showing a party of guests from
London over Strawberry:--enter we with him, and let us stand in the
great parlour before a portrait by Wright of the Minister to whom all
courts bowed. 'That is my father, Sir Robert, in profile,' and a vulgar
face in profile is always seen at its vulgarest; and the
_nex-retrousse,_ the coarse mouth, the double chin, are most forcibly
exhibited in this limning by Wright; who did not, like Reynolds, or like
Lawrence, cast a _nuance_ of gentility over every subject of his pencil.
Horace--can we not hear him in imagination?--is telling his friends how
Sir Robert used to celebrate the day on which he sent in his
resignation, as a fete; then he would point out to his visitors a
Conversation-piece, one of Reynolds's earliest efforts in small life,
representing the second Earl of Edgecumbe, Selwyn, and Williams---all
wits and beaux, and _habitues_ of Strawberry. Colley Cibber, however,
was put in cold marble in the anteroom; a respect very _Horatian_, for
no man knew better how to rank his friends than the recluse of
Strawberry. He hurries the lingering guests through the little parlour,
the chimneypiece of which was copied from the tomb of Ruthall, Bishop of
Durham, in Westminster Abbey. Yet how he pauses complacently to
enumerate what has been done for him by titled belles: how these dogs,
modelled in terra-cotta, are the production of Anne Darner; a
water-colour drawing by Agnes Berry; a landscape with gipsies by Lady Di
Beauclerk;--all platonically devoted to our Horace; but he dwells long,
and his bright eyes are lighted up as he pauses before a case, looking
as if it contained only a few apparently faded, of no-one-knows-who (or
by whom) miniatures; this is a collection of Peter Oliver's best
works--portraits of the Digby family.

How sadly, in referring to these invaluable pictures, does one's mind
revert to the day when, before the hammer of Robins had resounded in
these rooms--before his transcendent eloquence had been heard at
Strawberry--Agnes Strickland, followed by all eyes, pondered over that
group of portraits: how, as she slowly withdrew, we of the commonalty
scarce worthy to look, gathered around the spot again, and wondered at
the perfect life, the perfect colouring, proportion, and keeping of
those tiny vestiges of a bygone generation!

Then Horace--we fear it was not till his prime was past, and a touch of
gout crippled his once active limbs--points to a picture of Rose, the