ng house to visit in. First, there was
the host. 'His engaging manners,' writes the editor of Walpoliana, 'and
gentle, endearing affability to his friends, exceed all praise. Not the
smallest hauteur, or consciousness of rank or talent, appeared in his
familiar conferences; and he was ever eager to dissipate any constraint
that might occur, as imposing a constraint upon himself, and knowing
that any such chain enfeebles and almost annihilates the mental powers.
Endued with exquisite sensibility, his wit never gave the smallest
wound, even to the grossest ignorance of the world, or the most morbid
hypochondriac bashfulness.'

He had, in fact, no excuse for being doleful or morbid. How many
resources were his! what an even destiny! what prosperous fortunes! What
learned luxury he revelled in! he was enabled to 'pick up all the roses
of science, and to leave the thorns behind.' To how few of the gifted
have the means of gratification been permitted! to how many has hard
work been allotted! Then, when genius has been endowed with rank, with
wealth, how often it has been degraded by excess! Rochester's passions
ran riot in one century: Beckford's gifts were polluted by his vices in
another--signal landmarks of each age. But Horace Walpole was prudent,
decorous, even respectable: no elevated aspirations, no benevolent views
ennobled under the _petitesse_ of his nature. He had neither genius nor
romance: he was even devoid of sentiment; but he was social to all,
neighbourly to many, and attached to some of his fellow-creatures.

The 'prettiest bauble' possible, as he called Strawberry Hill, 'set in
enamelled meadows in filigree hedges,' was surrounded by 'dowagers as
plenty as flounders;' such was Walpole's assertion. As he sat in his
library, scented by caraway, heliotropes, or pots of tuberose, or
orange-trees in flower, certain dames would look in upon him, sometimes
_malgre lui_, sometimes to his bachelor heart's content.

'Thank God!' he wrote to his cousin Conway, 'the Thames is between me
and the Duchess of Queensberry!' Walpole's dislike to his fair neighbour
may partly have originated in the circumstance of her birth, and her
grace's presuming to plume herself on what he deemed an unimportant
distinction. Catherine Hyde, Duchess of Queensberry, was the
great-granddaughter of the famous Lord Clarendon, and the great-niece of
Anne, Duchess of York. Prior had in her youth celebrated her in the
'Female Phaeton,' as 'Kit