would but from your mind by such precepts, we should have but one
common feeling on every subject that could possibly arise between us!«
    This apostrophe was addressed, like the rest of his remarks, to empty air:
for Edward was not present, and the father was quite alone.
    »My Lord Chesterfield,« he said, pressing his hand tenderly upon the book as
he laid it down, »if I could but have profited by your genius soon enough to
have formed my son on the model you have left to all wise fathers, both he and I
would have been rich men. Shakespeare was undoubtedly very fine in his way;
Milton good, though prosy, Lord Bacon deep, and decidedly knowing; but the
writer who should be his country's pride, is my Lord Chesterfield.«
    He became thoughtful again, and the toothpick was in requisition.
    »I thought I was tolerably accomplished as a man of the world,« he
continued, »I flattered myself that I was pretty well versed in all those little
arts and graces which distinguish men of the world from boors and peasants, and
separate their character from those intensely vulgar sentiments which are called
the national character. Apart from any natural prepossession in my own favour, I
believed I was. Still, in every page of this enlightened writer, I find some
captivating hypocrisy which has never occurred to me before, or some superlative
piece of selfishness to which I was utterly a stranger. I should quite blush for
myself before this stupendous creature, if, remembering his precepts, one might
blush at anything. An amazing man! a nobleman indeed! any King or Queen may make
a Lord, but only the Devil himself - and the Graces - can make a Chesterfield.«
    Men who are thoroughly false and hollow, seldom try to hide those vices from
themselves; and yet in the very act of avowing them, they lay claim to the
virtues they feign most to despise. »For,« say they, »this is honesty, this is
truth. All mankind are like us, but they have not the candour to avow it.« The
more they affect to deny the existence of any sincerity in the world, the more
they would be thought to possess it in its boldest shape; and this is an
unconscious compliment to Truth on the part of these philosophers, which will
turn the laugh against them to the Day of judgement.
    Mr. Chester, having extolled his favourite author, as above recited, took up
the book again in the excess of his admiration and was composing himself for a
further