wley were now old and infirm.
'The fact is,' Chesterfield wittily said, 'Tyrawley and I have been dead
these two years, but we don't choose to have it known.'

'The Bath,' he wrote to his friend Dayrolles, 'did me more good than I
thought anything could do me; but all that good does not amount to what
builders call half-repairs, and only keeps up the shattered fabric a
little longer than it would have stood without them; but take my word
for it, it will stand but a very little while longer. I am now in my
grand climacteric, and shall not complete it. Fontenelle's last words at
a hundred and three were, _Je souffre d'etre._ deaf and infirm as I am,
I can with truth say the same thing at sixty-three. In my mind it is
only the strength of our passions, and the weakness of our reason, that
makes us so fond of life; but when the former subside and give way to
the latter, we grow weary of being, and willing to withdraw. I do not
recommend this train of serious reflections to you, nor ought you to
adopt them.... You have children to educate and provide for, you have
all your senses, and can enjoy all the comforts both of domestic and
social life. I am in every sense _isole_, and have wound up all my
bottoms; I may now walk off quietly, without missing nor being missed.'

The kindness of his nature, corrupted as it was by a life wholly
worldly, and but little illumined in its course by religion, shone now
in his care of his two grandsons, the offspring of his lost son, and of
their mother, Eugenia Stanhope. To her he thus wrote:--

'The last time I had the pleasure of seeing you, I was so taken up in
playing with the boys, that I forgot their more important affairs. How
soon would you have them placed at school? When I know your pleasure as
to that, I will send to Monsieur Perny, to prepare everything for their
reception. In the mean time, I beg that you will equip them thoroughly
with clothes, linen, &c., all good, but plain; and give me the amount,
which I will pay; for I do not intend, from this time forwards, the two
boys should cost you one shilling.'

He lived, latterly, much at Blackheath, in the house which, being built
on Crown land, has finally become the Ranger's lodge; but which still
sometimes goes by the name of Chesterfield House. Here he spent large
sums, especially on pictures, and cultivated Cantelupe melons; and here,
as he grew older, and became permanently afflicted with deafness, his
chief companion was