his dislike of fortune-hunting, or to his
dread of refusal.

Two years after his father's death, he took a small house at Twickenham:
the property cost him nearly L14,000; in the deeds he found that it was
called Strawberry Hill. He soon commenced making considerable additions
to the house--which became a sort of raree-show in the latter part of
the last, and until a late period in this, century.

Twickenham--so called, according to the antiquary Norden, because the
Thames, as it flows near it, seems from the islands to be divided into
two rivers,--had long been celebrated for its gardens, when Horace
Walpole, the generalissimo of all bachelors, took Strawberry Hill.
'Twicknam is as much as Twynam,' declares Norden, 'a place scytuate
between two rivers.' So fertile a locality could not be neglected by the
monks of old, the great gardeners and tillers of land in ancient days;
and the Manor of Twickenham was consequently given to the monks of
Christ Church, Canterbury, by King Edred, in 491; who piously inserted
his anathema against any person--whatever their rank, sex, or order--who
should infringe the rights of these holy men. 'May their memory,' the
king decreed, with a force worthy of the excommunicator-wholesale, Pius
IX., 'be blotted out of the Book of Life; may their strength continually
waste away, and be there no restorative to repair it!' nevertheless,
there were in the time of Lysons, a hundred and fifty acres of
fruit-gardens at Twickenham: the soil being a sandy loam, raspberries
grew plentifully. Even so early as Queen Elizabeth's days, Bishop
Corbet's father had a nursery garden at Twickenham,--so that King
Edred's curse seems to have fallen as powerlessly as it may be hoped all
subsequent maledictions may do.

In 1698, one of the Earl of Bradford's coachmen built a small house on a
piece of ground, called in old works, Strawberry-Hill-Shot; lodgings
were here let, and Colley Cibber became one of the occupants of the
place, and here wrote his Comedy called 'Refusal; or the Ladies'
Philosophy.' The spot was so greatly admired that Talbot, Bishop of
Durham, lived eight years in it, and the Marquis of Carnarvon succeeded
him as a tenant: next came Mrs. Chenevix, a famous toy-woman. She was
probably a French woman, for Father Courayer--he who vainly endeavoured
to effect an union between the English and the Gallican churches--lodged
here some time. Horace Walpole bought up Mrs. Chenevix's lease, and
afterwa