ity as distinct from religion. A man was Catholic, or Orthodox, or Armenian, or Protestant; but no one ever thought of nationality as something distinct from this. The very word millet, which the Turks apply to the Christian communities, and which foreigners translate "nation," means only a religious sect. But the Franco-Austrian war taught the people of Turkey the new and startling fact that religion and nationality were not the same thing. From that day the Christians have been more inclined to tolerate religious differences and to seek for national unity and emancipation. This change has been very marked among the Armenians; but it was in European Turkey that the influence of this idea was most apparent. It impressed upon the Bulgarians the fact that, although they were Orthodox, they were not Greeks, and it led them to look to France as the champion of this new idea of nationality. She had gone to war to rescue the Italians from a bondage like that under which the Bulgarians were groaning; she might, at some time, do the same thing for them. Even now this feeling is prominent, and it would be easy for France to secure a controlling influence, not only in Bulgaria, but in all European Turkey. The present Government of France has turned its attention exclusively to the Greeks, and has shown no inclination to favor the Bulgarians; but no Bulgarian would object to the annexation of Thessaly and Epirus to Greece, and, so long as there is no question of Macedonia, there is no reason why France should not exert an equal influence over both Greeks and Bulgarians.

Macedonia is the real battle-ground of these nationalities. Both claim it, and each hopes to secure it; but each fears that it may be appropriated by Austria. If it is annexed to Bulgaria or occupied by Austria, Greece can never expand into a new Byzantine Empire or realize her "grand idea." In view of this fact, every effort has been made by the Greeks to prove that a majority of the population is Greek, and a very large amount of money is expended there annually to extend the use of the Greek language. The Bulgarians, on the other hand, claim that more than half of the population is Bulgarian, and that not

more than half of the remainder is Greek. The American missionaries in Macedonia believe that this claim of the Bulgarians is well-founded, and base this judgment upon the language of the people, which is generally Bulgarian, and upon the fact that the people believe themselves to be Bulgarians. It is probable that, if it is not appropriated by Austria, it will ultimately fall to Bulgaria; but, since the Treaty of Berlin, no part of the Turkish Empire has suffered so much as this unfortunate province. It was provided in the Treaty that reforms should be inaugurated there under the direction of the Eastern Roumelia Commission, and it was of the highest importance to the Turkish Government to make this province at once a model of good government; but thus far nothing has been done. The whole province has been given over to anarchy and confusion. Brigands and Bashibazouks have alternately plundered and massacred the people. And the infamous Chevket Pacha was the man chosen to restore order. He remained at Monastir until he was driven out of the city by the Mussulman Beys themselves. Whatever may be the ultimate fate of Macedonia-however it may be for the interest of Greece, Bulgaria, Austria, and Russia to prolong this state of anarchy-it is to be hoped that England and France will interest themselves in securing the execution of that part of the Treaty of Berlin which promises good government to Macedonia.

It is not easy to forecast the future of the Bulgarian nation. It depends almost equally upon the patience and good-will of the Great Powers of Europe and upon the patience and good sense of the Bulgarians themselves. They have risen suddenly to life from a sleep of centuries; they have no acknowledged leaders, and but little experience of selfgovernment; they have unrealized hopes and ambitions, and are surrounded by watchful and hostile races; they are poor, and burdened with a debt for which they are not responsible; they have not been permitted by Europe to unite under a single Government, but have been divided into five sections to gratify the ambition or quiet the fears of other nations. But, on the other hand, they owe all that they have gained to the

aid and protection of other nations rather than to their own efforts, and the opportunity is offered them of proving to the world that they are worthy of its confidence and support. They have all the advantages of a fertile country, protected from foreign invasion by a great European Treaty; they have all the good qualities of their race to work upon, and can devote themselves exclusively to its development; they have nothing to pull down-they have only to build up. It is not to be expected that they will be

contented with the arrangements of the Treaty of Berlin, or cease to demand the union of Bulgaria and Eastern Roumelia. Europe expects this, and will endure it patiently, but the Bulgarians also must patiently wait for the time when Europe can grant this boon without danger to herself. If the Bulgarians use their newly-acquired liberty wisely, the people of England will not be the last to sympathize with their aspirations.-Contemporary Review.

THE eagle," said one of the wisest of men, does not nestle securely in the very bosom of Jove, the day on which he has quarrelled with a beetle." How much more serious, however, is the predicament of the royal bird, if he has offended, not a humble insect, but an animal of a far higher order. This was the misfortune which befell Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield. Justly or unjustly, for we know but one side of the story, he roused against him the anger of the "literary whale"* of his generation, and his memory suffers from it unto this day, in spite of the partial reparation which was made by his assailant. It is not my intention in the following paper to attempt to do anything towards rehabilitating Chesterfield, who had unquestionably his fair share of faults. Persons who set to work to rehabilitate damaged reputations are peculiarly apt to be attacked by a dangerous form of the rabies biographica, and to confound truth and falsehood, right and wrong, in their headlong advocacy. The object of the following pages is far more humble, and purely practical. Mr. Leslie Stephen, not the least eminent of an eminent family, has adopted, or almost adopted, what appears to me a monstrously unjust criticism of Dr. Johnson's upon a work of Chesterfield's, which ought in my judgment to be far more generally read than it is; and I am anxious, by

* Peter Pindar prophesied very truly of Boswell

"Triumphant thou thro' Time's vast gulf shalt sail,

The pilot of our literary whale."

recalling to the attention of some readers of this Review what really was the essential part of the teaching of Chesterfield, to do something towards making the study of his Letters to his Son what I think they ought to be, a regular portion of the education of every Englishman who is likely to enter public life tolerably early. Bfeore going further, however, it is absolutely necessary to admit, without any qualifications, that the book has some very grave defects. These fall for the most part under three heads.

Ist. There are a number of coarse expressions and allusions thinly scattered through the four volumes which are, although they occur in all the light literature of last century, not the less repugnant to modern eyes and ears.

2nd. The whole book is pitched, so to speak, an octave too low, if not for the day in which it was written, at least for that in which we have the good fortune to live. A man of the world, as shrewd as Chesterfield, would in the year 1879 have grasped the truth that to make an assured and honorable success in politics now, a character ought to be broader and deeper than that on the building up of which he labored so assiduously. There must be just as much shrewdness and knowledge of the world as ever, in the composition of the politician who is to play at the gold table and to win; but there must be, in an age when great masses are to be moved, a good deal more enthusiasm, a good deal more sympathy, and a good deal more poetry.

3rd. There are a great variety of pas

sages which inculcate what we have happily learned to think a most detesta ble morality. Chesterfield drew a broad distinction between ordinary dissipation and the gallantry which the practice of his times authorised in all continental countries, and to this topic he recurs with provoking frequency.

If I were engaged in estimating his character, it would be necessary to linger on this disagreeable subject, and to inquire what weight ought to be given to it in balancing his faults against his virtues. I cannot, however, make it too clear that I am not engaged in estimating his character. That was done very well more than a generation ago by the late Lord Stanhope in his History, and by Mr. Hayward in an Essay which has been reprinted.

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My object is, as I have said, a purely practical one. To examine, namely, how far his Letters to his Son can be made useful at the present day, and it fortunately happens that all his bad morality may, for that particular purpose, be left on one side. No one, says an eminent legal writer," however feloniously disposed, can run away with an acre of land," and it is not less certain that no young gentleman on his grand tour, however lax may be his principles, could form in every capital which he entered those intimate relations with ladies of position and reputation which Chesterfield is always pressing upon his son; although he would find it but too easy, if he had a turn that way, to indulge in those grosser forms of vice which Chesterfield so justly and so continually reprobates. The society in which Philip Stanhope moved is as dead as the Heptarchy, and we may treat the objectionable passages in the Letters as simply non-existent.

As to how far Chesterfield's views with regard to the women of his own day squared with the facts, it is beside my purpose to inquire; but certain it is that any one who, professing to be a man of the world, repeated these views as the result of his own observations on good society in the times in which we live, would, ipso facto, prove that he usurped a title to which he had no shadow of claim, and drew his conclusions, not from the experience of life, but either from books or from his own

extremely foolish inner consciousness. Whatever may have been the case a hundred and fifty years ago, there cannot be the slightest doubt that any young man of adequate merit and position, who was properly introduced, and would take a little trouble, could now pass from capital to capital, living everywhere in the society of women who would do all for his manners that Chesterfield desired, and more even for his mind and his morals than they did for his manners.

Before we can estimate Chesterfield's educational ideas correctly we must understand what he proposed to effect. He proposed, then, to make his natural son, Philip Stanhope, a youth of fair, but not shining abilities, cursed by nature with curiously ungainly manners,an all-accomplished man, worthy to stand in the first rank of politics, now as a Member of the House of Commons, now as a negotiator at foreign courts, now as the confidential adviser of the heir to the throne, and now as Secretary of State. He wished to do this in an age when personal influences were much more powerful than they are in our day, when the people had very little power, when the idea of a Frenchman's fighting for "la patrie" as he would fight for "l'honneur du Roi" seemed wildly preposterous; when a letter in Germany might be returned if only one of twenty titles were omitted in the address-in short, in that world of minute etiquette and endless formalities which M. Taine has so well described in the first volume of his book on the Ancien Régime and the Revolution.

This being the problem to be solved, it is clear that importance would have to be attached to many things which are nowadays, to borrow a happy Germanstudent phrase, "colossally unimportant;" while on the other hand, the world having progressed much since the middle of last century, many things now of great moment could not be expected to find a place. On the whole, however, the reader will, it is to be hoped, think that there is much more of what is permanently valuable than is usually supposed in the book to which it is sought to direct attention.

What then was Chesterfield's system? And, first, what was its foundation?

*

Its foundation, startling as the reply may appear to those who know his book only by hearsay, was morality and religion, as their author understood them. If we turn, for example, to Letter cxx. we find the following passage: As to the moral virtues, I say nothing to you; they speak best for themselves, nor can I suspect that they want any recommendation with you; I will, therefore, only assure you that, without them, you would be most unhappy."

Again in Letter cxxiii., after some observations about knowledge, we read: "For I never mention to you the two much greater points of religion and morality, because I cannot possibly suspect you, as to either of them.'

"I hope in God, and I verily believe, that you want no moral virtue. But the possession logicians call it, is not sufficient; you must of all the moral virtues, in actu primo, as the have them in actu secundo too: nay, that is not sufficient neither; you must have the reputation of them also. Your character in the world must be built upon that solid foundation, or it will soon fall, and upon your own head. You cannot therefore be too careful, too nice, too scrupulous, in establishing this character at first, upon which your whole depends. Let no conversation, no example, no fashion, no bon mot, no silly desire of seeming to be above what most knaves, and many fools, call prejudices, ever tempt you to avow, excuse, extenuate, or laugh at the least breach of morality; but show upon all occasions, and take all occa sions to show, a detestation and abhorrence of it."

With regard to religion he observes in

this:

"While you were a child, I endeavored to form your heart habitually to virtue and honor, before your understanding was capable of showing you their beauty and utility. Those principles, which you then got, like your gram. mar rules, only by rote, are now, I am persuaded, fixed and confirmed by reason.

I have therefore, since you have had the use of reason, never written to you upon those subjects: they speak best for themselves; and I should, now, just as soon think of warning you gravely not to fall into the dirt or the fire, as into dishonor or vice."

Nothing could exceed Chesterfield's horror and detestation of the ribald talk against morality, which was a not unnatural though calamitous result of the revolt against superstition, which formed so important a part of the history of the last century. On that subject he writes with a passion which he shows about hardly anything else.

Thus in Letter cxciii. he says:

* My references are throughout not to Lord Stanhope's edition, which, although the best, is scarce and dear, but to the third edition (1774), which is more easily procured.

Putting moral virtues at the highest, and religion at the lowest, religion must be allowed to be a collateral security, at least to virtue ; and every prudent man will sooner trust to

two securities than to one."

As to the form of his religion, Chesterfield began by being a bigoted, but soon became a very moderate member of the Church of England, extending his tolerance even to the Roman Communion, which, associated as it was with opposition to the rising spirit of inquiry and with the exiled dynasty, he heartily disliked both as a philosopher and a politician; but to whose priests and services he directs his son to show on all occasions proper respect.

On this foundation Chesterfield desired to raise a solid superstructure of knowledge, beginning, of course, with what we now call the "three r's," and the subjects usually taught to children before they go to school. A large portion of the first volume is filled with letters upon the elements of political geography and history, generally written in French, which was carefully taught to young Stanhope from the very first. Of what we now call Physical Geography there is of course not a trace.

Soon Latin and Greek were added, and made the staple of education for some years under competent private tutors; and later, at Westminster, "Classical knowledge," that is, Greek and Latin, the boy is told, while still only about twelve years of age, "is absolutely necessary for everybody, because everybody has agreed to think and to