 When you are not able to write yourself, let your secretary send me two or three lines to acquaint me how you are. You have now seen by the London Gazette what changes have really been made at court, but at the same time I believe you have seen that there must be more, before a ministry can be settled. What those will be God knows. Were I to conjecture I should say that the whole will center before it is long in Mr. Pitting Company, the present being in heterogeneous jumble of youth and caducity which cannot be efficient. Charles Townsend calls the present ludicestring ministry fit only for the summer. The next session will be not only a warm but a violent one, as you will easily judge, if you look over the names of the ends and of the outs. I feel this beginning of the autumn, which is already very cold. The leaves are withered, fall apace, and seem to intimate that I must follow them, which I shall do without reluctance, being extremely weary of this silly world. God bless you both in it and after it. Letter 279. Blackheath, August 25th, 1765. I received but four days ago your letter of the second instant. I find by it that you are well, for you are in good spirits. Your notion of the new birth or regeneration of the ministry is a very just one, and that they have not yet the true seal of the covenant is, I dare say, very true. At least it is not in the possession of either of the secretaries of state, who have only the king's seal. Nor do I believe, whatever his grace may imagine, that it is even in the possession of the Lord Privy Seal. I own I am lost in considering the present situation of affairs. Different conjectures present themselves to my mind, but none that it can rest upon. The next session must necessarily clear up matters a good deal, for I believe it will be the warmest and most acrimonious one that has been known since that of the excise. The late ministry, the present opposition, are determined to attack Lord B publicly in parliament and reduce the late opposition, the present ministry, to protect him publicly in consequence of their supposed treaty with him. On a tendant mew, the paper war is carried on with much fury and scurrility on all sides, to the great entertainment of such lazy and impartial people as myself. I do not know whether you have the daily advertiser, and the public advertiser, in which all political letters are inserted, and some very well written ones on both sides. But I know that they amuse me, taunt Bien Kumal, for an hour or two every morning. Lord T is the supposed author of the pamphlet you mentioned, but I think it is above him. Perhaps his brother, C. T., who is by no means satisfied with the present arrangement, may have assisted him privately. As to this letter, there was a good ridiculous paragraph in the newspapers two or three days ago. We hear that the right honourable Mr. C. T. is indisposed at his house in Oxfordshire of a pain in his side, but it is not said in which side. I do not find that the Duke of York has yet visited you. If he should, it may be expensive, mais on trouvres moyens. As for the lady, if you should be very sharp set for some English flesh, she has it amply in her power to supply you if she pleases. Pray tell me in your next what you think of and how you like Prince Henry of Prussia. God bless you. Letter 280. My dear friend, your great character of Prince Henry, which I take to be a very just one, lowers the King of Prussia's great deal, and probably that is the cause of their being so ill together. But the King of Prussia, with his good parts, should reflect upon that trite and true maxim, qui invidite minor, or Monsieur de Rochefaucose, que l'envie est la plus bas de tu passions puisse qu'on avoue bien des crimes, mais que personne n'a vu l'envie. I thank God I never was sensible of that dark and vile passion, except that formerly I have sometimes envied a successful rival with a fine woman. But now that cause is ceased, and consequently the effects. What shall I, or rather what can I tell you of the political world here? The late ministers accuse the present with having done nothing. The present accused the late ones with having done much worse than nothing. The writers abuse one another most scurrilously, but sometimes with wit. I look upon this to be pelote and attendant partit, till battle begins and sends Stephen's chapel. How that will end, I protest I cannot conjecture. Any farther than this, that if Mr. Pitt does not come into the assistance of the present ministers, they will have much to do to stand their ground. C.T. will play booty, and who else have they? But C. who has only good sense, but not the necessary talents nor experience. Eres, Sierra, Viros, Martimcu, Asandre, Cantu. I never remember in all my time to have seen so problematical a state of affairs, and a man would be much puzzled which sighed to bed on. Your guest, Miss C., is another problem which I cannot solve. She no more wanted the waters of Carlsbad than you did. Is it to show the Duke of Kingston that he cannot live without her? A dangerous experiment which may possibly convince him that he can. There is a trick, no doubt, in it, but what I neither know nor care. You did very well to show her civilities, cela ne gout jamais rien. I will go to my waters, that is, the bath waters, in three weeks or a month, more for the sake of bathing than of drinking. The hot bath always promotes my perspiration, which is sluggish, and supples my stiff rheumatic limbs. D'ayur, I am at present as well, and better than I could reasonably expect to be, anu septuagis moprimo. May you be as long imas. God bless you. End of Section 206, read by Professor Heather Mby. For more free audio books or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Section 207 of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. Letter 281, London, October 25th, 1765. My dear friend, I received your letter of the tenth sonica, for I set out for bath to tomorrow morning. If the use of those waters does me no good, the shifting the scene for some time will at least amuse me a little, and at my age, and with my infirmities, il faux fait de tu bois fiches. Some variety is as necessary for the mind as some medicines are for the body. Here is a total stagnation of politics, which I suppose will continue till the parliament sits to do business, and that will not be till about the middle of January, for the meeting on the 17th December is only for the sake of some new rits. The late ministers threaten the present ones, but the latter do not seem in the least afraid of the former, and for a very good reason, which is that they have the distribution of the loaves and fishes. I believe it is very certain that Mr. Pitt will never come into this, or any other administration. He is absolutely a cripple all the year, and in violent pain at least half of it. Such physical ills are great checks to two of the strongest passions to which human nature is liable, love and ambition. Though I cannot persuade myself that the present ministry can be long lived, I can as little imagine who or what can succeed them. Telle la dice de suger papeble. The Duke of swears that he will have Lord personally attacked in both houses, but I do not see how without endangering himself at the same time. Miss C. is safely arrived here, and her Duke is fonder of her than ever. It was a dangerous experiment that she tried in leaving him so long, but it seems she knew her man. I pity you for the inundation of your good countrymen, which overwhelms you. Je sais ce que ne vaut long. It is besides expensive, but as I look upon the expense to be the least evil of the two, I will see if a New Year's gift will not make it up. I am now upon the wing, I will only add, God bless you. Number 282 Bath November 28th, 1765 My dear friend, I have this moment received your letter of the tenth. I have now been here a month, bathing and drinking the waters, for complaints much of the same kind as yours. I mean pains in my legs, hips and arms, whether gouty or rheumatic. God knows. But I believe both, that a fight without a decision in favor of either, and have absolutely reduced me to the miserable situation of the Sphinx's riddle, to walk upon three legs, that is, with the assistance of my stick, to walk, or rather hobble, very indifferently. I wish it were a declared gout, which is the distemper of a gentleman, whereas the rheumatism is the distemper of a hackneyed coachman or chairman, who is obliged to be out in all weathers and at all hours. I think you will do very right to ask leave, and I dare say you will easily get it, to go to the Baths and Suabia. That is, supposing that you have consulted some skillful physician, if such a one there be, either at Dresden or at Leipzig, about the nature of your distemper, and the nature of those Baths. But Suos Quisca Patimermanis. We have but a bad bargain, God knows, of this life, and patience is the only way not to make bad worse. Mr. Pitt keeps his bed here, with a very real gout, and not a political one, as is often suspected. Here has been a Congress of most of the ex-ministries. If they have raised a battery, as I suppose they have, it is a masked one, for nothing has transpired, only they confess that they intend a most vigorous attack. Daliere, there seems to be a total suspension of all business, till the meeting of the Parliament, and then signacanat. I am very glad that at this time you are out of it, and for reasons that I need not mention. You would certainly have been sent for over, and as before, not paid for your journey. Poor heart is very ill, and condemned to the hot well at Bristol. He is a better poet than philosopher, for all this illness in melancholy proceeds originally from the ill success of his Gustavus Adolphus. He has grown extremely devout, which I am very glad of, because that is always a comfort to the afflicted. I cannot present Mr. Larpent with my New Year's gift till I come to town, which will be before Christmas at farthest. Till when, God bless you. Adjou. End of Section 207, read by Professor Heather Mbye. For more free audiobooks or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Section 208 of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. Chapter 283 London, December 27, 1765 My dear friend, I arrived here from Bath last Monday, rather, but not much better, than when I went over there. My rheumatic pains in my legs and hips plague me still, and I must never expect to be quite free from them. You have, to be sure, had from the office an account of what the Parliament did, or rather did not do, the day of their meeting, and the same point will be the great object at their next meeting. I mean the affair of our American colonies, relatively to the late imposed stamp duty, which our colonists absolutely refuse to pay. The administration are for some indulgence and forbearance to those forward children of their mother country. The opposition are for taking vigorous, as they call them, but I call them violent measures, not less than they dragonade, and to have the tax collected by the troops we have there. For my part, I never saw a forward child mended by whipping, and I would not have the mother country become a stepmother. Our trade to America brings in, communibus honest, two millions a year, and the stamp duty is estimated at about one hundred thousand pounds a year, which I would by no means bring into the stock of the ex-checker, at the loss or even the risk of a million a year to the national stock. I do not tell you of the garter given away yesterday, because the newspapers will, but I must observe that the Prince of Brunswick's ribbon is a mark of great distinction to that family, which I believe is the first, except our own royal family, that has ever had two blue ribbons at a time, but it must be owned they deserve them. One hears of nothing now in town but the separation of men and their wives. Will Finch, the ex-vice chamberlain, Lord Warwick, and your friend Lord Bollingbroke. I wonder at none of them for parting, but I wonder at many for still living together, for in this country it is certain that marriage is not well understood. I have this day sent Mr. Larpent two hundred pounds for your Christmas box, of which I suppose he will inform you by this post. Make this Christmas as merry a one as you can, for pour le pie de bon temps qui nous reste, rien ne s'y founesse, qu'un nor chagrine. For the new years, God send you many and happy ones. Adieu. Letter two hundred and eighty-four. London, February eleventh, seventeen sixty-six. My dear friend. I received two days ago your letter of the twenty-fifth past, and your former, which you mentioned it in, but ten days ago. This may easily be accounted for from the badness of the weather, and consequently of the roads. I hardly remember so severe a winter. It has occasioned many illnesses here. I am sure it pinched my crazy carcass so much that, about three weeks ago, I was obliged to let blood twice in four days, which I found afterwards was very necessary, by the relief it gave to my head and to the rheumatic pains in my limbs, and from the excruble kind of blood which I lost. Perhaps you expect from me a particular account of the present state of affairs here, but if you do you will be disappointed, for no man living, and I, still less than any one, knows what it is. It varies not only daily but hourly. Most people think, and I among the rest, that the date of the present ministers is pretty near out, but how soon we are to have a new style God knows. This, however, is certain that the ministers had a contested election in the House of Commons, and got it but by eleven votes, too small a majority to carry anything. The next day they lost a question in the House of Lords by three. The question in the House of Lords was, to enforce the execution of the Stamp Act in the colonies, v. et amese. What conclusions you will draw from these premises I do not know, but I protest I draw none, but only stare at the present undecisivable state of affairs, which in fifty years' experience I have never seen anything like. The Stamp Act has proved a most pernicious measure, for, whether it is repealed or not, which is still very doubtful, it is given such terror to the Americans, that our trade with them will not be, for some years, what it used to be, and great numbers of our manufacturers at home will be turned to starving, for want of that employment which our very profitable trade to America found them, and hunger is always the cause of tumults and sedition. As you have escaped to fit of the gout in this severe cold weather, it is to be hoped you may be entirely free from it, till next winter at least. Lord, having parted with his wife, now keeps another whore at a great expense, I fear he is totally undone. End of Section 208. Read by Professor Heather Mby. For more free audiobooks or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Section 209 of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. Chapter 285 London, March 17, 1766 My dear friend, you wronged me in thinking me in your debt, for I never received a letter of yours, but I answer it by the next post, or the next but one, at furthest. But I can easily conceive that my two last letters to you may have been drowned or frozen in their way, for portents and prodigies of frost, snow, and inundations have been so frequent this winter, that they have almost lost their names. You tell me that you are going to the Baths of Bodden, but that puzzles me a little, so I recommend this letter to the care of Mr. Larpent to forward to you. For Bodden I take to be the general German word for Bath, and the particular ones are distinguished by some epithet, as Vice Bodden, Carl's Bodden, etc. I hope they are not cold Baths, which I have a very ill opinion of, in all arthritic or rheumatic cases, and your case I take to be a compound of both, but rather more of the latter. You will probably wonder that I tell you nothing of public matters, upon which I shall be as secret as Hotspur's gentle Kate, who would not tell what she did not know, but what is singular nobody seems to know any more of them than I do. People gape, stare, conjecture, and refine. Changes of the ministry, or in the ministry at least, are daily reported and foretold, but, of what kind, God only knows. It is also very doubtful whether Mr. Pitt will come into the administration or not. The two present secretaries are extremely desirous that he should, but the others think of the horse that called the man to its assistance. I will say nothing to you about American affairs, because I have not pens, ink, or paper enough to give you an intelligible account of them. They have been the subjects of warm and acrimonious debates, both in the lords and commons, and in all companies. The repeal of the Stamp Act is at last carried through. I am glad of it, and gave my proxy for it, because I saw many more inconveniences from the enforcing than from the repealing of it. Colonel Brown was with me the other day, and assured me that he left you very well. He said he saw you at Sba, but I did not remember him, though I remember his two brothers, the Colonel and the Ravisher, very well. Your Saxon Colonel has the brogue exceedingly. Present my respects to Count Fleming. I am very sorry for the Countess's illness. She was a most well-bred woman. You would hardly think that I gave a dinner to the Prince of Brunswick, your old acquaintance. I am glad it is over, but I could not avoid it. Il mauvais tablie de politisse. God bless you. Letter 286. Blackheath. June 13th, 1766. My dear friend. I received yesterday your letter of the thirtieth past. I waited with impatience for it, not having received one from you in six weeks, nor your mother neither, who began to be very sure that you were dead if not buried. You should write to her once a week, or at least once a fortnight, for women make no allowance either for business or laziness, whereas I can by experience make allowances for both. However, I wish you would generally write to me once a fortnight. Next week I paid my mid-summer offering of five hundred pounds to Mr. Larpent for your use, as I suppose he has informed you. I am punctual, you must allow. What account shall I give you of ministerial affairs here? I protest I do not know. Your own description of them is as exact a one as any I, whom upon the place, can give you. It is a total dislocation and derangement, consequently a total inefficiency. When the Duke of Grafton quitted the seals, he gave that very reason for it, in a speech in the House of Lords. He declared that he had no objection to the persons or the measures of the present ministers, but that he thought they wanted strength and efficiency to carry on proper measures with success, and that he knew but one man, meaning, as you will easily suppose, Mr. Pitt, who could give them strength and solidity, that under this person he should be willing to serve in any capacity, not only as a general officer but as a pioneer, and would take up a spade and a mattock. When he quitted the seals, they were offered first to Lord Edgmont, then to Lord Hardwick, who both declined them, probably for the same reasons that made the Duke of Grafton resign them. But after they're going a-begging for some time, the Duke of… begged them, and has them, foe de mû. Lord Mount Stuart was never thought of for Vienna, where Lord Stormont returns in three months. The former is going to be married to one of the Miss Winsers, a great fortune. To tell you the speculations, the reasonings, and the conjectures, either of the uninformed or of the best-informed public, upon the present wonderful situation of affairs, would take up much more time in paper than either you or I can afford, though we have neither of us a great deal of business at present. I am in as good health as I could reasonably expect at my age, and with my shattered carcass, that is, from the waist upward. But downward it is not the same, for my limbs retain that stiffness and debility of my long rheumatism. I cannot walk half an hour at a time. As the autumn and still more as the winter approaches, take care to keep yourself very warm, especially your legs and feet. Lady Chesterfield sends you her compliments, and triumphs in the success of her plaster. God bless you. End of Section 209. Read by Professor Heather M. Baye. For more free audio books or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Section 210 of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. Letter 287. Blackheath, July 11th, 1766. My dear friend, you are a happy mortal to have your time thus employed between the great and the fair. I hope you do the honors of your country to the latter. The emperor, by your account, seems to be very well for an emperor, who, by being above the other monarchs in Europe, may justly be supposed to have had a proportionably worse education. I find by your account of him that he has been trained up to homicide, the only science in which princes are ever instructed, and with good reason, as their greatness and glory singly depend upon the numbers of their fellow creatures which their ambition exterminates. If a sovereign should, by great accident, deviate into moderation, justice and clemency, what a contemptible figure would he make in the catalogue of princes. I have always owned a great regard for King Log. From the interview at Torgal, between the two monarchs, they will be either a great deal better or worse together, but I think rather the latter, for our namesake, Philip de Comine, observes, that he never knew any good to come from la bouchement des Rois. The king of Prussia will exert all his perspicacity to analyze his imperial majesty, and I would bet upon the one head of his black eagle against the two heads of the Austrian eagle, though two heads are said, proverbially, to be better than one. I wish I had the direction of both monarchs, and they should together with some of their allies take Lorraine and Alsace from France. You will call me la baie de Saint-Pierre, but I only say what I wish, whereas he thought everything that he wished practicable. Now to come home. Here are great bustles at court, and a great change of persons is certainly very near. You will ask me, perhaps, who is to be out and who is to be in, to which I answer I do not know. My conjecture is that, be the new settlement what it will, Mr. Pitt will be at the head of it. If he is, I presume, qui l'aura mise de l'eau de cent vingt pour la mille-l'eau de bie, when that shall come to be known, as known it certainly will soon be, he may bid adieu to his popularity. A minister, as minister, is very apt to be the object of public dislike, and a favorite as favorite still more so. If any event of this kind happens, which, if it happens at all, I conjecture will be some time next week, you shall hear further from me. I will follow your advice and be as well as I can next winter, though I know I shall never be free from my flying rheumatic pains, as long as I live. But whether that will be more or less is extremely indifferent to me. In either case, God bless you. Letter 288, Blackheath, August 1st, 1766. My dear friend. The curtain was at last drawn up, the day before yesterday, and discovered the new actors, together with some of the old ones. I do not name them to you, because tomorrow's gazette will do it full as well as I could. Mr. Pitt, who had carte blanche given him, named every one of them. But what would you think he named himself for? Lord Privy-Seal, and what will astonish you as it does every mortal here? Earl of Chatham. The joke here is that he has had a fall upstairs, and has done himself so much hurt that he will never be able to stand upon his legs again. Everybody is puzzled how to account for this step, though it would not be the first time that great abilities have been duped by low cunning. But be it what it will, he is certainly now only Earl of Chatham, and no longer Mr. Pitt, in any respect whatever. Such an event, I believe, was never read nor heard of. To withdraw in the fullness of his power and in the utmost gratification of his ambition from the House of Commons, which procured him his power, and which alone insured him, and to go into that hospital of incurables, the House of Lords, is a measure so unaccountable that nothing but proof positive could have made me believe it, but true it is. Hans Stanley is to go ambassador to Russia, and my nephew Ellis to Spain, decorated with a red ribbon. Lord Shelburne is your secretary of state, which I suppose he is notified to you this post by a circular letter. Charles Townsend has now the sole management of the House of Commons, but how long he will be content to be only Lord Chatham's vice-region there is a question which I will not pretend to decide. There is one very bad sign for Lord Chatham in his new dignity, which is that all his enemies without exception rejoice at it, and all his friends are stupefied and dumbfounded. If I mistake not much, he will in the course of a year enjoy perfect otium cum dignitate, enough of politics. Is the fair, or at least the fat Miss C. with you still? It must be confessed that she knows the arts of courts to be received at Dresden, and so connived at in lester fields. There never was so what a summer as this has been in the memory of man. We have not had one single day since March without some rain, but most days a great deal. I hope that does not affect your health, as great cold does. For, with all these inundations, it has not been cold. God bless you. End of Section 210. Read by Professor Heather M. By. For more free audiobooks or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Section 211 of Chester Fields' Letters to His Son. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. Letter 289. Blackheath. August 14th, 1766. My dear friend. I received yesterday your letter of the 30th past, and I find, by it, that it crossed mine upon the road, where they had no time to take notice of one another. The newspapers have informed you before now of the changes actually made. More will probably follow, but what I am sure I cannot tell you, and I believe nobody can, not even those who are to make them. They will, I suppose, be occasional, as people behave themselves. The causes and consequences of Mr. Pitt's quarrel now appear in print, in a pamphlet published by Lord T., and in a refutation of it, not by Mr. Pitt himself, I believe, but by some friend of his, and under his sanction. The former is very scurrilous and scandalous, and betrays private conversation. My Lord says that in his last conference he thought he had as good a right to nominate the new ministry as Mr. Pitt, and consequently named Lord G., Lord L., etc., for Cabinet Council Employments, which Mr. Pitt not consenting to, Lord T. broke up the conference, and in his wrath went to stow, where I presume he may remain undisturbed a great while, since Mr. Pitt will neither be willing nor able to send for him again. The pamphlet, on the part of Mr. Pitt, gives an account of his whole political life, and in that respect is tedious to those who were acquainted with it before. But at the latter end there is an article that expresses such supreme contempt of Lord T., and in so pretty a manner, that I suspect it to be Mr. Pitt's own. You shall judge yourself, for I hear transcribe the article. But this I will be bold to say, that had he, Lord T., not fastened himself into Mr. Pitt's train, and acquired thereby such an interest in that great man, he might have crept out of life with his little notices he crept in, and gone off with no other degree of credit than that of adding a single unit to the bills of mortality. I wish I could send you all the pamphlets and half-sheets that swarm here upon this occasion, but that is impossible, for every week would make a ship's cargo. It is certain that Mr. Pitt has, by his dignity of Earl, lost the greatest part of his popularity, especially in the city, and I believe the opposition will be very strong, and perhaps prevail next session in the House of Commons. There being now nobody there who can have the authority and ascendant over them that Pitt had. People tell me here, as young Harvey told you at Dresden, that I look very well, but those are words of course which every one says to everybody. So far is true that I am better than at my age, and with my broken constitution I could have expected to be. God bless you. Letter 290. Blackheath, September 12th, 1766. My dear friend. I have this moment received your letter of the twenty-seventh past. I was in hopes that your course of waters this year at Badden would have given you a longer reprieve from your painful complaint. If I do not mistake, you carried over with you some of Dr. Monzi's powders. Have you taken any of them, and have they done you any good? I know they did me a great deal. I, who pretend to some skill in physics, advise a cool regimen and cooling medicines. I do not wonder that you do wonder at Lord C's conduct. If he was not outwitted into his peerage by Lord B, his accepting it is utterly inexplicable. The instruments he has chosen for the great office, I believe, will never fit the same case. It was cruel to put such a boy as Lord G over the head of old Ligonier, and if I had been the former I would have refused that commission, during the life of that honest and brave old general. All this is to quiet the Duke of R to a resignation, and to make Lord B Lieutenant of Ireland, where I will venture to prophecy that he will not do. Ligonier was much pressed to give up his regimen of guards, but would by no means do it, and declared that the king might break him if he pleased, but that he would certainly not break himself. I have no political events to inform you of. They will not be ripe till the meeting of the parliament. Immediately upon the receipt of this letter, write me one to equate me how you are. God bless you, and particularly may he send you health, for that is the greatest blessing. Letter 291, Blackheath, September 30th, 1766. My dear friend, I received yesterday with great pleasure your letter of the 18th, by which I consider this last ugly bout is over, and to prevent its return I greatly approve of your plan for the south of France, where I recommend for your principal residence, Pazena's Toulouse or Bordeaux, but do not be persuaded to go to Exxon-Provence, which by experience I know to be at once the hottest and the coldest place in the world, from the ardor of the provincial sun, and the sharpness of the alpine winds. I also earnestly recommend to you, for your complaint upon your breast, to take, twice a day, asses, or what is better, mares milk, and that for these six months at least, mingle turnips as much as you can with your diet. I have written as you desired to Mr. Secretary Conway, but I will answer for it that there will be no difficulty to obtain the leave you ask. There is no new event in the political world since my last, so God bless you. I am glad to hear that your breast is so much better. You will find both asses and mares milk enough in the south of France, where it was much drank when I was there. Guy Patton recommends to a patient to have no doctor but a horse, and no apothecary but an ass. As for your pains and weaknesses in your limbs, je vous en offre-tente. I have never been free from them since my last rheumatism. I use my legs as much as I can, and you should do so too, for disuse makes them worse. I cannot now use them long at a time because of the weakness of old age, but I can try to get, by different snatches, at least two hours walking every day, either in my garden or within doors as the weather permits. I set out to-morrow for Bath in hopes of half repairs, for Medea's kettle could not give me whole ones. The timbers of my wretched vessel are too much decay to be fitted out again for use. I shall see poor heart there, who I am told is in a miserable way, between some real and some imaginary dis-tempers. I send you no political news, for one reason among others, which is that I know none. Great expectations are raised of this session, which meets the eleventh of next month, but of what kind nobody knows, and consequently everybody conjectures variously. Lord Chatham comes to town to-morrow from Bath, where he has been to refit himself for the winter campaign. He has hitherto but an indifferent set of aid to come, and where he will find better I do not know. Charles Townsend and he are already upon ill terms. Enfin je n'y vous goûte, and so God bless you. Letter 293, Bath, November 15th, 1766. My dear friend, I have this moment received your letter of the fifth instant from Basel. I am very glad to find that your breast is relieved, though perhaps at the expense of your legs, for if the humor be either gaudy or romantic it had better be in your legs than anywhere else. I have consulted Moise C., the great physician of this place, upon it, who says that at this distance he dares not prescribe anything, as there may be such different causes for your complaint, which must be well weighed by a physician upon the spot. That is, in short, that he knows nothing of the matter. I will therefore tell you my own case in 1732, which may be something parallel to yours. I had that year been dangerously ill of a fever in Holland, and when I was recovered of it the febrific humor fell into my legs, and swelled them to that degree, and chiefly in the evening, that it was as painful to me as it was shocking to others. I came to England with them in this condition, and consulted Meade, Broxholman, Arbuthnot, who none of them did me the least good. But on the contrary increased the swelling by applying poultices and emollients. In this condition I remained near six months, till, finding that the doctors could do me no good, I resolved to consult Palmer, the most eminent surgeon of St. Thomas's hospital. He immediately told me that the physicians had pursued a very wrong method, as the swelling of my legs proceeded only from a relaxation and weakness of the cutaneous vessels, and he must apply strengtheners instead of emollients. Accordingly he ordered me to put my legs up to the knees every morning in brine from the salters, as hot as I could bear it. The brine must have Meade salted in it. I did so, and after having thus pickled my legs for about three weeks, the complaint absolutely ceased, and I have never had the least swelling in them since. After what I have said I must caution you not to use the same remedy rashly, and without the most skillful advice you can find, where you are, for if your swelling proceeds from a gouty or rheumatic humor there may be great danger in applying so powerful an astrogent, and perhaps repellent as brine. So go piano, and not without the best advice, upon a view of the parts. I shall direct all my letters to you, Chez Monsieur Sarriksen, who by his trade is, I suppose, sedentaire at Basel, while it is not sure that you will be at any one place in the south of France. Do you know that he is a descendant of the French poet, Sarazin? Your heart, whom I frequently go to see here out of compassion, is in a most miserable way. He has had a stroke of the palsy, which has deprived him of the use of his right leg, affected his speech a good deal, and perhaps his head a little. Such are the intermediate tributes that we are forced to pay, in some shape or other, to our wretched nature, till we pay the last great one of all. May you pay this very late, and as few intermediate tributes as possible. And so, jubio to Ben Vellere. God bless you. I am very glad that you begin to feel the good effects of the climate where you are. I know it saved my life in 1741, when both the skillful and the unskillful gave me over. In that ramble I stayed three or four days at Nîmes, where there are more remains of antiquity, I believe, than in any other town in Europe, Italy accepted. What is falsely called La Maison Coirée is, in my mind, the finest piece of architecture that I ever saw, and the amphitheater the clumsiest and the ugliest. If it were in England, everybody would swear that it had been built by Sir John Van Broeg. This place is now just what you have seen it formerly. Here is a great crowd of trifling and unknown people, whom I seldom frequent in the public rooms, so that I may pass my time tre uniment in taking the air in my post-chase every morning and in reading of evenings. And, apropos of the latter, I shall point out a book which I believe will give you some pleasure. At least it gave me a great deal. I never read it before. It is réflexion sur la poisie et la peinture par la baie de Beau, in two octavo volumes, and is, I suppose, to be had at every great town in France. The criticisms and the reflections are just and lively. It may be you expect some political news from me, but I can tell you that you will have none, for no mortal can comprehend the present state of affairs. Eight or nine people of some consequence have resigned their employments, upon which Lord C. made overtures to the Duke of B. and his people, but they could by no means agree, and his grace went the next day full of wrath to Wovern, so that negotiation is entirely at an end. People wait to see who Lord C. will take in, for some he must have, even he cannot be alone, contremundum. Such a state of affairs, to be sure, was never seen before, in this or in any other country. When this ministry shall be settled it will be the sixth ministry in six years' time. Poor heart is here, and in a most miserable condition. Those who wish him the best as I do must wish him dead. God bless you. Letter 295, London, February 13th, 1767. My dear friend, it is so long since I have had a letter from you that I am alarmed about your health, and fear that the southern parts of France have not done so well by you as they did by me in the year 1741, when they snatched me from the jaws of death. Let me know, upon the receipt of this letter, how you are and where you are. I have no news to send you from hence, for everything seems suspended, both in the court and in the parliament, till Lord Chatham's return from the Bath, where he has been laid up this month by a severe fit of the gout, and at present he has the sole apparent power. In what little business has hitherto been done in the House of Commons, Charles Townsend has given himself more ministerial heirs than Lord Chatham will, I believe, approve of. However, since Lord Chatham has thought fit to withdraw himself from that house, he cannot do well without Charles's abilities to manage it as his deputy. I do not send you an account of weddings, births, and burials, as I take it for granted that you know them all from the English printed papers, some of which I presume are sent after you. Your old acquaintance, Lord Essex, is to be married this week to Harriet Blotton, who has twenty thousand down, besides the reasonable expectation of as much at the death of her father. My kinsman, Lord Strathmore, is to be married in a fortnight to Miss Bows, the greatest heiress perhaps in Europe. In short, the matrimonial frenzy seems to rage at present and is epidemical. The men marry for money, and I believe you guess what the women marry for. God bless you and send you health. Number 276 London, March 3, 1761 My dear friend. Yesterday I received two letters at once from you, both dated Montpellier, one of the twenty-ninth of last December and the other the twelfth of February, but I cannot conceive what became of my letters to you, for I assure you that I answered all yours the next post after I received them, and about ten days ago I wrote you a volunteer, because you had been so long silent, and I was afraid that you were not well. But your letter of the twelfth of February has removed all my fears upon that score. The same climate that has restored your health so far will probably, in a little more time, restore your strength, too, though you must not expect it to be quite what it was before your late, painful complaints. At least I find that, since my late great rheumatism, I cannot walk above half an hour at a time, which I do not play singly to the account of my years, but chiefly to the great shock given them by my limbs. Daliur, I am pretty well for my age in shattered constitution. As I told you in my last I must tell you again in this that I have no news to send. Lord Chatham, at last, came to town yesterday, full of gout, and is not able to stir hand or foot. During his absence Charles Townsend has talked of him and at him in such a manner that henceforward they must be either much worse or much better together than ever they were in their lives. On Friday last Mr. Doudswell and Mr. Grenville moved to have one shilling in the pound of the land tax taken off, which was opposed by the court, but the court lost it by eighteen. The opposition triumphed much upon this victory, though I think without reason, for it is plain that all the landed gentlemen bribed themselves with this shilling in the pound. The Duke of Buckley is very soon to be married to Lady Betty Montague. Lord Essex was married yesterday to Harriet Blayden, and Lord Strathmore last week to Miss Bows. Both couples went directly from the church to consummation in the country, from an unnecessary fear that they should not be tired of each other if they stayed in town. And now, Dixie, God bless you. You are in the right to go to see the assembly of the states of Langdok, though they are but the shadow of the original atop, while there was some liberty subsisting in France. End of section two hundred and thirteen, read by Professor Heather Mby. For more free audiobooks or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Section two hundred and fourteen of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. Letter two hundred and ninety-seven, London, April sixth, seventeen sixty-seven, my dear friend. Yesterday I received your letter from Nim, by which I find that several of our letters have reciprocally miscarried. This may probably have the same fate. However, if it reaches Mr. Sarazin, I presume he will know where to take his aim at you, for I find you are in motion and with a polarity to Dresden. I am very glad to find by it that your meridional journey has perfectly recovered you, as to your general state of health. For as to your legs and thighs, you must never expect that they will be restored to their original strength and activity, after so many rheumatic attacks as you have had. I know that my limbs, besides the natural debility of old age, have never recovered the severe attack of rheumatism that plagued me five or six years ago. I cannot now walk above half an hour at a time, and even that in a hobbling kind of way. I can give you no account of our political world, which is in a situation that I never saw in my whole life. Lord Chatham has been so ill these last two months, that he has not been able, some say not willing, to do or hear of any business, and for his sue ministers they either cannot or dare not do any without his directions. So everything is now at a stand. This situation, I think, cannot last much longer, and if Lord Chatham should either quit his post or the world, neither of which is very improbable, I conjecture, that which is called the Rockingham Connection stands the fairest for the ministry. But this is merely my conjecture, for I have neither the data nor postulata enough to reason upon. When you get to Dresden, which I hope you will not do till next month, our correspondence will be more regular. God bless you. Letter 298, London, May 5th, 1767 My dear friend. By your letter of the twenty-fifth past from Basel, I presume this will find you at Dresden, and accordingly I direct to you there. When you write me word that you are at Dresden, I will return you an answer with something better than the answer itself. If you complain of the weather north of Bessenson, what would you say to the weather that we have had here for these last two months uninterruptedly? Snow often, northeast wind constantly, and extreme cold. I write this by the side of a good fire, and at this moment it snows very hard. All my promised fruit at Blackheath is quite destroyed, and what is worse, many of my trees. I cannot help thinking that the King of Poland, the Empress of Russia, and the King of Prussia, sentendant comme la renne voie, though the former must not appear in it upon account of the stupidity, ignorance, and bigotry of his polls. I have a great opinion of the cogency of the controversial arguments of the Russian troops, in favor of the dissidents. I am sure I wish them success, for I would have all intoleration intolerated in its turn. We shall soon see more clearly into this matter, for I do not think that the autocratrice of all the Russians will be trifled with by the Sermitians. What do you think of the late extraordinary event in Spain? Could you have ever imagined that those ignorant Goths would have dared to banish the Jesuits? There must have been some very grave and important reasons for so extraordinary a measure. But what they were I do not pretend to guess, and perhaps I shall never know, though all the coffee-houses here do. Things are here in exactly the same situation in which they were when I wrote to you last. Lord Chatham is still ill, and only goes abroad for an hour in a day, to take the air in his coach. The King hath, to my certain knowledge, sent him repeated messages, desiring him not to be concerned at his confinement, for that he is resolved to support him, Pue Contra II. God bless you. Letter 299 London, June 1st, 1767 My dear friend, I received yesterday your letter of the 20th pass from Dresden, where I am glad to find that you are arrived safe and sound. This has been everywhere un honest mirabilis for bad weather, and it continues still here. Everybody has fires, and their winter clothes, as at Christmas. The town is extremely sickly, and sudden deaths have been very frequent. I do not know what to say to you upon public matters. Things remain in statu quo, and nothing is done. It changes our talkt of, and I believe will happen soon, perhaps next week. But who is to be changed, for whom I do not know, though everybody else does? I am apt to think that it will be a mosaic ministry, made up to pièce rapauté, from different connections. Last Friday I sent your subsidy to Mr. Lar-Pent, who I suppose has given you notice of it. I believe it will come very seasonably, as all places, both foreign and domestic, are so far in arrears. We talk of paying you all up to Christmas. The King's inferior servants are almost starving. I suppose you have already heard, at Dresden, that Count Brul is either actually married, or very soon to be, to Lady Egremont. She has, together with her salary, as Lady of the Bedchamber, twenty-five hundred a year, besides ten thousand pounds in money left her at her own disposal, by Lord Egremont. All this was sound great, and a coup d'amour. I am glad of it, for he is a very pretty man. God bless you. I easily concede why Orloff influences the empress of all the rushes, but I cannot see why the King of Precious should be influenced by that motive. End of Section Two Hundred and Fourteen. Read by Professor Heather Mby. For more free audiobooks or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Section Two Hundred and Fifteen of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. Letter Three Hundred. Blackheath, July 2, 1767. My dear friend, though I have had no letter from you since my last, and though I have no political news to inform you of, I write this to acquaint you with a piece of Greenwich news, which I believe you will be very glad of. I am sure I am. Know then that your friend, Miss, was happily married three days ago to Mr. an Irish gentleman, and a member of Parliament with an estate of above twelve thousand pounds a year. He settles upon her six hundred pounds jointure, and in the case they have no children, fifteen hundred pounds. He happened to be by chance in her company one day here, and was at once shot dead by her charms. But as dead men sometimes walk, he walked to her the next morning and tendered her his person and his fortune, both which, taking the one with the other, she very prudently accepted, for his person is sixty years old. Ministerial affairs are still in the same ridiculous and doubtful situation as when I wrote to you last. Lord Chatham will neither hear of nor do any business, but lives at Hampstead, and rides about the heath. His gout is said to be fallen upon his nerves. Your provincial secretary, Conway, quits this week, and returns to the army, for which he languished. Two lords are talked of to succeed him, Lord Edgmont and Lord Hillsborough. I rather hope the latter. Lord Northington certainly quits this week, but nobody guesses who is to succeed him as president. A thousand other changes are talked of which I neither believe nor reject. Poor heart is in a most miserable condition. He has lost one side of himself, and in a great measure his speech, not withstanding which, he is going to publish his divine poems as he calls them. I am sorry for it, as he had not time to correct them before this stroke, nor abilities to do it since. God bless you. Letter 301. Blackheath, July 9th, 1767. My dear friend, I have received joys of the twenty-first past with the enclosed proposal from the French refugees for a subscription toward building them in Tempel. I have shown it to the very few people I see, but without the least success. They told me, and with too much truth, that while such numbers of poor were literally starving here from the dearness of all provisions they could not think of sending their money into another country, for a building which they reckoned useless. In truth I never knew such misery as is here now, and it affects both the hearts and the purses of those who have either. For my own part I never gave to a building in my life, which I reckon is only giving to masons and carpenters, and the treasurer of the undertaking. Prior to the expectations of all mankind here, everything still continues in statu quo. General Conway has been desired by the king to keep the seals till he has found a successor for him, and the Lord President the same. Lord Chatham is relapsed, and worse than ever. He sees nobody, and nobody sees him. It is said that a bungling physician has checked his gout, and thrown it upon his nerves, which is the worst distemper that a minister or a lover can have, as it debilitates the mind of the former and the body of the latter. Here is it present and interregnum. We must soon see what order will be produced from this chaos. The electorate, I believe, will find the want of Comte Fleming, for he certainly had abilities, and was as sturdy and inexorable as a minister at the head of the finances ought always to be. When you seek Comte's Fleming, which I suppose cannot be for some time, pray make her Lady Chesterfield's and my compliments of condolence. You say that Dresden is very sickly. I am sure London is at least as sickly now, for there reigns an epidemical distemper, called by the gentile name of L'Enfluenza. It is a little fever, of which scarcely anybody dies, and it generally goes off with a little looseness. I have escaped it, I believe, by being here. God keep you from all distempers, and bless you. Chapter 302 London, October 30th, 1767 My dear friend, I have now left Blackheath till the next summer, if I can live till then, and am just able to write, which is all I can say, for I am extremely weak, and have in a great measure lost the use of my legs. I hope they will recover both flesh and strength, for at present they have neither. I go to the bath next week, in hopes of half repairs at most, for those waters I am sure will not prove Medea's kettle, nor les yeux du juvant, to me. However, I shall do as good courteurs do, and get what I can, if I cannot get what I will. I send you no politics, for here are neither politics nor ministers. Lord Chatham is quiet at Pinsent in Somersetshire, and his former subalterns do nothing, so that nothing is done. Whatever places or performance are disposed of, come evidently from Lorde, who affects to be invisible, and who, like a woodcock, thinks that if his head is but hid, he has not seen it all. General Pultney is at last dead last week, worth above thirteen hundred thousand pounds. He has left all his land at estate, which is eight and twenty thousand pounds a year, including the Bradford estate, which his brother had from that ancient family, to a cousin's germain. He has left two hundred thousand pounds in the funds to Lord Darlington, who was his next nearest relation, and at least twenty thousand pounds in various legacies. If riches alone could make people happy, the last two proprietors of this immense wealth ought to have been so, but they never were. God bless you, and send you good health, which is better than all the riches of the world. End of Section Two Hundred and Fifteen, read by Professor Heather Mbuy. For more free audiobooks or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Section Two Hundred and Sixteen of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. Letter Three Hundred and Three. London, November Third, 1767. My dear friend, your last letter brought me but a scurvy account of your health. For the headaches you complain of, I will venture to prescribe a remedy, which by experience I found a specific, when I was extremely plagued with them. It is either to chew ten grains of rhubarb every night going to bed, or what I think rather better, to take immediately before dinner a couple of rhubarb pills, of five grains each, by which means it mixes with the ailments, and will, by degrees, keep your body gently open. I do it to this day, and find a great good by it. As you seem to dread the approach of a German winter, I would advise you to write to General Conway, for leave of absence for the three rigorous winter months, which I daresay will not be refused. If you choose a worse climate you may come to London, but if you choose a better and a warmer you may go to Nice-en-Provence, where Sir William Stanhope is gone to pass his winter, who I am sure will be extremely glad of your company there. I go to the Bath next Saturday, Utanum de Fristra. God bless you. Letter Three Hundred and Four. Death's September 19th, 1767 My dear friend, yesterday I received your letter of the twenty-ninth past, and am very glad to find that you are well enough to think that you may perhaps stand the winter at Dresden, but if you do, pray take care to keep both your body and your limbs exceedingly warm. As to my own health it is, in general, as good as I could expect it at my age. I have a good stomach, a good digestion, and sleep well, but find that I shall never recover the free use of my legs, which are now full as weak as when I first came hither. You ask me questions concerning Lord See, which neither I nor I believe anybody but himself can answer. However, I will tell you all that I do know, and all that I guess concerning him. This time twelve-month he was here, and in good health and spirits, except now and then some little twinges of the gout. We saw one another four or five times at our respective houses, but for these last eight months he has been absolutely invisible to his most intimate friends, les sous-ministres, would receive no letters, nor so much as open any packet about business. His physician, Dr. as I am told, had very ignorantly checked a coming fit of the gout, and scattered it about his body, and it fell particularly upon his nerves, so that he continues exceedingly vaporish, and would neither see nor speak to anybody while he was here. I sent him my compliments, and asked leave to wait upon him, but he sent me word that he was too ill to see anybody whatsoever. I met him frequently taking the air in his post-chase, and he looked very well. He set out from Hentz for London last Tuesday, but what to do, whether to resume or finally to resign the administration, God knows. Conjectures are various. In one of our conversations here, this time twelve-month, I desired him to secure you a seat in the new Parliament. He assured me that he would, and I am convinced very sincerely. He said even that he would make it his own affair, and desired that I would give myself no more trouble about it. Since that I have heard no more of it, which made me look out for some venal borough, and I spoke to a borough-jobber, and offered five and twenty-hundred pounds for a secure seat in Parliament. But he laughed at my offer, and said that there was no such thing as a borough to be had now, for that the rich East and West Indians had secured them all, at the rate of three thousand pounds at least, but many at four thousand, and two or three that he knew at five thousand. This I confess has vexed me a good deal, and made me the more impatient to know whether Lord See had done anything in it, which I shall know when I go to town, as I propose to do in about a fortnight, and as soon as I know it you shall. To tell you truly what I think, I doubt from all this nervous disorder, that Lord See is ordered to combat as a minister, but do not ever hint this to anybody. God bless you. Letter 305, Bath December 27th, 1767, and Nova Progenies. My dear friend, the outlines of a new ministry are now declared, but they are not yet quite filled up. It was formed by the Duke of Bedford. Lord Gower is made President of the Council, Lord Sandwich Postmaster, Lord Hillsborough, Secretary of State for America only, Mr. Rigsby, Vice Treasurer of Ireland. General Conway is to keep the seals a fortnight longer, and then surrender them to Lord Weymouth. It is very uncertain whether the Duke of Grafton is to continue at the head of the Treasury or not, but in my private opinion George Grenville will very soon be there. Lord Chatham seems to be out of the question, and is at his repurchased house at Hayes, where he will not see a mortal. It is yet uncertain whether Lord Shelburn is to keep his place. If not, Lord Sandwich, they say, is to succeed him. All the Rockingham people are absolutely excluded. Many more changes must necessarily be, but no more are yet declared. It seems to be a resolution taken by somebody that ministers are to be annual. Sir George McCartney is next week to be married to Lady Jane Stewart, Lord Butte's second daughter. I never knew it so cold in my life as it is now, and with a very deep snow, by which if it continues I may be snowbound here for God knows how long, though I propose leaving this place the latter end of the week. Poor heart is very ill here. He mentions you often and with great affection. God bless you. When I know more, you shall. End of Section 216, read by Professor Heather Mbye. For more free audiobooks or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Section 217 of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. Letter 306. London, January 29, 1768. My dear friend. Two days ago I received your letter of the Eighth. I wish you had gone a month or six weeks sooner to Basel, that you might have escaped the excessive cold of the most severe winter that I believe was ever known. It congealed both my body and my mind, and scarcely left me the power of thinking. A great many here, both in town and country, have perished by the frost and been lost in the snow. You have heard no doubt of the changes at court, by which you have got a new provincial, Lord Weymouth, who has certainly good parts, and as I am informed speaks very well in the House of Lords, but I believe he has no application. Lord Chatham is at his house at Hayes, but sees no mortal. Some say that he has a fit of the gout, which would probably do him good, but many think that his worst complaint is in his head, which I am afraid is too true. Were he well I am sure he would realize the promise he made me concerning you, but, however, in that uncertainty I am looking out for any chance borough, and if I can find one I promise you I will bid like a Chapman for it, as I should be very sorry that you were not in the next Parliament. I do not see any probability of any vacancy in a foreign commission in a better climate. Mr. Hamilton at Naples, Sir Horace Mann at Florence, and George Pitt at Turin, do not seem likely to make one. And as for changing your foreign department for a domestic one, it would not be in my power to procure you one, and you would become Deveque-Munier and gain nothing in point of climate by changing a bad one for another full as bad, if not worse, and the worse I believe is not than ours. I have always had better health abroad than at home, and if the tattered remnant of my wretched life were worth my care, I would have been in the south of France long ago. I continue very lame and weak, and despair of ever recovering any strength in my legs. I care very little about it. At my age every man must have his share of physical ills of one kind or another, and mine, thank God, are not very painful. God bless you. CHAPTER 307 LONDON, MARCH 12, 1768 MY DEAR FRIEND The day after I received your letter of the twenty-first past I wrote to Lord Weymouth as you desired, and I send you his answer enclosed, from which, though I have not heard from him since, I take it for granted, and so may you, that his silence signifies his majesty's consent to your request. Your complicated complaints give me great uneasiness, and the more as I am convinced that the Montpellier physicians have mistaken a material part of your case, as indeed all the physicians here did, except Dr. Mati. In my opinion you have no gout, but a very scorbidic and rheumatic habit of body, which should be treated in a very different manner from the gout. And as I pretend to be a very good quack at least, I would prescribe to you a strict milk diet, with the seeds such as rice, sego, barley, millet, etc., for the three summer months at least, and without ever tasting wine. If climate signifies anything, in which, by the way, I have very little faith, you are, in my mind, in the finest climate in the world, neither too hot nor too cold, and always clear. You are with the gayest people living, be gay with them, and do not wear out your eyes with reading at home. La Nuit is the English distemper, and a very bad one it is, as I find by every day's experience, for my deafness deprives me of the only rational pleasure that I can have at my age, which is society, so that I read my eyes out every day, that I may not hang myself. You will not be in this Parliament, at least not at the beginning of it. I relied too much upon Lord See's promise above a year ago at Bath. He desired that I would leave it to him, that he would make it his own affair, and give it in charge to the Duke of Gee, whose province it was to make the parliamentary arrangement. This I depended upon, and I think with reason. But since that, Lord See has neither seen nor spoken to anybody, and has been in the oddest way in the world. I have sent to the Duke of Gee to know if L.C. had either spoken or sent him about it, but he assured me that he had done neither, that all was full or rather running over at present, but that if he could crowd you in upon a vacancy he would do it with great pleasure. I am extremely sorry for this accident, for I am of a very different opinion from you about being in Parliament, as no man can be of consequence in this country who is not in it. And though one may not speak like a Lord Mansfield or a Lord Chatham, one may make a very good figure in a second rank. Locus es pluribus umbrus. I do not pretend to give you any account of the present state of the country or ministry, not knowing nor guessing it myself. God bless you, and send you health, which is the first and greatest of all blessings. End of Section 217, read by Professor Heather Mby. For more free audiobooks or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Section 218 of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. Letter 308. London, March 15th, 1768. My dear friend. This letter is supplemental to my last. This morning Lord Weymouth very civilly sent Mr. Wood his first comise, to tell me that the King very willingly gave you leave of absence from your post for a year, for the recovery of your health, but then added that as the court of Vienna was tampering with that of Saxony, which it seems our court is desirous to counter-core her. It might be necessary to have in the interim a charge d'affaires at Dresden, with a defalcation out of your appointment of forty shillings a day, till you return, if I would agree to it. I told him that I consented to both the proposals, upon condition that at your return you should have the character and the pay of a planet-potion-tary added to your present character and pay, and that I would completely make up to you the defalcation of the forty shillings a day. He positively engaged for it, and added that he knew that it would be willingly agreed to. Thus I think I have made a good bargain for you, though but an indifferent one for myself, but that is what I never minded in my life. You may therefore append upon receiving from me the full of this defalcation, when and how you please, independently of your usual annual refreshment, which I will pay to Mr. Larpent whenever you desire it. In the meantime, cura uthvalyas. The person whom Mr. Wood intimated to me would be the charge d'affaires during your absence is one Mr. Keith, the son of that Mr. Keith who is formerly minister in Russia. Chapter 309 London, April 12th, 1768 My dear friend, I received yesterday your letter of the first in which you do not mention the state of your health, which I desire you will do for the future. I believe you have guessed the true reason of Mr. Keith's mission, but by a whisper that I have since heard, Keith is rather inclined to go to Turin, as charge d'affaires. I forgot to tell you in my last that I was almost positively assured that the instant you returned to Dresden, Keith should decamp. I am persuaded that they will keep their words with me, as there is no one reason in the world why they should not. I will send your annual to Mr. Larpent in a fortnight and pay the forty shillings a day quarterly, if there should be occasion, for in my own private opinion there will be no charge d'affaires sent. I agree with you that poindageant, poindalement, as was used to be said, and not without more reason of the Swiss, but as we have neither the inclination nor I fear the power to give subsidies, the court of Vienna can give good things that cost them nothing, as archbishoprics, bishops, besides corrupting their ministers and favourites with places. Elections here have been carried on to a degree of frenzy hitherto unheard of. That for the town of Northampton has cost the contending parties at least thirty thousand pounds a side, and has sold his borough of two members for nine thousand pounds. As soon as Wilkes had lost his election for the city he set up for the country of Middlesex and carried it hollow as the jockeys say. Here were great mobs and riots upon that occasion, and most of the windows in town broke, that had no lights for Wilkes and Liberty, who were thought to be inseparable. He will appear the tenth of this month in the court of King's bench to receive his sentence, and then great riots are again expected and probably will happen. God bless you. CHAPTER 310 BATH October 17th, 1768 My dear friend, your last two letters to myself and Grevenkopp have alarmed me extremely, but I comfort myself a little by hoping that you, like all people who suffer, think yourself worse than you are. A dropsy never comes so suddenly, and I flatter myself that it is only that gouty or rheumatic humour which has played you so long, that has occasioned the temporary swelling of your legs. About forty years ago, after a violent fever, my legs swelled as much as you describe yours to be. I immediately thought that I had a dropsy, but the faculty assured me that my complaint was only the effect of my fever, and would soon be cured, and they said true. Pray let your immenuensis, whoever he may be, write an account regularly once a week, either to Grevenkopp or myself, for that is the same thing of the state of your health. I sent you, in four successive letters, as much of the Duchess of Somerset snuff as a letter could well convey to you. Have you received all or any of them? And have they done you any good? Though in your present condition you cannot go into company, I hope that you have some acquaintances that come and sit with you, for if originally it was not good for a man to be alone, it is much worse for a sick man to be so. He thinks too much of his distemper and magnifies it. Some men of learning among the ecclesiastics I dare say would be glad to sit with you, and you could give them as good as they brought. Poor Hart, who is here still, is in a most miserable condition. He has entirely lost the use of his left side and can hardly speak intelligibly. I was with him yesterday. He inquired after you with great affection, and was in the utmost concern when I showed him your letter. My own health is, as it has been, ever since I was here last year. I am neither well nor ill, but unwell. I have in a manner lost the use of my legs, for though I can make a shift to crawl upon even ground for a quarter of an hour, I cannot go up or down stairs, unless supported by a servant. God bless and grant you a speedy recovery. Note. This is the last of the letters of Lord Chesterfield to his son Mr. Philip Stanhope, who died in November, 1768. The unexpected and distressing intelligence was announced by the lady to whom Mr. Stanhope had been married for several years, unknown to his father. On learning that the widow had two sons, the issue of this marriage, Lord Chesterfield took upon himself the maintenance of his grandchildren. The letters which follow show how happily the writer adapted himself to the trying situation. CHESTERFIELD'S LEADERS to his son, read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. LETTER 311. TO MRS. STANHOPE. THEN AT PARIS. LONDON. MARCH. 16. 1769. MADAME. A troublesome and painful inflammation in my eyes obliges me to use another hand than my own to acknowledge the receipt of your letter from Avignon of the twenty-seventh past. I am extremely surprised that Mrs. Duboucher should have any objection to the manner in which your late husband desired to be buried, and which you very properly complied with. All I desire for my own burial is not to be buried alive, but how or where I think must be entirely indifferent to every rational creature. I have no commission to trouble you with during your stay at Paris. From wence I wish you and the boys a good journey home, where I shall be very glad to see you all, and assure you of my being with great truth, your faithful, humble servant, Chesterfield. LETTER 312. TO THE SAME AT LONDON. MADAME. The last time that I had the pleasure of seeing you, I was so taken up in playing with the boys that I forgot they're more important affairs. How soon would you have them placed at school? When I know your pleasure as to that, I will send to them as your perney to prepare everything for their reception. In the meantime I beg that you will equip them thoroughly with clothes, linen, etc., all good but plain, and give me the account which I will pay. For I do not intend that, from this time forward, the two boys should cost you one shilling. I am with great truth, madame, your faithful, humble servant, Chesterfield. LETTER 313. As some day must be fixed for sending the boys to school, do you approve of the eighth of next month, by which time the weather will probably be warm and settled, and you will be able to equip them completely? I will upon that day send my coach to you to carry you and the boys to Longborough House, with all their immense baggage. I must recommend to you, when you leave them there, to suppress, as well as you can, the overgrowing of maternal tenderness, which would grieve the poor boys the more, and give them a terror of their new establishment. I am with great truth, madame, your faithful, humble servant, Chesterfield. LETTER 314. BATH, October 11, 1769. Madame, nobody can be more willing and ready to obey orders than I am, but then I must like the orders and the orderer. Your orders and yourself come under this description, and therefore I must give you an account of my arrival and existence, such as it is here. I got hither last Sunday, the day after I left London, less fatigued than I expected to have been, and now crawl about this place upon my three legs, but am kept in countenance by many of my fellow-crawlers. The last part of the Sphinx's riddle approaches, and I shall soon end as I began upon all fours. When you happen to see either monsieur or madame Perney, I beg you will give them this melancholic proof of my coducity, and tell them that the last time I went to see the boys, I carried the Myclemus quarterage in my pocket, and when I was there I totally forgot it, but assure them that I have not the least intention to build them, and will pay them faithfully the two quarters together at Christmas. I hope our two boys are well, for then I am sure you are so. I am, with great truth and esteem, your most faithful, humble servant, Chesterfield. CHERESTER THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN BATH OCTOBER 28TH, SEVENTEEN SIXTEEN NINE MADAME, your kind anxiety for my health and life is more than, in my opinion, their both worth. Without the former the latter is a burden, and indeed I am very weary of it. I think I have got some benefit by drinking these waters, and by bathing, for my old stiff, rheumatic limbs, for I believe I could now out-crawl a snail, or perhaps even a tortoise. I hope the boys are well. Phil, I dare say, has been in some scrapes, but he will get triumphantly out of them, by dint of strength and resolution. I am, with great truth and esteem, your most faithful, humble servant, Chesterfield. LETTER THREE HUNDRED AND SIXTEEN BATH NOVEMBER FIFTH, SEVENTEEN SIXTEEN NINE MADAME, I remember very well the paragraph which you quote from a letter of mine to Mrs. Dubouché, and see no reason yet to retract that opinion, in general, which at least nineteen widows and twenty had authorised. I had not, then, the pleasure of your acquaintance. I had seen you but twice or thrice, and I had no reason to think that you would deviate, as you have done, from other widows, so much as to put perpetual shackles upon yourself for the sake of your children. But if I may use a vulgarism, one swallow makes no summer. Five righteous were formerly necessary to save a city, and they could not be found. So till I find four more such righteous widows as yourself, I shall entertain my former notions of widowhood in general. I can assure you that I drink here very soberly and cautiously, and at the same time keep so cool a diet that I do not find the least symptom of heat, much less of inflammation. By the way, I never had that complaint, in consequence of having drank these waters, for I have had it but four times and always in the middle of summer. Mr. Hawkins is timorous, even to minutia, and my sister delights in them. Charles will be a scholar, if you please, but our little Philip, without being one, will be something or other as good, though I do not yet guess what. I am not of the opinion generally entertained in this country, that man lives by Greek and Latin alone, that is, by knowing a great many words of two dead languages, which nobody living knows perfectly, and which are of no use in the common intercourse of life. Useful knowledge in my opinion consists of modern languages, history, and geography. Some Latin may be thrown into the bargain, in compliance with custom, and for closet amusement. You are by this time certainly tired with this long letter, which I could prove to you from Horace's own words, for I am a scholar, to be a bad one. He says that water-drinkers can write nothing good, so I am, with real truth and esteem, your most faithful, humble servant, Chesterfield. End of Section 219, read by Professor Heatheran Bye. For more free audiobooks or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Section 220 of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. Letter 317. Bath, October 9th, 1770. Madam, I am extremely obliged to you for the kind part which you take in my health and life. As to the latter, I am as indifferent myself as any other body can be. But as to the former, I confess care and anxiety, for while I am to crawl upon this planet I would willingly enjoy the health at least of an insect. How far these waters will restore me to that moderate degree of health which alone I aspire at, I have not yet given them a fair trial, having drank them but one week. The only difference I hitherto find is that I sleep better than I did. I beg that you will neither give yourself nor Mr. Fitzhugh much trouble about the pine plants, for as it is three years before they fruit, I might as well at my age plant oaks, and hope to have the advantage of their timber. However, somebody or other, God knows who, will eat them, as somebody or other will fell and sell the oaks I planted five and forty years ago. I hope our boys are well, my respects to them both. I am with the greatest truth, your faithful and humble servant, Chesterfield. Matter three hundred and eighteen. Bath, November fourth, seventeen seventy. Madam, the post has been more favourable to you than I intended it should, for upon my word I answered your former letter the post after I had received it. However, you've got a loss, as we say sometimes in Ireland. My friends from time to time require bills of health from me in these suspicious times, when the plague is busy in some parts of Europe. All I can say, in answer to their kind inquiries, is that I have not the distemper properly called the plague, but that I have all the plague of old age and of a shattered carcass. These waters have done me what little good I expected from them, though by no means what I could have wished, for I wished them to be les eaux des Jeux-vans. I had a letter the other day from our two boys. Charles's was very finely written, and Philip's very pritally. They are both perfectly well, and say that they want nothing. What grown-up people will or can say as much? I am with the truest esteem, madam, your most faithful servant, Chesterfield. Letter 319, Bath, October 27th, 1771 Madam, upon my word you interest yourself in the state of my existence more than I do myself, for it is worth the care of neither of us. I ordered my valet as chambra, according to your orders, to inform you of my safe arrival here, to which I can add nothing, being neither better nor worse than I was then. I am very glad that our boys are well. They give them the enclosed. I am not at all surprised at Mr. Conversion, for he was, at 17, the idol of old women, for his gravity, devotion, and dullness. I am, madam, your most faithful, humble servant, Chesterfield. Letter 320, to Charles and Philip Stanhope. I received a few days ago the two best-written letters that I ever saw in my life, the one signed Charles Stanhope, the other Philip Stanhope. As for you, Charles, I did not wonder at it, for you will take pains and are a lover of letters. But you, idol rogue, you fill, how came you to write so well that one can almost save you, too? E cantare porus et rispondre pariti. Charles will explain this Latin to you. I am told, Phil, that you have got a nickname at school, from your intimacy with Master Strangeways, and that they call you Master Strangeways, for to be rude you are a strange boy. Is this true? Tell me what you would have me bring you both from hence, and I will bring it to you when I come to town. In the meantime, God bless you both. CHESTERFIELD. END OF SECTION 220. END OF LETTERS TO HIS SON ON THE ART OF BECOMING A MAN OF THE WORLD AND A GENTLEMAN, BY PHILIP STANHOPE, FOURTH EARL OF CHESTERFIELD. Read by Professor Heatheran Bye in Carrollton, Georgia, in 2010 and January 2011. For more free audiobooks or to volunteer, please visit LibreVox.org.