surprised by the duke of Vendôme at Brihuega, and after a gallant defence was compelled to surrender with all his forces amounting to two thousand men. This disaster terminated his career as a soldier. On his return home after his release in 1712, he took an active part in politics on the whig side, and became a zealous opponent of Queen Anne's tory administration. He had been distinguished as an officer for his activity and daring spirit, and he now displayed equal energy and vehemence in political warfare. His ardour sometimes degenerated into violence, and he frequently lost his temper in the heat of debate. On the accession of George I. in 1714, Stanhope was appointed one of the principal secretaries of state, and leader of the house of commons. On the dismissal of Lord Townshend in 1717, he became first lord of the treasury and chancellor of the exchequer. A few months later, he was elevated to the peerage by the title of Viscount Stanhope. In March, 1718, an exchange of offices took place between him and Sunderland: he became again secretary of state, as his personal intimacy at the courts of Paris, Vienna, and the Hague, and his long experience, peculiarly fitted him to take the control of our foreign policy. He was also at this period raised to an earldom. He was repeatedly sent on important missions to Spain, and concluded a treaty with that court in 1719, which had the effect of restoring peace throughout Europe. There is reason to believe that he was the projector of the unconstitutional and unpopular peerage bill for limiting the right of the sovereign to create new peers. His influence was now at its height; but in the midst of the commotion caused by the failure of the South Sea speculations, he burst a blood-vessel while vindicating himself and his colleagues against the animadversions of the notorious duke of Wharton, and died next day. Stanhope was an able and accomplished man, and though fond of power, was straightforward, frank, and generous; and unlike many contemporary statesmen, was perfectly pure and disinterested in money matters. He died poorer in the king's service than he entered it. He married the daughter of Governor Pitt, grandfather of Lord Chatham.—J. T.
STANHOPE, P. D. See Chesterfield.
* STANHOPE, Philip Henry, fifth earl, long known before his accession to the peerage by his courtesy-title of Lord Mahon, was born at Walmer in Kent in 1805. He received his later education at the university of Oxford, where he graduated R.A. in 1827. Two years afterwards, in 1829, he published his "Life of Belisarius," a learned and serious work for so young a man; one, moreover, in which various inaccuracies of Gibbon were corrected, and the old story of the mendicancy of Belisarius was demonstrated anew. In 1832 appeared his "History of the War of Succession in Spain," illustrated from the MS. correspondence of the first Lord Stanhope preserved at Chevening—a grave and authentic narrative. In 1836 Lord Mahon published the first volume of the most important of his works, the "History of England from the Peace of Utrecht to the Peace of Versailles, 1713-83"—clear, unaffected, impartial, judicious, and based upon research, always conscientious, and often original. The last volume of this history was published in 1854, and it is a work which has gone through several editions. During its publication several other works appeared from the pen of Lord Mahon, among them the "Essai sur la vie du grand Condé," 1842, in which Lord Mahon, like Gibbon in his first work, essayed original composition in French (an English translation by his lordship was published in 1845); "Spain under Charles II.," being extracts from the diplomatic correspondence of the editor's ancestor, the Hon. A. Stanhope, 1844; Historical Essays contributed to the Quarterly Review, 1849; and the very ably edited Letters of Lord Chesterfield, 1845-53. Lord Mahon had entered the house of commons in 1830 as member for Wootton-Basset, and in 1834-35, during Sir Robert Peel's first and short premiership, was made under-secretary of state for foreign affairs. In Sir Robert Peel's second ministry he was secretary to the board of control from July, 1845, to July, 1846. From 1852 he was absent from parliament until 1855, when, on the death of his father, he entered the house of lords as Earl Stanhope. Sir Robert Peel made him, with Mr. Cardwell, his literary executor, and a similar honour was conferred on him by the duke of Wellington. It was under the joint editorship of Lord Stanhope and Mr. Cardwell that appeared in 1856-57 the first two volumes of Sir Robert Peel's autobiographico-political memoirs. In 1861-62 appeared Lord Stanhope's very interesting "Life of Pitt," the second of the name. Any notice, however meagre, of Lord Stanhope's biography would be incomplete without a reference to the copyright act of 1842, which, as Lord Mahon, he introduced into parliament, and which, chiefly through his exertions, became law. After the elevation of the late Mr. Justice Talfourd to the bench. Lord Mahon made the copyright question his own, and introduced the copyright act on which the relations between authors and publishers have since been based. His proposal was for a copyright during life and for twenty-five years after the death of the author; but at the instance of the late Lord Macaulay this was rejected, and a copyright for life, or in any case, for forty-two years certain, was substituted. The act is known as "Lord Mahon's." To Earl Stanhope the public is in great measure indebted for the establishment of the National Portrait gallery. In 1846 he was elected president of the Society of Antiquaries, and in 1858 lord rector of the university of Aberdeen. At Oxford, in 1855, he very appropriately founded a Stanhope history prize. In 1834 he married the second daughter of Sir Edward Kerrison, Bart. Since his elevation to the peerage, and in spite of his Peelite antecedents. Earl Stanhope has acted with the political party led by the earl of Derby.—F. E.
STANISLAUS, Augustus Poniatoffski, the last king of Poland, was born at his father's seat in Lithuania on the 17th of January, 1732. He was educated with care in the Roman catholic religion, and soon became distinguished by the external graces of his person, and by the superiority of his mental attainments. On making a tour through Europe, he lived too extravagantly for his small fortune, and was arrested for debt at Paris. At London he was more fortunate; for making the acquaintance of Sir Hanbury Williams, he became attached in 1755 to the English embassy at St. Petersburg, of which Sir Hanbury was the chief. One part of Williams' instructions was to gain over to English interests the Grand-duchess Catherine, who, having become thoroughly disgusted with her sottish husband, and dissatisfied with her absent lover Soltikoff, looked with favour upon the handsome Polish attaché then in his twenty-third year. Stanislaus was not insensible to her wit and beauty, on which he enlarges in his memoirs. A correspondence carried on by means of Leon Narishkin resulted in a relationship so ardently tender between the lovers, that Catherine was accustomed to escape in male attire from the palace at night, when she was supposed to be in bed, and hold rendezvous with Poniatoffski. From this time forth the grand-duchess became the arbiter of his fate. At her suggestion he went back to Poland in 1756, and by her influence was appointed Saxo-Polish minister at St. Petersburg. The importance and authority thus obtained greatly facilitated their guilty intercourse. Indeed the Grand-duke Peter, after once surprising Stanislaus at Oranienbaum, and filling him with the dread of his vengeance, grew to be well pleased with the connection which so dishonoured him, and even promoted the return of Stanislaus from Poland in the character of an ambassador. The scenes depicted by Catherine in her memoirs of the little suppers she gave clandestinely in her bedchamber to Poniatoffski and the three sisters Narishkin, are worthy of Marivaux or Molière. "Count Poniatoffski," she says, "when going about, always wore a wig of fair hair and a cloak, and to the question of the sentinels, 'Who goes there?' was accustomed to answer that he was a musician to the grand-duke. This wig made us laugh a good deal." Notwithstanding this frolicsome abandonment, the grand-duchess mingled ambition with love, and Stanislaus was employed in an intrigue with the Chancellor Bestucheff, the object of which was to give Catherine a share of the sovereign power, when her husband should become emperor. The chancellor was arrested, and a correspondence with him carried on by Poniatoffski led to the recall of the latter by the king of Poland, at the request of the Russian government, in 1759. Peter III., after reigning about a year, was dethroned by his wife, who became empress in 1762. The letter to Stanislaus in which Catherine narrates the events of her accession, terminates with these words:—"Without losing a moment, I send Count Kayserling ambassador to Poland, to make you king." The stalwart Orloff, however, had taken the place of the handsome Pole in the heart of the empress. She disregarded Poniatoffski's request to be near her. "Do not make me king," he wrote in January, 1764, "but call me near you again." "I do not wish to be king," he said afterwards, "unless I can rely upon being married to her majesty. Without the empress a crown has no attractions for me." Nevertheless, he accepted the crown which was to bring him so much sorrow
