Page:Letters, sentences and maxims.djvu/36

 good qualities of both nationalities—the ideal statesman and the ideal polished man of society. He did not forget that on Philip Stanhope would ever remain the brand of the bar sinister; but we may well believe that this was only one more daring reason for the experiment which he chose to make. He was playing for high stakes, and he was not careless of the issue. "My only ambition," he writes in 1754, "remaining is to be the counsellor and minister of your rising ambition. Let me see my own youth revived in you; let me be your mentor, and I promise you, with your parts and knowledge you shall go far."—(Letter CCLXXIV.)

It is seldom that we have such a continuous series of original letters as these. From the first badinage to his son, then five years old, who was then in Holland, in which he explains what a republic is, and how clean is Holland in comparison with London; from the times when he explains how Poetry is made, and who the Muses are, and sends his little son accounts of all the Greek and Roman legends; from the times when he writes, "Let us return to our Geography that we may amuse ourselves with maps;" and in the middle of a letter of affection, having mentioned Cicero, starts off "apropos of him," and gives his little son his whole history, and that of Demosthenes after him; to the times when