rd Hervey wanted
the genuine source of all social qualities--Christianity. That moral
refrigerator which checks the kindly current of neighbourly kindness,
and which prevents all genial feeling from expanding, produced its usual
effect--misanthropy. Lord Hervey's lines, in his 'Satire after the
manner of Persius,' describe too well his own mental canker:--

'Mankind I know, their motives and their art,
Their vice their own, their virtue best apart,
Till played so oft, that all the cheat can tell,
And dangerous only when 'tis acted well.'

Lord Hervey left in the possession of his family a manuscript work,
consisting of memoirs of his own time, written in his own autograph,
which was clean and legible. This work, which has furnished many of the
anecdotes connected with his court life in the foregoing pages, was long
guarded from the eye of any but the Hervey family, owing to an
injunction given in his will by Augustus, third Earl of Bristol, Lord
Hervey's son, that it should not see the light until after the death of
his Majesty George III. It was not therefore published until 1848, when
they were edited by Mr. Croker. They are referred to both by Horace
Walpole, who had heard of them, if he had not seen them, and by Lord
Hailes, as affording the most intimate portraiture of a court that has
ever been presented to the English people. Such a delineation as Lord
Hervey has left ought to cause a sentiment of thankfulness in every
British heart for not being exposed to such influences, to such examples
as he gives, in the present day, when goodness, affection, purity,
benevolence, are the household deities of the court of our beloved,
inestimable Queen Victoria.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 22: Prince Frederick.]

PHILIP DORMER STANHOPE, FOURTH EARL OF CHESTERFIELD.

The King of Table Wits.--Early Years.--Hervey's Description of his
Person.--Resolutions and Pursuits.--Study of Oratory.--The
Duties of an Ambassador.--King George II.'s Opinion of his
Chroniclers.--Life in the Country.--Melusina, Countess of
Walsingham.--George II. and his Father's Will.--Dissolving
Views.--Madame du Bouchet.--The Broad-Bottomed
Administration.--Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland in Time of
Peril.--Reformation of the Calendar.--Chesterfield
House.--Exclusiveness.--Recommending 'Johnson's
Dictionary.'--'Old Samuel,' to Chesterfield.--Defensive
Pride.--The Glass