find him thus referring to the parent still throbbing
in mortal agony on the death-bed, with no chance of amendment:--

'How dismal a prospect for him, with the possession of the greatest
understanding in the world, not the least impaired, to lie without any
use for it! for to keep him from pains and restlessness, he takes so
much opiate, that he is scarce awake four hours of the four-and-twenty;
but I will say no more of this.'

On the 29th of March, he again wrote to his friend in the following
terms:--

'I begged your brothers to tell you what it is impossible for me to tell
you. You share in our common loss! Don't expect me to enter at all upon
the subject. After the melancholy two months that I have passed, and in
my situation, you will not wonder I shun a conversation which could not
be bounded by a letter, a letter that would grow into a panegyric or a
piece of a moral; improper for me to write upon, and too distressful for
us both! a death is only to be felt, never to be talked upon by those it
touches.'

Nevertheless, the world soon had Horace Walpole for her own again;
during Lord Orford's last illness, George II. Thought of him, it seems,
even though the 'Granvilles' were the only people tolerated at court.
That famous _clique_ comprised the secretly adored of Horace (Lady
Granville now), Lady Sophia Fermor.

'The Granville faction,' Horace wrote, before his father's death, 'are
still the constant and only countenanced people at court. Lord
Winchelsea, one of the disgraced, played at court at Twelfth-night, and
won; the king asked him next morning how much he had for his own share.
He replied, "Sir, about a quarter's salary." I liked the spirit, and was
talking to him of it the next night at Lord Granville's. "Why yes," said
he, "I think it showed familiarity at least: tell it your father, I
don't think he will dislike it."'

The most trifling incidents divided the world of fashion and produced
the bitterest rancour. Indeed, nothing could exceed the frivolity of the
great, except their impertinence. For want of better amusements, it had
become the fashion to make conundrums, and to have printed books full of
them, which were produced at parties. But these were peaceful
diversions. The following anecdote is worthy of the times of George II.
and of Frederick of Wales:--

'There is a very good quarrel,' Horace writes, 'on foot, between two
duchesses: she of Queensberry sent to invite Lady Emily Lenox to