e for Walpoles, whose views were never
to be controverted, nor whose faith impugned. Yet Horace must have
witnessed, perhaps with out comprehending it, much disunion at home.
Lady Walpole. beautiful and accomplished, could not succeed in riveting
her husband to his conjugal duties. Gross licentiousness was the order
of the day, and Sir Robert was among the most licentious; he left his
lovely wife to the perilous attentions of all the young courtiers who
fancied that by courting the Premier's wife they could secure Walpole's
good offices. Sir Robert, according to Pope, was one of those who--

'Never made a friend in private life,
And was, besides, a tyrant to his wife.

At all events, if not a tyrant, he was indifferent to those
circumstances which reflected upon him, and were injurious to her. He
was conscious that he had no right to complain of any infidelity on her
part, and he left her to be surrounded by men whom he knew to be
profligates of the most dangerous pretensions to wit and elegance.

It was possibly not unfrequently that Horace, his mother's pet, gleaned
in the drawing-rooms of Arlington Street his first notions of that
_persiflage_ which was the fashion of the day. We. can fancy him a
precocious, old-fashioned little boy, at his mother's apron-string,
whilst Carr, Lord Hervey, was paying his devoirs; we see him gazing with
wondering eyes at Pulteney, Earl of Bath, with his blue ribbon across
his laced coat; whilst compassionating friends observing the pale-faced
boy in that hot-house atmosphere, in which both mind and body were like
forced plants, prophesied that 'little Horace' could not possibly live
to be a man.

He survived, however, two sisters, who died in childhood, and became
dearer and dearer to his fond mother.

In his old age, Horace delighted in recalling anecdotes of his infancy;
in these his mother's partiality largely figured. Brought up among
courtiers and ministers, his childish talk was all of kings and princes;
and he was a gossip both by inclination and habit. His greatest desire
in life was to see the king--George I., and his nurses and attendants
augmented his wish by their exalted descriptions of the grandeur which
he effected, in after-life, to despise. He entreated his mother to take
him to St. James's. When relating the incidents of the scene in which he
was first introduced to a court, Horace Walpole speaks of the 'infinite
good-nature of his father, who never thwarted