y Hill, but Strawb'ry Hill
Must bear away the bell."

It is no way surprising that a noble poet capable of writing such a
ballad should have admired the villa of Horace Walpole: it is no way
surprising that a proprietor capable of admiring such a ballad should
have printed his own glorification of Strawberry Hill.

I am not insensible to the easy grace and the piquancy of his letters;
no man could ever pour more delightful twaddle into the ear of a great
friend; no man could more delight in doing it, if only the friend were
really great. I am aware that he was highly cultivated,--that he had
observed widely at home and abroad,--that he was a welcome guest in
distinguished circles; but he never made or had a real friend; and the
news of the old man's death made no severer shock than if one of his
Fayence pipkins had broken.

But what most irks me is the absurd dilettanteism and presumption of the
man. He writes a tale as if he were giving dignity to romance; he
applauds an artist as Dives might have thrown crumbs to Lazarus; vain to
the last degree of all that he wrote or said, he was yet too fine a
gentleman to be called author; if there had been a way of printing
books, without recourse to the vulgar _media_ of type and paper,--a way
of which titled gentlemen could command the monopoly,--I think he would
have written more. As I turn over the velvety pages of his works, and
look at his catalogues, his _bon-mots_, his drawings, his affectations
of magnificence, I seem to see the fastidious old man shuffling with
gouty step up and down, from drawing-room to library,--stopping here and
there to admire some newly arrived bit of pottery,--pulling out his
golden snuff-box, and whisking a delicate pinch into his old
nostrils,--then dusting his affluent shirt--frill with the tips of his
dainty fingers, with an air of gratitude to Providence for having
created so fine a gentleman as Horace Walpole, and of gratitude to
Horace Walpole for having created so fine a place as Strawberry Hill.

I turn from this ancient specimen of titled elegance to a consideration
of Mr. Burke, with much the same relief with which I would go out from a
perfumed drawing-room into the breezy air of a June morning. Lord Kames
has told us that Mr. Burke preferred oxen to horses for field-labor; and
we have Burke's letters to his bailiff, showing a nice attention to the
economies of farming, and a complete mastery of its working details. But
mor