GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 



Rake, mind on yr name Stephen Fox ; that I hope will keep you 

 from being wicked. Think on your name, it will even fly in your 

 face, and say did your Father do so ? Think on his virtues and 

 follow yi. Love your Brother I charge you Stephen. I charge you 

 all love one another. You have Ennemys enough, make not one 

 another so ; you will have too many Stephen that will flock about 

 you, court you, and fawn upon you. these are your worst Ennemys, 

 take care of y m . You Harry having a less fortune, won't be 

 subject to so many temptations, but withstand those you have 

 when you grow up take care and avoid ill company, if you don't 

 you are gone. . . . Then you'd learn to swear, to drink, to rake 

 about, to game, and at last be ruined by those, you unhappily 

 think your friends. Don't affect, or think it a genteel or a pretty 

 thing to be a Rake, for if you are wicked what will your Estate 

 signify e. . . . Be humble and obliging to and obey your Trustees 

 and though they may have failings never laugh at them, take 

 their advice in everything, mind what they say to you ; while 

 you are at School. . . . W" you come of age don't be conceited 

 or self-sufficient, don't think above advice, for y n you'd want it 

 most. ... I have said all I can think of now. Let me tell you 

 when I am gone, it will show you Love or hate me, as you obey, or 

 disobey, these my instructions.' ' 



I have left spelling and punctuation, written by a mere boy, as 

 they appear in the original. 



The tender mother's admonitions read strangely when \\e 

 consider the extraordinary upbringing, by him who records them, 

 of his favourite son, afterwards the famous Whig statesman, 

 Charles James Fox. 



The lad was but fourteen when his father took him from Eton 

 to the Continent where he introduced him to undesirable society, 

 and supplying him with money for the purpose, during four months 

 deliberately taught him to gamble. This was at the period when, 

 as Horace Walpole tells us, " young men lose five, ten, fifteen, 

 thousand pounds in an evening" when the Earl of Carlisle could 

 write : " The hazard last evening was very deep Meynell won 

 4,000, Pigot 5,000 "when we learn from Sir George Trevelyan's 

 " Early History of Charles James Fox," that during the years that 

 preceded the American war "5,000 was staked on one card, and 

 70,000 changed hands in a single night." 



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