ow, with
many regrets, I love Houghton--Houghton, I know not what to call it--a
monument of grandeur or ruin!'

Although he did not go with the expectation of finding a land flowing
with milk and honey, the sight of all this ruin long saddened his
thoughts. All was confusion, disorder, debts, mortgages, sales, pillage,
villainy, waste, folly, and madness. The nettles and brambles in the
park were up to his shoulders; horses had been turned into the garden,
and banditti lodged in every cottage.

The perpetuity of livings that came up to the very park-palings had been
sold, and the farms let at half their value. Certainly, if Houghton were
bought by Sir Robert Walpole with public money, that public was now
avenged.

The owner of this ruined property had just stemmed the torrent; but the
worst was to come. The pictures were sold, and to Russia they went.

Whilst thus harassed by family misfortunes, other annoyances came. The
mournful story of Chatterton's fate was painfully mixed up with the
tenour of Horace Walpole's life.

The gifted and unfortunate Thomas Chatterton was born at Bristol in
1752. Even from his birth fate seemed to pursue him, for he was a
posthumous son: and if the loss of a father in the highest ranks of life
be severely felt, how much more so is it to be deplored in those which
are termed the working classes!

The friendless enthusiast was slow in learning to read; but when the
illuminated capitals of an old book were presented to him, he quickly
learned his letters. This fact, and his being taught to read out of a
black-letter Bible, are said to have accounted for his facility in the
imitation of antiquities. Pensive and taciturn, he picked up education
at a charity-school, until apprenticed to a scrivener, when he began
that battle of life which ended to him so fatally.

Upon very slight accidents did his destiny hinge. In those days women
worked with thread, and used thread-papers. Now paper was, at that time,
dear: dainty matrons liked tasty thread-papers. A pretty set of
thread-papers, with birds or flowers painted on each, was no mean
present for a friend. Chatterton, a quiet child, one day noticed that
his mother's thread-papers were of no ordinary materials. They were made
of parchment, and on this parchment was some of the black-letter
characters by which his childish attention had been fixed to his book.
The fact was, that his uncle was sexton to the ancient church of St.
Mary Redclif