nguished from his political, anecdotes do in
one sense what Leech's drawings have done for this generation. But the
keen old man of the world puts a far bitterer and deeper meaning into
his apparently superficial scratches than the kindly modern artist,
whose satire was narrowed, if purified, by the decencies of modern
manners. Walpole reflects in a thousand places that strange combination
of brutality and polish which marked the little circle of fine ladies
and gentlemen who then constituted society, and played such queer
pranks in quiet unconsciousness of the revolutionary elements that were
seething below. He is the best of commentators on Hogarth, and gives us
'Gin Lane' on one side and the 'Marriage a la mode' on the other. As we
turn over the well-known pages we come at every turn upon characteristic
scenes of the great tragi-comedy that was being played out. In one page
a highwayman puts a bullet through his hat, and on the next we read how
three thousand ladies and gentlemen visited the criminal in his cell, on
the Sunday before his execution, till he fainted away twice from the
heat; then we hear how Lord Lovat's buffooneries made the whole
brilliant circle laugh as he was being sentenced to death; and how
Balmerino pleaded 'not guilty,' in order that the ladies might not be
deprived of their sport; how the House of Commons adjourned to see a
play acted by persons of quality, and the gallery was hung round with
blue ribands; how the Gunnings had a guard to protect them in the park;
what strange pranks were played by the bigamous Miss Chudleigh; what
jokes--now, alas! very faded and dreary--were made by George Selwyn, and
how that amiable favourite of society went to Paris in order to see the
cruel tortures inflicted upon Damiens, and was introduced to the chief
performer on the scaffold as a distinguished amateur in executions. One
of the best of all these vignettes portrays the funeral of George II.,
and is a worthy pendant to Lord Hervey's classic account of the Queen's
death. It opens with the solemn procession to the torch-lighted Abbey,
whose 'long-drawn aisles and fretted vault' excite the imagination of
the author of the 'Castle of Otranto.' Then the comic element begins to
intrude; the procession jostles and falls into disorder at the entrance
of Henry the Seventh's Chapel; the bearers stagger under the heavy
coffin and cry for help; the bishop blunders in the prayers, and the
anthem, as fit, says Walpole