of that school, whose philosophy consists in the degradation of virtue, it has often been triumphantly declared, that no excellence of character can stand the test of close observation that no man is a hero to his domestic servants, or to his familiar friends. How much more just, as well as more amiable and dignified, is the opposite sentiment, delivered to us in the words of Plutarch, and illustrated throughout all his writings! "Real virtue," says that inimitable moralist, "is most loved, where it is most nearly seen: and no respect which it commands from strangers, can equal the neverceasing admiration it excites in the

daily intercourse of domestic life." Τῆς ἀληθινῆς ἀρετῆς κάλλιστα φάινεται τὰ μάλιστα φαινόμενα· καὶ τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἀνδρῶν ἐδὲν στω θαυμάσιον τοις ἐκτὸς, ὡς ὁ καθ' ἡμέραν βίος τοῖς συνᾶσιν.

PLUT. VIT. PERICLIS.

The following correspondence, imperfect as it is, (and who will not lament that many more such letters are not preserved?) exhibits a great orator, statesman and patriot, in one of the most interesting relations of private society. Not, as in the cabinet or the senate, enforcing by a vigorous and commanding eloquence, those councils to which his country owed her pre-eminence and glory; but implanting with parental kind

ness into the mind of an ingenuous youth, seeds of wisdom and virtue, which ripened into full maturity in the character of a most accomplished man: directing him to the acquisition of knowledge,* as the best instrument of action; teaching him by the cultivation of his reason, to strengthen and establish in his heart those principles of moral rectitude which were congenial to it; and, above all, exhorting him to regulate the whole conduct of his life by the predominant influence of grati

* Ingenium illustre altioribus studiis juvenis admodum dedit; non ut nomine magnifico segne otium velaret, sed quo firmior adversus fortuita Rempublicam capesseret.

TACITUS.

tude, and obedience to God, as the only sure ground work of every human duty.

What parent, anxious for the character and success of a son, born to any liberal station in this great and free country, would not, in all that related to his education, gladly have resorted to the advice of such a man? What youthful spirit animated by any desire of future excellence, and looking for the gratification of that desire, in the pursuits of honourable ambition, or in the consciousness of an upright, active, and useful life, would not embrace with transport any opportunity

of listening on such a subject to the lessons of Lord Chatham? They are here before him. Not delivered with the authority of a preceptor, or a parent, but tempered by the affection of a friend towards a disposition and character well entitled to such regard.

On that disposition and character the editor forbears to enlarge. Their best panegyric will be found in the following pages. Lord

Camelford is there described such as Lord Chatham judged him in the first dawn of his youth, and such as he continued to his latest hour. The same suavity of manners, and