're bit.'—

It is to Chesterfield that we owe the story of Pope and Atterbury's last interview in the Tower, according to which, unless Pope told Chesterfield a most egregious and circumstantial lie, or Chesterfield invented his own conversation with Pope at Twickenham, Bishop Atterbury, though a Christian when he left England never to return, had been a steady adherent of the sect of Bolingbroke, all the while that he filled a prominent place in the service and guidance of the Church of England. Lord Mahon expresses utter disbelief in the whole story. 'What judicious critic,' he says (vol. ii. p. 446), would weigh in the balance, for a moment, the veracity of Pope against the piety of Atterbury? We hope his lordship's decision is right.

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That there was, however, one sincere Christian in the Twickenham set, we have the evidence even of Chesterfield. His Character of Arbuthnot (now first printed) is a pleasing relief in every way-and here he says:

'He lived and died a devout and sincere Christian. Pope and I were with him the evening before he died, when he suffered racking pains from an inflammation in his bowels, but his head was clear to the last. He took leave of us with tenderness, without weakness, and told us that he died, not only with the comfort, but even the devout assurance of a Christian.'-vol. ii. p. 448.

Whether Chesterfield had the satisfaction of making his filial pupil either a libertine or an infidel we have no sufficient evidence. Notwithstanding Mr. James Boswell's attestation to the respectability of Mr. Philip Stanhope's character (Croker's edition, i. 254), these points remain in obscuro. We suppose there is no question that the noble tutor failed in his grand object of social elegance and that, as Chesterfield had for his father a saturnine Jacobite, so he had a pedantic sloven for his son. But we hope these lines, which we take from the fly-leaf of a friend's copy of the fifth edition of the Letters (1774)-the handwriting unknown to that friend, though he is well skilled in such matters-have no merit but their point :

Vile Stanhope-Demons blush to tell

In twice two hundred places

Has shown his son the road to hell,
Escorted by the Graces:

But

But little did th' ungenerous lad
Concern himself about them;
For base, degenerate, meanly bad,

He sneaked to hell without them."

Mr. Stanhope certainly made, in one important matter, a very ungrateful return for the unbounded attention which Lord Chesterfield bestowed on his success in this world. He married without his father's knowledge. The Earl never heard that such a step had been contemplated even, until a widow and two children presented themselves at his door with evidence of their position. He was by this time very frail. The want of confidence cut the aged apostle of dissimulation to the quickit was upon that son that he had concentrated his cares, and, latterly at least, his affections. But he did not visit the offence

on the widow and the orphans. He dealt with them all in the most generous manner. His letters to the lady are models of graciousness, and he provided for her boys' education and future establishment with liberality. Again he had an ungrateful return As soon as he was in his coffin Mrs. Eugenia Stanhope set about selling the manuscript of his Letters to her husband-which certainly were written, if ever letters were, for the exclusive use of one person, and that person and his representatives bound by every tie to guard the secret-dum calebant cineres at all events. But she got 15007. by the job. We doubt if any Earl has died since 1773 for two little volumes of whose private letters any one bookseller would have given a third of the sum. They went through five editions in the first twelve months.

His less exemplary usage of his own wife met with another sort of return. Her birth was, according to the now obsolete notions of that time, an illustrious distinction, to which were added a peerage in her own right, a handsome fortune, the prospect of a great one, and, unless her painters rivalled her lovers, no common share of beauty. In truth, that this tall, darkhaired, graceful woman sprung from the amours of a Hanoverian king and a Dutch-built concubine seems to us, after all, very doubtful. These pretensions and advantages, however, were all hers when she selected Chesterfield from a host of suitors; and certainly during the flower of her life and his own he was a most profligate husband. Nevertheless, the Correspondence bears evidence that the childless Countess treated his son with almost maternal regard, and that in his infirm old age she watched over him with unwearied devotion. For his memory after he was gone she on all occasions showed an anxious Dr. Maty's weak book is the monument of her tenderWe are, we suppose, to divide our admiration between the generosity

concern.

ness.

generosity of the sex which Chesterfield flattered, outraged, and despised-the clinging instincts of virgin love and conjugal pride -and the fascination of his habitual small courtesies.

The likeness prefixed to these volumes is from a very fine picture by Gainsborough at Chevening. It was painted in his seventieth year-but we should have guessed him far above eighty for the excesses of youth and manhood (especially his contempt of Boerhaave's celebrated prescription for him when consulted at the Hague) had produced a general languor and relaxation of the nervous system, and seamed the beautiful countenance all over with wrinkles which no Lawrence would ever have ventured to imitate. We are surprised that Lord Mahon did not take rather the exquisite portrait in crayons by Rosalba, done when Chesterfield House was building, and still impannelled in its original position. This gives us the no longer young, but perfectly preserved Chesterfield-the Ambassador, the Viceroy, the Secretary. His figure, though on a small scale, was very good-every limb turned by Nature's daintiest hand, yet full of vigour, till it paid the penalties of vice. The head is inimitable-we never saw any engraving of him, either from bust, or medal, or picture, that gives an approach to its peculiar expression. The features are all classical-the eyes full of softness, yet of fire-the brow and eyebrows grave and manlythe mouth small, but impressed with such a mixture of firmness, sense, wit, gaiety, and voluptuous delicacy as few artists could have imagined—and no one of that day but Rosalba could have transcribed.*

ART. VII.-Physical Description of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land; illustrated by a Geological Map, Sections, and Diagrams, and Figures of the Organic Remains. By P. E. De Strzelecki. London, 1845.

THIS

HIS work is cast in a mould not perhaps the fittest for popularity, but is nevertheless a remarkable production, accrediting highly the scientific acquirements of the author, his

* We have a serious complaint to make of this Collective Edition of Chesterfield's Letters,—it has no Index. It was the same with the Collective Edition of Walpole's Letters,' lately issued from the same establishment, and, like this, in other respects satisfactorily arranged. The publisher ought to know that, though such omissions may not be regarded by the keepers of circulating libraries, they are most annoying to people who have libraries of their own, and buy books to be bound, preserved, and consulted-not merely to be read or glanced over, like a 'standard Lovel,' or some sentimental spinster's mince or jocular Captain's hash of history or memoirs. In every considerable printing office there may be found some intelligent man willing and able to compile a sufficient index for such a book as this now before us, for a very moderate remuneration, at his leisure hours.

masculine

masculine zeal and intrepidity as a traveller, and his candour, modesty, and clearness as a writer. The subject, moreover, is one which ought to be deeply interesting to English readers. We have as a nation a large stake, augmenting with every successive year, in these our colonies of the southern world; and much obligation is due to the enlightened foreigner who has sought, and successfully, to render his Australian researches not merely profitable to science, but beneficial also to the practical interests of the numerous and energetic people who are spreading the English name and language over these remote shores.

In the various knowledge which he brings to his researches as a traveller, Count Strzelecki is a worthy disciple of the Humboldt school. He has eyes well tutored and intelligent for every part and province of inquiry; for mountains and their minerals; for the great under-world of fossil existence; for botany; for all the conditions of atmosphere and climate, and the electrical and magnetic phenomena which act so largely therein; for agriculture and the chemistry of soils; for languages and the characters of man. These are large endowments, and they are honestly used; with no assumption of knowledge not possessed, and with ample acknowledgment of the labours of others in the same great field.

In commenting on the general merits of this work, we must notice the advantage Count Strzelecki possesses in the extent of his travels over the globe, and the independent activity of spirit which has guided him throughout. A native of Poland, which country we presume he quitted from political considerations, he has passed twelve years continuously in pervagating seas and lands; chiefly those the last and least explored by European adventure, though now yielding to the great tide which civilization, for ulterior purposes in the economy of Providence, is pouring over them. We find from his Preface, that in the course of this period he has visited North and South America, the West Indies, the South Sea Islands, New Zealand, New South Wales, Van Diemen's Land, the Javanese Islands, part of China, and the East Indies, and Egypt.. Though this volume is limited to Australia, we have abundant proof in the notes and illustrations appended to it, that the same acute faculty of inquiry has accompanied him through these various regions; the survey of one furnishing instruction and preparation for that of another, and with instruments of research fashioned and sharpened by constant exercise. From the specimens of his manuscript journals occasionally afforded in the present volume, we are well justified in desiring that they may hereafter become known to us in their more entire state.

In a recent article of this Review we had occasion to discuss―

courteously,

courteously, we hope, as well as justly-the relative merits of a fair class of travellers who occupy a large place in the literature of the day; and we indicated certain parts in the history of trave where the female eye and instinct gather up observations, the finer lights and shades of things, not equally attained by the grosser or graver perceptions of our own sex. A volume by Mrs. Meredith on the very countries now brought before us in the work of M. Strzelecki, furnished an apposite and agreeable illustration of our meaning. We spoke highly of this volume at the time, and can afford to repeat our commendation of it.

At a moment when the fashion of travelling, fostered by facilities heretofore unknown to the world, has reached to so extraordinary an extent, and is yet in progress further, we cannot, we conceive, do amiss in adding some few general remarks, applicable chiefly to those graver inquiries of the traveller which embrace the physical history and character of the earth itself, and of the various forms of organised life spread over its surface—and, further, the antiquities, languages, diversities of conformation, social and political economy of the various races and nations of men-objects which, even thus summarily stated, will be seen to comprise a vast circle of knowledge and to require great variety of talent for their successful pursuit. There is the more reason for this, seeing the very large part which our own country bears in the prevailing fashion of the time. It would probably be below the truth, were we to rate the number of travellers furnished forth by our narrow island as thrice that belonging to any equal amount of population in the world. The overflowing commerce and colonial establishments which render England a sort of officina gentium, our national wealth and manner of education; and, it may be, other habits of our social life, are all concerned in this effect; which, with every allowance for the vagaries of mere fashion, must be admitted as no bad criterion of the intelligence and moral culture of a community. The great and almost fearful facilities of locomotion which have recently come into existence, and, aided by the capital and energy of England, are still growing with gigantic rapidity by land and sea, have already levelled the surface of the globe to all ranks and conditions of men. Our small country squires, shopkeepers, and artisans, traverse and crowd those regions which heretofore were accessible only to the wealthy and curious few. Tourists whose aspirations were once bounded by the Loire, Rhine, or Po, are now familiarly found in Greece, Palestine, and Egypt; and the transit from New Bond Street to the Bazaar of Constantinople, or to those Pyramids which, in the phrase of an eloquent old writer, astonish Heaven with their audacity,' is as readily made as was sixty years ago the journey from London to Inverness.

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