one of the country seats of his father's opponent and his own friend, Pulteney, Earl of Bath, and Kendal House,1 the retreat of the mistress of George I., Ermengard de Schulenburg, Duchess of Kendal. At Sion, the princely seat of the Percys, the Seymours, and the Smithsons, he turned into the Hounslow Road, left Sion on his right, and Osterly, not unlike Houghton, on his left, and rolled through Brentford,

Brentford, the Bishopric of Parson Horne," 2 then, as now, infamous for its dirty streets, and famous for its white-legged chickens. Quitting Brentford, he approached the woods that concealed the stately mansion of Gunnersbury, built by Inigo Jones and Webb, and then inhabited by the Princess Amelia, the last surviving child of King George II. Here he was often a visitor, and seldom returned without being a winner at silver loo. At the Pack

1 Kendal House now no longer exists.

2 An Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers, Knight,

For dirty streets, and white-leg'd chickens known.'

Brandford's tedious town,

Gay's Journey to Exeter.

4 Gunnersbury House (or Park), a new structure, now

belongs to Lord Rothschild.

Horse1 on Turnham Green he would, when the roads were heavy, draw up for a brief bait. Starting anew, he would pass a few red brick houses on both sides, then the suburban villas of men well to do in the Strand and Charing Cross. At Hammersmith, he would leave the church on his right, call on Mr. Fox at Holland House, look at Campden House, with recollections of Sir Baptist Hickes, and not without an ill-suppressed wish to transfer some little part of it to his beloved Strawberry. He was now at Kensington Church, then, as it still is, an ungraceful structure, but rife with associations which he would at times relate to the

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1 The Old Pack Horse, somewhat modernized by redbrick additions, still (1892) stands at the corner of Turnham Green. It is mentioned in the London Gazette as far back as 1697. The sign, a common one for posting inns in former days, is on the opposite side of the road.

2 Hammersmith church was rebuilt in 1882-3.

3 Sir Baptist Hickes, once a mercer in Cheapside, and afterwards Viscount Campden, erected it circa 1612. At the time to which Mr. Cunningham is supposed to refer, it was a famous ladies' boarding-school, kept by a Mrs. Terry, and patronized by Selwyn and Lady Di. Beauclerk.

4 The (with all due deference to the writer) quaint and picturesque old church of St. Mary the Virgin, in Kensington High Street, at which Macaulay, in his later days, was a regular attendant, gave way, in 1869, to a larger and more modern edifice by Sir Gilbert Scott, R.A.

friend he had with him. On his left he would leave the gates of Kensington Palace, rich with reminiscences connected with his father and the first Hanoverian kings of this country. On his right he would quit the red brick house in which the Duchess of Portsmouth lived,1 and after a drive of half a mile (skirting a heavy brick wall), reach Kingston House,2 replete with stories of Elizabeth Chudleigh, the bigamist maid of honour, and Duchess-Countess of Kingston and Bristol. At Knightsbridge (even then the haunt of highwaymen less gallant than Maclean) he passed on his left the little chapel 3 in which his father was married. At Hyde Park Corner he saw the Hercules Pillars ale-house of Fielding and Tom Jones, and at one door from Park Lane

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1 Old Kensington House, as it was called, has also been pulled down. One of its inmates, long after the days of Madam Carwell,' was Elizabeth Inchbald, the author of A Simple Story, who died there in 1821.

2 Now Lord Listowel's. It stands near the Prince's Gate into Hyde Park.

8 Restored and remodelled in 1861, and now the Church of the Holy Trinity.

4 The Hercules Pillars, where Squire Western put up his horses when he came to town, stood just east of Apsley House, 'on the site of what is now the pavement opposite Lord Willoughby's.'

would occasionally call on old "Q" for the sake of Selwyn, who was often there.1 The trees which now grace Piccadilly were in the Green Park in Walpole's day; they can recollect Walpole, and that is something. On his left, the sight of Coventry House 2 would remind him of the Gunnings, and he would tell his friend the story of the "beauties," with which (short story-teller as he was) he had not completed when the chariot turned into Arlington Street on the right, or down Berkeley Street into Berkeley Square, on the left.' In these last lines Mr. Cunningham anticipates our story, for in 1774, Walpole had not yet taken up his residence in Berkeley Square.

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1 The Duke of Queensberry's house afterwards became 138 and 139 Piccadilly.

2 This is No. 106, - the present St. James's Club. It was built in 1764 by George, sixth Earl of Coventry, some years after the death of his first wife, the elder Miss Gunning.

3 Letters, by Cunningham, 1857-9, ix. xx.-xxi.

CHAPTER IX.

Occupations and Correspondence. — Literary Work. — Jephson and the Stage. - Nature will Prevail. — Issues from the Strawberry Press. - Fourth Volume of the Anecdotes of Painting. The Beauclerk Tower and Lady Di. — George, third Earl of Orford. Sale of the Houghton Pictures. Moves to Berkeley Square. - Last Visit to Madame du Deffand. Her Death. Themes for Letters. Death of Sir Horace Mann. - Pinkerton, Madame de Genlis, Miss Burney, Hannah More.- Mary and Agnes Berry. Their Residence at Twickenham.. 1.- Becomes fourth Earl of Orford. — Epitaphium vivi Auctoris.— The Berrys again. — Death of Marshal Conway. - Last Letter to Lady Ossory. - Dies at Berkeley Square, 2 March, 1797.- His Fortune and Will. - The Fate of Strawberry.

AFTER the completion of Strawberry Hill and the printing of the Catalogue, Walpole's life grows comparatively barren of events. There are still four volumes of his Correspondence, but they take upon them imperceptibly the nature of nouvelles à la main, and are less fruitful in personal traits. Between his books and his prints, his time passes agreeably, but will not do to relate.' Indeed, from this period until his death, in 1797, the most notable occurrences in his history are his friendship with the

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