'When wit exerts itself in satyr it is a most malignant distemper; wit it is true may be shown in satyr, but satyr does not constitute wit, as most fools imagine it does. A man of real wit will find a thousand better occasions of showing it. Abstain therefore most carefully from satyr, which though it fall upon no particular person in company, and momentarily from the malignity of the human heart, pleases all; upon reflexion it frightens all too, they think it may be their turn next, and will hate you for what they find you could say of them more, than be obliged to you for what you do not say. Fear and hatred are next door neighbours. The more wit you have the more good nature and politeness you must show, to induce people to pardon your superiority, for that is no easy matter.' Alas! and alas! that so much labour and patience should have been lost. For Philip the Second, though he made no secret marriage, was not a much greater success than Philip the First. He turned out a commonplace country gentleman, amiable, methodical, agricultural, but wholly overshadowed and obliterated by the fame of the accomplished statesman and orator who had directed his studies. 'The bows of eloquence are buried with the Archers.' It is impossible, even with the aid of the phonograph, to recapture the magnetic personality, the fervour of gesture that winged the words and carried conviction to the hearer. Equally impossible is it, in this age of egotisms and eccentricities that pass for character, to realize the fascination of those splendid manners for which Lord Chesterfield was celebrated. The finished elegance, the watchful urbanity, the perfect ease and self-possession, which Fielding commended, and Johnson could not contest, are things too foreign to our restless overconsciousness to be easily intelligible. But we can at least call up--not without compassionate admiration--the pathetic picture of the deaf old gentleman who had been the rival of 'silver-tongued Murray' and the correspondent of Montesquieu, sitting down at seventy in his solitary study at Babiole * to write, in that wonderful hand of which Lord Carnarvon gives a facsimile, his periodical letter of advice to a _petit bout d'homme_ at Parson Dodd's in Southampton Row, concerning whose career in life he had formed the fondest--and the vainest--expectations. * Babiole was His Lordship's country-house at Blackheath, so entitled in imitation of Bagatelle, the seat near Paris of his friend Madame la Marquise de Monconseil. It was also the name of a house of Madame de Pompadour. XIV. A DAY AT STRAWBERRY HILL.