pail under the table. Coffee was served almost immediately, to which he proceeded up stairs, as he dined in the small parlour or large dining room, according to the number of his guests. He would take his seat on the sofa, and amuse the company with a current of lively gossip and scandal, relieved with observations on books and art, in illustration of objects brought from the library or any other portion of the house for the whole might be regarded as a His snuff-box, filled from a canister of tabac d'etrennes from Fribourg's, placed in a marble urn at one of the windows to keep it moist, was handed round, and he frequently enjoyed its pungent fragrance till his guests had departed this was rarely till about two o'clock. If earlier, Walpole was sure to be found with pen in hand, continuing whatever work he might have in progress, or communicating to some of his numerous friends the news and gossip of the day.

museum.

The whole of the forenoon, till dinner-time, was often employed by him in attending upon visitors, rambling about the grounds, or taking excursions upon the river. He rarely wore a hat, his throat was generally exposed, and he was quite regardless of the dew, replying, to the earnest solicitude of his friends, My back is the same with my face, and my neck is like my nose."

Sometimes of an evening he would go out to pay a visit to his neighbour, Kitty Clive, and then the hours passed by in a rivalry of anecdote and pleasantry; for Kitty, like himself, had seen a great deal of the world, and was full of its recollections.

CHAPTER X.

HORACE WALPOLE AS POLITICIAN.

"THE period which elapsed between the fall of Sir Robert Walpole and the reign of George the Third,” writes one of the most distinguished of our political leaders, "was the age of small factions. The great Whig party, having had from the accession of the House of Hanover complete possession of power, broke into many little sections, divided from each other by personal predilections, and not by distinct lines of policy. Thus their quarrels and their friendships were precarious and capricious: there was no reason why any one statesman should not join with any other statesman to whom he had been the week before most opposed; nor, to say the truth, was there any great question in dispute, like the revolution settlement, or the American war, or the French war, upon which parties widely separated in opinion could take their stand. The cohesion of politicians, thus loose and slight, became the sport of secret intrigue, of interested cabal, of sudden resentments and dis

cordant tempers. been more conciliatory, his great qualities might have rallied around him a national party."*

Had the character of Mr. Pitt

But though the factions that existed may have generally been insignificant, they occasionally produced men of great ability, and sometimes gave indications of extraordinary talent in public business. Horace Walpole was in the midst of these small factions, and very frequently was, when not at the top, at the bottom of them. In 1751 he moved the address, and seemed to be putting himself forward He has left us admirable

in the parliamentary arena. portraits of men of all parties, and we are enabled in a great measure to learn the history of the times by tracing his footsteps in their political movements. One or two of Walpole's portraits will prove how close and interested an observer he was of what was going on around him. We find him chronicling the début of a public speaker in 1755, whose subsequent reputation was based exclusively on the one display of talent, from which he acquired the name of Singlespeech Hamilton.

"Then there was a young Mr. Hamilton who spoke for the first time, and was at once perfection: his speech was set and full of antithesis, and those antitheses were full of argument: indeed his speech was the most argumentative of the whole day, and he broke through the regularity of his own composition, answered other people, and fell into his own track again with the greatest ease. His

* "Correspondence of John, Fourth Duke of Bedford." Selected from the originals, at Woburn Abbey. With an Introduction. By Lord John Russell, vol. iii.

figure is advantageous; his voice strong and clear, his manner spirited, and the whole with the ease of an established speaker.”*

Walpole then proceeds to describe an orator, whose reputation was based on a hundred similar displays

Nothing, but what

He spoke at past

"You will ask what could be beyond this? was beyond what ever was, and that was Pitt. one, for an hour and thirty-five minutes: there was more humour, wit, vivacity, finer language, more boldness, in short, more astonishing perfections than even you, who are used to him, can conceive. He was not abusive, yet very attacking on all sides he ridiculed my Lord Hillsborough, crushed poor Sir George, terrified the attorney, lashed my Lord Granville, painted my Lord of Newcastle, attacked Mr. Fox, and even hinted up to the Duke.Ӡ

In another place he says

"Pitt surpassed himself, and then I need not tell you that he surpassed Cicero and Demosthenes. What a figure would they, with their formal laboured cabinet orations, make vis-à-vis his manly vivacity and dashing eloquence at one o'clock in the morning, after sitting in that heat for eleven hours. He spoke above an hour and a half, with scarce a bad sentence: the most admired part was a comparison he drew of the two parts of the new administrationto the conflux of the Rhone and the Saone."

This debate the reader will find duly reported by the writer, with the other proceedings of the session of 1755, but we refer to the more lively accounts which Walpole wrote at the same time to his friends. In one of these, of the date of December 17, 1755, alluding to a letter he had received from Mr. Bentley, he says:

"Walpole Letters." Vol. iii. p. 171. + Ibid. p. 173.
"Walpole's Memoirs of George II.

"I never heard as much wit, except in a speech with which Mr. Pitt concluded the debate t'other day on the treaties. His antagonists endeavour to disarm him, but as fast as they deprive him of one weapon, he finds a better: I never suspected him of such an universal armoury-I knew he had a Gorgon's head, composed of bayonets and pistols, but little thought that he could tickle to death with a feather. On the first debate on these famous treaties, last Wednesday, Hume Campbell, whom the Duke of Newcastle had retained as the most abusive counsel he could find against Pitt (and hereafter perhaps against Fox) attacked the former for eternal invectives. Oh, since the last Philippic of Billingsgate memory, you never heard such an invective as Pitt returned-Hume Campbell was annihilated! Pitt, like an angry wasp, seems to have left his sting in the wound, and has since assumed a style of delicate ridicule and repartee. But think how charming a ridicule must that be that lasts and rises flash after flash, for an hour and a half! Some day or other, perhaps, you will see some of the glittering splinters that I gathered up. I have written under his print these lines, which are not only full as just as the original, but have not the tautology of loftiness and majesty :

"Three orators in distant ages born,

Greece, Italy, and England did adorn ;
The first in loftiness of thought surpassed,
The next in language, but in both the last:
The power of nature could no farther go;

To make a third, she joined the former two."

In 1756 Horace again put himself forward as a debater by making a speech on employing Swiss regiments, but without producing any particular effect. There were however few whose eloquence could be expected to produce any very brilliant display, when the Bude light of Pitt was illumining a whole nation.

"Walpole Letters" Vol. iii. p. 179.

† See "Walpole's Memoirs of George II." Vol. ii.