_to lie_ abroad for the good of his
country;' and no man was in this respect more competent to fulfil these
requirements than Chesterfield. Hating both wine and tobacco, he had
smoked and drunk at Cambridge, 'to be in the fashion;' he gamed at the
Hague, on the same principle; and, unhappily, gaming became a habit and
a passion. Yet never did he indulge it when acting, afterwards, in a
ministerial capacity. Neither when Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, or as
Under-secretary of State, did he allow a gaming-table in his house. On
the very night that he resigned office he went to _White's_.

The Hague was then a charming residence: among others who, from
political motives, were living there, were John Duke of Marlborough and
Queen Sarah, both of whom paid Chesterfield marked attention. Naturally
industrious, with a ready insight into character--a perfect master in
that art which bids us keep one's thoughts close, and our countenances
open, Chesterfield was admirably fitted for diplomacy. A master of
modern languages and of history, he soon began to like business. When in
England, he had been accused of having 'a need of a certain proportion
of talk in a day:' 'that,' he wrote to Lady Suffolk, 'is now changed
into a need of such a proportion of writing in a day.'

In 1728 he was promoted: being sent as ambassador to the Hague, where he
was popular, and where he believed his stay would be beneficial both to
soul and body, there being 'fewer temptations, and fewer opportunities
to sin,' as he wrote to Lady Suffolk, 'than in England.' Here his days
passed, he asserted, in doing the king's business, very ill--and his own
still worse:--sitting down daily to dinner with fourteen or fifteen
people; whilst at five the pleasures of the evening began with a lounge
on the Voorhoot, a public walk planted by Charles V.:--then, either a
very bad French play, or a '_reprise quadrille_,' with three ladies, the
youngest of them fifty, and the chance of losing, perhaps, three florins
(besides one's time)--lasted till ten o'clock; at which time 'His
Excellency' went home, 'reflecting with satisfaction on the innocent
amusements of a well-spent day, that left nothing behind them,' and
retired to bed at eleven, 'with the testimony of a good conscience.'

All, however, of Chesterfield's time was not passed in this serene
dissipation. He began to compose 'The History of the Reign of George
II.' at this period. About only half a dozen chapters were wr