STRAWBERRY HILL; 66 AN HISTORICAL NOVEL. BY THE AUTHOR OF 99 66 SHAKSPEARE AND HIS FRIENDS," MAIDS OF HONOUR," BAUDRY'S EUROPEAN LIBRARY, 3, QUAI MALAQUAIS, NEAR THE PONT DES ARTS. STASSIN AND XAVIER, 9, RUE DU COQ. 1847. HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY THE GIFT OF FRIENDS OF THE LIBRARY By Robert Folkestone Williams 6012A 40-141 4.3 INTRODUCTION. "Going! going! Gentlemen and Ladies, for the last time of offering this lot. For the last time. No advance upon this bidding? Going-goinggone!" Such was the speech which greeted the ears of the Author, from a clear sonorous voice, as, early in the month of May 1842, he entered one of the chambers of the most celebrated, if not the most admired of modern structures. He was enjoying a distinction which would have been denied a stranger half a century before. Nor did he value it less, because it was shared by a multitude. He was a visitor at Strawberry Hill. He made one of an eager, curious crowd, whose only letter of introduction appeared in the shape of an auctioneer's catalogue. Even when passing through the monastic entrance into the hall, he could hardly believe, much less reconcile himself to the astounding fact, that he was there-not to look and marvel, but to bid and buy. All the treasures of Strawberry Hill, literary, antiquarian, and artistical, were for sale to the highest bidder. That quaint edifice, on which the author of "The Castle of Otranto" had lavished the resources of his gothic imagination, was to be stripped to the bare walls: those matchless decorations, which at so vast an amount of labour and expense were sought for and collected from every available quarter in Europe, were to be distributed amongst a thousand owners, at the best price that could be got for them. It was impossible for any historical student to have entered the place, without recalling to mind some of the numerous associations that marked it as the head quarters of wit and fashion in the last century: but as well as having been the rendezvous of the beauties, the wits, and the gossips of the age, it had been made equally famous as a sort of nursery of Letters, where certain of its most delicate plants had for a considerable period been carefully reared and successfully planted out. The Strawberry Hill personages, in their claims to celebrity, found rivals only in the Strawberry Hill press. Could a change more violent be conceived than that which had fallen upon it, in the course of the half century that had elapsed since the death of its architect and founder? The visitor, instead of having to pay his compliments to the greatest of fashionable authors, found himself the object of curious scrutiny from the greatest of fashionable auctioneers. The histo a |