at an early period of life; and as
this is a disease remarkably affected by the mind, the perpetual
disturbances of a public life seem to have given it a mastery over the
whole frame of the great minister. Walpole talks in unjustifiable
language of his "haughty sterility of talents." But there seems to be
more truth in his account of the caprices of this powerful
understanding in his retirement. Walpole calls it the "reality of Lord
Chatham's madness." Still, we cannot see much in those instances,
beyond the temper naturally resulting from an agonizing disease. When
the Pynsent estate fell to him, he removed to it, and sold his house
and grounds at Hayes--"a place on which he had wasted prodigious sums,
and which yet retained small traces of expense, great part having been
consumed in purchasing contiguous tenements, to free himself from all
neighbourhood. Much had gone in doing and undoing, and not a little in
planting by torchlight, as his peremptory and impatient habits could
brook no delay. Nor were those the sole circumstances which marked his
caprice. His children he could not bear under the same roof, nor
communications from room to room, nor whatever he thought promoted
noise. A winding passage between his house and children was built with
the same view. When, at the beginning of his second administration, he
fixed at North End by Hampstead, he took four or five houses
successively, as fast as Mr Dingley his landlord went into them,
still, as he said, to ward off the houses of the neighbourhood."

Walpole relates another anecdote equally inconclusive. At Pynsent, a
bleak hill bounded his view. He ordered his gardener to have it
planted with evergreens. The man asked "with what sorts." He replied,
"With cedars and cypresses." "Bless me, my lord," replied the
gardener, "all the nurseries in this county would not furnish a
hundredth part." "No matter, send for them from London: and they were
brought by land carriage." Certainly, there was not much in this
beyond the natural desire of every improver to shut out a disagreeable
object, by putting an agreeable one in its place. His general object
was the natural one of preventing all noise--a point of importance
with every sufferer under a wakeful and miserable disease. His
appetite was delicate and fanciful, and a succession of chickens were
kept boiling and roasting at every hour, to be ready whenever he
should call. He at length grew weary of his residence and, aft