the way one has seen men do that.) But after all what the
glass gives is a reflection and record of nature: and women learn to see
it in others as well as in themselves.

[Sidenote: CHESTERFIELD]

Few English writers have suffered more injustice in popular estimation
than Chesterfield. Even putting aside the abuse by which, as above
mentioned, Johnson showed (on Fluellen's principles convincingly) that
he had more in common with the Goddess Juno than the J in both their
names--that is to say an _insanabile vulnus_ of vanity--there remain
sources of mistakes and prejudice which have been all too freely tapped.
The miscellaneous letters--which show sides of him quite different from
those most in evidence throughout the "Letters to his Son"--are rarely
read: these latter have been, at least once and probably oftener, made
into a schoolbook for translation into other languages--an office by no
means likely to conciliate affection. And even when they are not
suspected of positive immorality there is a too general idea that they
are frivolously and trivially didactic--the sort of thing that Mr.
Turveydrop the elder might have written on Deportment--if he had had
brains enough. Yet again, unbiassed appreciation of them has been
hampered by all sorts of idle controversies as to the kind of man that
young Stanhope actually turned out to be--a point of merely gossiping
importance in any case, and, whatever be the facts of this one, having
no more to do with the merit of the letters than the other fact that
some people make mistakes in their accounts after having learnt the
multiplication table has to do with the value of that composition. As a
matter of relevant fact the letters--except (and even here the
accusations against them are much exaggerated) from the point of view of
very severe morality in regard to one or two points--perhaps no more
than one--are full of sound advice, clear common-sense, and ripe
experience of the world. The manners they recommend are not those of any
but a very exceptional "dancing master," they are those of a gentleman.
The temper that they inculcate and that they exhibit in the inculcator
is positively kindly and relatively correct. Both these and the other
batch of "Letters to his Godson" and successor in the Earldom (the Lord
Chesterfield for forging whose name Dr. Dodd was hanged) show the most
curious and unusual pains on the part of a man admitted to be in the
highest degree a man of the wor