that church into which I have not yet had
courage to enter; where lies that mother on whom I doated, and who
doated on me! There are the two rival mistresses of Houghton, neither of
whom ever wished to enjoy it. There, too, is he who founded its
greatness--to contribute to whose fall Europe was embroiled; there he
sleeps in quiet and dignity, while his friend and his foe--rather his
false ally and real enemy--Newcastle and Bath, are exhausting the dregs
of their pitiful lives in squabbles and pamphlets.

When he looked at the pictures--that famous Houghton collection--the
surprise of Horace was excessive. Accustomed to see nothing elsewhere
but daubs, he gazed with ecstasy on them. 'The majesty of Italian
ideas,' he says, 'almost sinks before the warm nature of Italian
colouring! Alas! don't I grow old?'

As he lingered in the gallery, with mingled pride and sadness, a party
arrived to see the house--a man and three women in riding-dresses--who
'rode post' through the apartments. 'I could not,' he adds, 'hurry
before them fast enough; they were not so long in seeing the whole
gallery as I could have been in one room, to examine what I knew by
heart. I remember formerly being often diverted with this kind of
_seers_; they come, ask what such a room is called in which Sir Robert
lay, write it down, admire a lobster or a cabbage in a Market Piece,
dispute whether the last room was green or purple, and then hurry to the
inn, for fear the fish should be over-dressed. How different my
sensations! not a picture here but recalls a history; not one but I
remembered in Downing Street, or Chelsea, where queens and crowds
admired them, though seeing them as little as these travellers![5]

[5: Sir Robert Walpole purchased a house and garden at Chelsea in 1722,
near the college, adjoining Gough House.--Cunningham's 'London.']

After tea he strolled into the garden. They told him it was now called a
_pleasure-ground._ To Horace it was a scene of desolation--a floral
Nineveh. 'What a dissonant idea of pleasure!--those groves, those
_allees_, where I have passed so many charming moments, were now
stripped up or overgrown--many fond paths I could not unravel, though
with an exact clue in my memory. I met two gamekeepers, and a thousand
hares! In the days when all my soul was tuned to pleasure and vivacity
(and you will think perhaps it is far from being out of tune yet), I
hated Houghton and its solitude; yet I loved this garden, as n