alone, who—if other damsels found no charms in his somewhat piggish, wooden countenance, or in his manners, replete, it is said, with an unpleasant consciousness of superiority—never deserted him. His college existence, varied only by his being appointed Professor of Modern History, was, for a brief space, exchanged for an existence almost as studious in London. Between the years 1759 and 1762, he took lodgings, we find, in Southampton Row—a pleasant locality then, opening to the fields—in order to be near the British Museum, at that time just opened to the public. Here his intense studies were, it may be presumed, relieved by the lighter task of perusing the Harleian Manuscripts; and here he formed the acquaintance of Mason, a dull, affected poet, whose celebrity is greater as the friend and biographer of Gray, than even as the author of those verses on the death of Lady Coventry, in which there are, nevertheless, some beautiful lines. Gray died in college—a doom that, next to ending one's days in a jail or a convent, seems the dreariest. He died of the gout: a suitable, and, in that region and in those three-bottle days, almost an inevitable disease; but there is no record of his having been intemperate.

Whilst Gray was poring over dusty manuscripts, Horace was beginning that career of prosperity which was commenced by the keenest enjoyment of existence. He has left us, in his Letters, some brilliant passages, indicative of the delights of his boyhood and youth. Like him, we linger over a period still fresh, still hopeful, still generous in impulse— still strong in faith in the world's worth—before we hasten on to portray the man of the world, heartless, not wholly, perhaps, but wont to check all feeling till it was well-nigh quenched; little minded; bitter, if not spiteful; with many acquaintances and scarce one friend—the Horace Walpole of Berkeley Square and Strawberry Hill.

'Youthful passages of life are,' he says, 'the chippings of Pitt's diamond, set into little heart-rings with mottoes; the stone itself more worth, the filings more gentle and agreeable. Alexander, at the head of the world, never tasted the true pleasure that boys of his age have enjoyed at the head of a school. Little intrigues, little schemes and policies engage their thoughts; and at the same time that they are laying the foundation for their middle age of life, the mimic republic they live in, furnishes materials of conversation for their latter age; and old men cannot be said to be children a second time with greater truth from any one cause, than their living over again their childhood in imagination.'

Again: 'Dear George, were not the playing-fields at Eton food for all manner of flights? No old maid's gown, though it had been tormented into all the fashions from King James to King George, ever underwent so many transformations as these poor plains have in my idea. At first I was contented with tending a visionary flock, and sighing some pastoral name to the echo of the cascade under the bridge ... As I got further into Virgil and Clelia, I found myself transported from Arcadia to the garden of Italy; and saw Windsor Castle in no other view than the Capitoli immobile saxum.'

Horace Walpole's humble friend Assheton was another of those Etonians who were plodding on to independence, whilst he, set forward by fortune and interest, was accomplishing reputation. Assheton was the son of a worthy man, who presided over the Grammar School at Lancaster, upon a stipend of £32 a year. Assheton's mother had brought to her husband a small estate. This was sold to educate the 'boys:' they were both clever and deserving. One became the fellow of Trinity College; the other, the friend of Horace, rose into notice as the tutor of the young Earl of Plymouth; then became a D.D., and a fashionable preacher in London; was elected preacher at Lincoln's Inn; attacked the Methodists; and died, at fifty-three, at variance with Horace—this Assheton, whom once he had loved so much.

Horace, on the other hand, after having seen during his travels all that was most exclusive, attractive, and lofty, both in art and nature, came home without bringing, he declares, 'one word of French or Italian for common use.' He professed, indeed, to prefer England to all other countries. A country tour in England delighted him: the populousness, the ease in the people also, charmed him. 'Canterbury was a paradise to Modena, Reggio, or Parma.' He had, before he returned, perceived that nowhere except in England was there the distinction of 'middling people;' he now found that nowhere but in England were middling houses. 'How snug they are!' exclaims this scion of the exclusives. Then he runs on into an anecdote about Pope and Frederick, Prince of Wales. 'Mr. Pope, said the prince, 'you don't love princes.' 'Sir, I beg your pardon.' 'Well, you don't love kings, then.' 'Sir, I own I like the lion better before his claws are grown.' The 'Horace Walpole' began now to creep out: never was he really at home except in a court atmosphere. Still he assumed, even at twenty-four, to be the boy.

'You won't find me,' he writes to Harry Conway, 'much altered, I believe; at least, outwardly. I am not grown a bit shorter or fatter, but am just the same long, lean creature as usual. Then I talk no French but to my footman; nor Italian, but to myself. What inward alterations may have happened to me you will discover best; for you know 'tis said, one never knows that one's self. I will answer, that that part of it that belongs to you has not suffered the least change—I took care of that. For virtu, I have a little to entertain you—it is my sole pleasure. I am neither young enough nor old enough to be in love.'

Nevertheless, it peeps out soon after that the 'Pomfrets' are coming back. Horace had known them in Italy. The Earl and Countess and their daughters were just then the very pink of fashion; and even the leaders of all that was exclusive in the court. Half in ridicule, half in earnest, are the remarks which, throughout all the career of Horace, incessantly occur. 'I am neither young enough nor old enough to be in love,' he says; yet that he was in love with one of the lovely Fermors is traditionary still in the family—and that tradition pointed at Lady Juliana, the youngest, afterwards married to Mr. Penn. The Earl of Pomfret had been master of the horse to Queen Caroline: Lady Pomfret, lady of the bed-chamber. 'My Earl,' as the-countess styled him, was apparently a supine subject to her ladyship's strong will and wrong-headed ability—which she, perhaps, inherited from her grandfather, Judge Jeffreys; she being the daughter and heiress of that rash young Lord Jeffreys, who, in a spirit of braggadocia, stopped the funeral of Dryden on its way to Westminster, promising a more splendid procession than the poor, humble cortege—a boast which he never fulfilled. Lady Sophia Fermor, the eldest daughter, who afterwards became the wife of Lord Carteret, resembled, in beauty, the famed Mistress Arabella Fermor, the heroine of the 'Rape of the Lock.' Horace Walpole admired Lady Sophia—whom he christened Juno—intensely. Scarcely a letter drips from his pen—as a modern novelist used to express it⁴—without some touch of the Pomfrets. Thus to Sir Horace Mann, then a diplomatist at Florence:—

'Lady Pomfret I saw last night. Lady Sophia has been ill with a cold; her head is to be dressed French, and her body English, for which I am sorry, her figure is so fine in a robe. She is full as sorry as I am.'

Again, at a ball at Sir Thomas Robinson's, where four-and-twenty couples danced country-dances, in two sets, twelve and twelve, 'there was Lady Sophia, handsomer than ever, but a little out of humour at the scarcity of minuets; however, as usual, dancing more than anybody, and, as usual too, she took out what men she liked, or thought the