e society of this family gave Horace Walpole the truest, and perhaps
the only relish he ever had of domestic life. But his mind was harassed
towards the close of the eighteenth century, by the insanity not only of
his nephew, but by the great national calamity, that of the king. 'Every
_eighty-eight_ seems,' he remarks, 'to be a favourite period with fate;'
he was 'too ancient,' he said, 'to tap what might almost be called a new
reign;' of which he was not likely to see much. He never pretended to
penetration, but his foresight, 'if he gave it the reign, would not
prognosticate much felicity to the country from the madness of his
father, and the probable regency of the Prince of Wales. His happiest
relations were now not with politics or literature, but with Mrs. Damer
and the Miss Berrys, to whom he wrote:--'I am afraid of protesting how
much I delight in your society, lest I should seem to affect being
gallant; but, if two negatives make an affirmative, why may not two
ridicules compose one piece of sense? and, therefore, as I am in love
with you both, I trust it is a proof of the good sense of your
devoted--H. WALPOLE,'

He was doomed, in the decline of life, to witness two great national
convulsions: of the insurrection of 1745 he wrote
feelingly--justly--almost pathetically: forty-five years later he was
tired, he said, of railing against French barbarity and folly.
'Legislators! a Senate! To neglect laws, in order to annihilate
coats-of-arms and liveries!' George Selwyn said, that Monsieur the
king's brother was the only man of rank from whom they could not take a
title. His alarm at the idea of his two young friends going to the
Continent was excessive. The flame of revolution had burst forth at
Florence: Flanders was not a safe road; dreadful horrors had been
perpetrated at Avignon. Then he relates a characteristic anecdote of
poor _Marie Antoinette!_ She went with the king to see the manufacture
of glass. As they passed the Halle, the _poissardes_ hurra'd them. 'Upon
my word,' said the queen, 'these folks are civiller when you visit them,
than when they visit you.'

Walpole's affection for the Miss Berrys cast a glow of happiness over
the fast-ebbing years of his life, 'In happy days,' he wrote to them
when they were abroad, 'I called you my dear wives; now I can only think
of you as darling children, of whom I am bereaved.' He was proud of
their affection; proud of their spending many hours with 'a very old