not without respect for his opinions as well as his talents; for Walpole was one of the few who had the wisdom to see and the frankness to denounce the unjust policy of his government towards the colony which, happily for all parties, became so soon an independent nation. But, beyond this feeling, I sympathised little with the family of the then possessors of Strawberry Hill; and had I even been that way disposed, I heard enough from the persons I met there to give my thoughts an opposite direction. One amongst these was a very singular man, whom I had often heard of, and now accidentally encountered-the celebrated author of Vathek, but more celebrated still as the owner of Fonthill, his own creation, and the victim of his own caprice.

No man's career had been more uniformly cast in high places than Mr. Beckford's; none had possessed more, few so many, opportunities of seeing life, and there was probably no one in England who could say so much of what he had seen and known, or say it so well, as himself. I have heard that he cared less for his own countrymen than for any other people on earth, and I am inclined to think so from the mauvaise langue with which he spoke of so many whom I named to him as celebrities, who had been his contemporaries in youth and middle age.

He soon discovered, perhaps from the free-spoken manner with which I questioned him on various points, that I was an American; and whether he was on that account more communicative than he otherwise would have been, or was willing to entertain me because I was a stranger, I cannot say, but he certainly put no restraint on his words, nor troubled himself much about the effect which might be caused by his anecdotes.

Towards Horace Walpole he seemed to entertain a feeling of animosity, which nearly half a century of the shrouded stillness of the grave had been unable to remove.

"I wrote a book," said he, "when I was only eighteen-not to ridicule Horace Walpole, though he thought so, and cherished a spite against me as long as he lived-but to mystify an old housekeeper of mine, who elieved every word that was set down in it, and learnt it all by heart to etail it to the people who came to see my house. She was firmly persuaded, because I had told her so, that Michael Angelo was a baker, whom I had set up in business in Bath, where he took to painting, and produced the work on which she used to descant to the astonished visitors. The title of the book offended Walpole, but there was nothing in it against him; it was thought amusing; a bookseller gave me a hundred and sixty guineas for it, and it had its day. But besides that," continued Mr. Beckford, "he disliked me as a younger and rival collector. If”— and the old man churned his words spitefully, a light foam settling from time to time on his lips as he rapidly went on-"if he could see me here now, fixing on the things I mean to buy, he would even wish himself back again. Horace Walpole's taste," he added with vehemence," was bad. He was an offalist."

He told a good story of the Emperor Charles VI. of Germany, which he had had from the famous Prince de Ligne, with whom he had been intimate at Brussels some sixty years before.

"The emperor," said Mr. Beckford, "had fewer brains than kings, quand même ils fussent Allemands, generally have. His LorraineFrench was exquisite, and the Prince de Ligne could imitate him to the

life. He was one day out walking with the great chamberlain and some other officers of his court, when it came on to rain. The emperor turned round in a state of helpless distress, and-gueule béanteexclaimed to the chamberlain:-11 bleut tans ma pouche !' The functionary received the intimation as gravely as if it had been the profoundest state secret; the vast resources of his mind, however, suggested a remedy. Approaching the afflicted emperor with a low bow at every step as he drew nearer, he paused at length, and, looking respectfully in the vacant face, said with the utmost gravity:-' qu'il blaise à sa machesté imbériale te pien fouloir fermer sa pouche?'

The look of imbecile gratitude which Mr. Beckford put on to express the monarch's thanks, could not have been surpassed by the emperor himself, or by his witty reporter.

Of a great predecessor of the Lorraine prince-the Emperor Charles V. -Mr. Beckford spoke with more respect. We were examining a portfolio of rare prints together, and came to a portrait of the recluse of St. Just, engraved, however, from a picture when he still wore the diadems of Germany and Spain. After commenting on his character in terms of praise, perhaps on account of his having exhausted his ambition, or for his contempt of the nothingness of fame, he suddenly said

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"This is a very good likeness. I can say so, for I have seen him." "I know, sir, you have seen a great deal more than most people,” I replied, smiling: "but Charles V. has been dead nearly 300 years. "Very true," returned Mr. Beckford, "but for all that I have seen him." He said this so positively, that I stared with astonishment, beginning to ask myself if I had got into company with the Wandering Jew. "When I was first in Spain," pursued he, "although my visit was ostensibly for my own amusement, I had been charged by the Queen of Portugal with certain matters of importance to the Court of Spain, and more facilities were given me for seeing whatever I pleased than any foreigner had enjoyed before. I had only to express a wish, and it was immediately gratified. When I went to the Escurial, I said that I should like to see the body of Charles V. as he lay embalmed in his coffin. The tomb was consequently opened, and I saw his face as distinctly as I see yours now, as plainly as this engraving shows it. There's only one difference-the mouth had slightly fallen in, but the rest of the features were as prominent as in his lifetime. I shall never forget

them."

Mr. Beckford's acquaintance with the royal family of Portugal provoked his cynical, or perhaps scandal-loving propensities.

"Few of that race," said he, "are legitimate. Dom Miguel, for instance; his father was the Marquis of Marialva, not Dom João; and the proof of it is that he is web-footed. The Marialvas all have that mark,

like the Reine Pédauque."

How true this assertion may be, it is impossible for me to say, but Mr. Beckford asserted it as a fact which admitted of no dispute. His tone, indeed, was so confident, that had he declared Dom Miguel to be a human ornithoryneus, I should scarcely have raised a doubt on the subject. After all, Nature indulges in so many freaks, that I see no reason why, amongst other blemishes, a few extra membranes may not become hereditary. I could repeat many more curious things which fell from this strange old man, who, at the age of eighty-two, spoke with all the fer

vour and energy of youth; but they would lead me too far from my subject-though the allusion to him is not altogether disconnected with the theme which more particularly occupies me, for in the same gallery where I saw Mr. Beckford, I renewed my acquaintance with the Countess of Blessington.

Thirteen years before-time has since lengthened the period to twenty -I had been presented to her ladyship in Paris by my countryman Fenimore Cooper. She then struck me as one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen; and that opinion was scarcely shaken when I met her again, standing beneath Sir Joshua's portrait of the lovely Lady Waldegrave, a test of some severity. More fulness had been added to her figure, and the oval form of her face was less apparent, but the grace of the one and the sweetness of the other were still conspicuous. There are some faces in which the light of beauty is never extinguished, and Lady Blessington's was of that order. He who has only seen Lawrence's exquisite portrait of her will have carried away this impression; we, who have known the original, many years after that picture was painted, can confirm the truth of this creed by our own experience.

There was more of change in the appearance of Count D'Orsay, on whose arm Lady Blessington was leaning. The wear and tear of a man's life, and such a life as I have heard he led, sufficiently account for this. But there was nothing altered in his manner,- -nor in that of either. The faculty which all clever people possess, in common with many who are notoriously deficient in other respects-that of remembering faces-recalled me at once to their recollection.

"You must come and see me at Gore House," said her ladyship; my rooms are not quite so large as the salons in the Faubourg St. Honoré, but I manage to fill them as well, if not better. J'ai laché la parole, mon cher Alfred," added she, turning with a smile to her companion, "j'espère que tu ne m'en veux pas?"

"Je n'ai rien à dire," was the count's reply; "on gagne toujours quand on trouve de nouveaux amis sans en perdre de vieux.

"Surtout," continued the countess, giving me her hand, "quand ils arrivent de si loin."

I need scarcely say, that after this welcome, I did not bend unwilling feet in the direction of Gore House during the remainder of my stay in London that summer.

The first time I dined there I shall not easily forget. It was a beautiful evening in the beginning of June, and though the day had been spent in a round of sight-seeing, I experienced none of the fatigue which I might have felt at another moment, with so much pleasure had I looked forward to the party I expected to meet. In the month of June, if the season be at all propitious, the environs of London, especially to the west, are charming. An hour or two before, Hyde Park had been filled with the beauty and fashion of the town; but now, as I drove to my appointment, only a few stray horsemen were still enjoying the freshness of the turf and the coolness of the evening. They were diners at clubs, I fancied, who had no such attraction before them as that which beckoned me on. I was fearful, indeed, of being rather behind time myself, having been delayed by a slight accident at my lodgings, but-like my countryman, N. P. Willis, who had been similarly graced a few years before I had gained upon the clock, or perhaps I should rather say, had

been too literal an interpreter of its meaning in London society, for when I was shown into the library, where Lady Blessington generally received her guests, no one had yet arrived. I had leisure, therefore, to examine the locality; and as this hospitable mansion is now, alas! dismantled, some description of it, even though it trench upon the auctioneer's privilege, may not be out of place.

The rooms on the ground-floor consisted of a small study on the left of the vestibule, separated by a wide old-fashioned staircase from the diningroom, which looked out upon the garden. The library on the right hand occupied the whole depth of the house, and was narrow in proportion to its length, which I should judge to be about forty feet.

As N. P. Willis has said, it was filled with "sofas, couches, ottomans, and busts, arranged in rather a crowded sumptuousness throughout the room;" and this description held good of every apartment in the house. But amidst the profusion of ornament which met the eye everywhere, perplexing it in its choice of rest, when it did settle, the object was always commended by beauty of form, richness of decoration, or intrinsic value. China of deep oriental blue, porcelain of Sevres and Dresden, sea-green and turquoise, vases for flowers and essences of glittering gold and brightest ruby, many-hued marble pedestals crowned with classical tazze-antiques in bronze-middle-age relics of silver and ivory-clocks of or-molu, and goodly rows of books which lined the walls on either side, some thousands in number, surmounted by golden urns, were amongst the many beautiful things which attracted my notice. Here was an exquisitely chiselled bust of a lovely woman, whom instinct alone would have told me was the presiding genius of the place; opposite to it a companion piece of sculpture, evidently by the same hand, in which I at once traced the features of Count d'Orsay, perfect in their proportion and striking in their ensemble. These I afterwards learnt were the work of Bertolini. At that time the sculptor's art was unpractised by the accomplished French nobleman, or if practised, nothing had then issued beyond the limits of his studio; and the numberless statuettes which the auctioneer's hammer sent flying all abroad the other day, had not yet seen the light. Versatile in his talents as he is successful in the exercise of them, Count d'Orsay, at the period of which I speak, confined himself to those admirable croquis, which so soon became multiplied into one of the most agreeable galleries of contemporaneous portraiture that have been drawn by one hand.

But if the library, with its white and gold boiserie, its green and amber brocade, its doors lined with plate glass, its golden flambeaux and antique-shaped candlesticks, gave an idea of luxurious embellishment; how much more was that impression heightened by the splendid decoration of the drawing-room adjoining, the approach to which was by a small lobby at the northern extremity of the apartment! Gorgeous with crimson and gold, and reflecting its brightness in countless mirrors and looking-glasses, which reached mostly from the floor to the ceiling, and lit in the midst by one enormous chandelier with its shivering pendants of rainbow dye, it seemed as if it were beyond the power of art to add to the display of ornament. And this, perhaps, was true; but art which was not the upholsterer's or the jeweller's had been busy at work on the walls, banishing all else from the mind when once you gazed upon it.

Byron somewhere in his journal speaks of a picture by Titian or Giorgione, which seemed to light up the place where he beheld it, filling the

eye to the exclusion of everything beside. The same effect was produced
when one looked on the exquisite portrait of Lady Blessington which hung
over the lobby entrance. No painter of his time, nor scarcely of any other,
could so truly as Sir Thomas Lawrence have interpreted the matchless
beauty of the original. That smiling face, that dimpled cheek, that rich
but fair complexion, that sweet mouth, those clear expressive eyes, that
hair of darkest brown sweeping so gracefully over a brow of snow, that
bending, speaking attitude, that air of joyousness and tenderness com-
bined! It would seem as if the poet's vision were prophetic, though at
the time he wrote the following lines Byron had not yet seen Lady
Blessington.
Her glossy hair was cluster'd o'er a brow

Bright with intelligence, and fair and smooth;
Her eyebrows' shape was like the aerial bow,
Her cheek all purple with the beam of youth.

Her brow was white and low; her cheeks' pure dye
Like rosy twilight still with the set sun;

Short upper lips, such lips! that make us sigh

Ever to have seen such.

Rarely before have such charms met in one person, and still more rare has been the endeavour to transfer them to canvass. He who succeeds in such a task, has by that work alone secured for himself an immortality. Lawrence-the modern Vandyke in this branch of his art-has painted many beautiful women, but he never had a subject more worthy of his pencil. This enchanting portrait has now become the property of the Marquis of Hertford, who acquired it for 320 guineas-but little more than half the sum that Lawrence used to receive for an ordinary portrait.

upon a

From such a picture to the fac-simile produced by the skill of the modeller, the transition is natural. In a small boudoir, the only drawback to which was that it looked out upon the stables, lay reclined velvet cushion, and carefully protected by a glass shade from the blackening air, a pair of hands modelled in silver after those of Lady Blessington. Small, and round, and dimpled, with long taper fingers and arching nails, the sculptor never met with a finer study. What was given for them I know not, though even as a work of art they were worth any price, but at the sale they went for 341. "The hands of old gave hearts," Othello says;-Lady Blessington's heart has scarcely gone with her hands. Whoever the purchaser may be, let him content himself with the fragments which fortune has thrown into his lap.

The companion portrait to the one just now described was that of the late Earl of Blessington, also by Lawrence, and valuable as a specimen of his style.

Having got on the subject of art, I may as well enumerate here a few of the principal works scattered through different parts of the house; less on account of their intrinsic merit, than from so many of them having been produced by one who was so long the leader of the English world of fashion. They served also, in a very interesting degree, to illustrate the friendships and feelings which predominated in Gore House. The name of Napoleon was there a worshipped one. Not only did his portrait appear in various places, but more than one bust and several sta