'Daughter, daughter! Don't call names; You are always abusing my pleasures, which is what no mortal will bear. Trash, lumber and stuff are the titles you give to my favourite amusement. If I called a white staff a stick of wood, a gold key gilded brass, and the ensigns of illustrious orders coloured strings, this may be philosophically true, but would be very ill received. We have all our playthings; happy are they that can be contented with those they can obtain; those hours are spent in the wisest manner that can easiest shade the ills of life, and are the least productive of ill-consequences.... The active scenes are over at my age. I indulge with all the art I can my taste for reading. If I would confine it to valuable books, they are almost as rare as valuable men. I must be content with what I can find. As I approach a second childhood, I endeavour to enter into the pleasures of it. Your youngest son is perhaps at this very moment riding on a poker with great delight, not at all regretting that it is not a gold one, and much less wishing it an Arabian horse which he would not know how to manage. I am reading an idle tale, not expecting wit or truth in it, and am very glad it is not metaphysics to puzzle my judgment, or history to mislead my opinion. He fortifies his health by exercise; I calm my cares by oblivion. The methods may appear low to busy people; but if he improves his strength, and I forget my infirmities, we both attain very desirable ends.' Lady Mary, it may be added, deserves to be remembered for her courage in trying inoculation on her own children, and then introducing it into this country. This was in 1721, seventy-eight years before Jenner discovered a more excellent way of grappling with the small pox. [Sidenote: Philip Dormer Stanhope Earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773).] Lord Chesterfield's position in the literature of the period is also among the letter writers. He was emphatically a man of affairs, and as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1745, gained a high reputation. He entered upon his labours with the resolution to be independent of party, and during his brief administration did all that man could do for the benefit of the country. In his public career, Chesterfield has the reputation of an orator who spoke 'most exquisitely well;' he was an able diplomatist, and probably no man of the time took a wider interest in public affairs. In a corrupt age, too, he appears to have been politically incorruptible: 'I call corruption,' he writes, 'the taking of a sixpence more than the just and known salary of your employment under any pretence whatsoever.' The reform of the Calendar, in which he was assisted by two great mathematicians, Bradley and the Earl of Macclesfield, is also one of his honourable claims to remembrance.