Referring to the treasures of art collected at Fonthill, Mr. Eastlake remarks that some idea of their value may be formed from the fact that in 1819, at the sale of the abbey and its contents to Mr. Farquhar, 7,200 copies of the catalogue at a guinea each were sold in a few days. The large sale of this catalogue, which served as a ticket of admission, was mainly owing to the general eagerness to see a place which had been carefully secluded from view. Connoisseurs and collectors, with the élite of the fashionable world, had enjoyed free access to Strawberry Hill, but, making full allowances on this ground, we are at a loss to account for the comparative indifference with which it was regarded by the general public. The private view began on the 28th of March; the public were admitted on the 4th of April, and the sale began on the 25th. The views, public and private, were thinly attended; and on the first and most of the succeeding days of the sale, the renowned auctioneer's audience was principally composed of professional bidders and dealers. The tone taken by the leading journal had doubtless contributed towards this result:

of Scots, the spur with which William III.
pricked his charger through the Boyne,
the clock which was Henry VIII.'s wed-
ding present to Anne Boleyn, the watch
of Fairfax, the hat of Wolsey, etc., etc.
As for the trappings of chivalry: -
The good knights are dust,
And their swords are rust,

And their souls are with the Lord, we trust.

What are their coats of mail, helmets

and gauntlets, but so many stone of old iron? And what (by a parity of reasoning may be asked) are the ruins of Iona but ruins? or what is the plain of Marathon but a plain? Johnson's noble apostrophe is the reply: "Far from me and my friends be such frigid philosophy as may

Historic

conduct us indifferent and unmoved over
any ground that has been dignified by
wisdom, bravery, or virtue!
relics appeal to the same sympathies as
historic localities:

Struck with the seat that gave Eliza birth, We kneel and kiss the consecrated earth. with the same associations? Does it not Why not her glove? Is it not linked similarly recall the lion-hearted queen who flung foul scorn at Tilbury, or the old coquette who signed the death-warrant of Essex? Far from laughing at Mr. Charles Kean for purchasing the dagger of Henry VIII. and the scarlet hat of Wolsey, we should have been strongly tempted to bid against him. Sentiment apart, historic relics have a positive value as illustrations of manners and customs; but if they are one and all to be set down as rubbish, the Can the writer have gone over a single celebrated collection of the Hôtel de Cludepartment of the collection, or even haveny, at Paris, might as well be flung into read the catalogue? He summarily disposes of the whole of the historical relics in this fashion :

There are not, perhaps, a dozen things in the house which evince any refined taste, or taste of a high order, in him by whom they were collected. There is nothing whatever of the highest class of art in the whole collection, not one single solitary object by which national taste can be improved, or from the contemplation of which a pure feeling of art can be produced.*

the Seine.

By way of counterpoise to the depreciation of the journalist, the noble owner was Old hats, old clothes, old gloves, and old fortunate enough to engage the services rubbish, dignified by whatsoever name their of the late George Robins, the prince of owner may rejoice to give them, are still rub-auctioneers, who carried the peculiar elobish: those by whom they are collected are quence of his profession to a point which little better than antiquated dealers in slops; almost entitles him to be regarded as the and those who wish to buy may be supplied at founder of a school. The swelling periods half the expense of a trip to Strawberry Hill, in which Lord Macaulay described the by the recognized retailers of rubbish in May-procession of peers at the trial of Warren fair or Rosemary Lane.

Hastings were pronounced by Sir George Cornewall Lewis to be an excellent specimen of the genuine George Robins style; and a still happier adaptation of that style, in our opinion, was the paragraph in which Lord Beaconsfield brought vividly before the mind's eye the array of large-acred squires who sealed the doom of Sir Robert Peel's government in 1846.*

We refer to the paragraph beginning: "They

Nor will any judicious critic deem these comparisons invidious after reading the prefatory remarks to the catalogue, in which Mr. Robins speaks in his own proper person. For example:

Whether he considers the hallowed recollections that surround a pictorial and historical abode, so dear to its distinguished originator, and so often and so tenderly referred to in his letters and writings, or the extreme rarity and value of the collection contained in it, rich in all that can delight the antiquarian, the scholar, the virtuoso, or the general lover of art, so perfect and unapproachable in all its details that each will quit it with the fixed opinion that his peculiar tastes were those to which the energies, the learning, and the research of the noble founder were directed; when there pass before him in review, the splendid gallery of paintings teeming with the finest works of the greatest masters;* matchless enamels, of immortal bloom, by Petito, Boit, Bordice, and Zincke; chasings, the workmanship of Cellini and Jean de Bologna; noble specimens of Faenza ware, from the pencils of Robbia and Bernard Palizzi; glass, of the rarest hues and tints, executed by Jean Cousin and other masters of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries; Limoges enamels of the period of the Renaissance, by Leonard and Courtoise; Roman and Grecian antiquities in bronze and sculpture; Oriental and European china, of the choicest forms and colors; exquisite and matchless missals, painted by Raphael and Julio Clovis; magnificent specimens of cinquecento armor; miniatures illustrative of the most interesting periods of history; a valuable collection of drawings and manuscripts; engravings in countless numbers and of infinite value; a costly library, extending to fifteen thousand volumes, abounding in splendid editions of the classics; illustrated, scarce, and unique works, with ten thousand other relics of the arts and histories of bygone ages; he may well feel overpowered at the evident impossibility of rendering to each that lengthened notice which their merits and their value demand.

This is a magnificent sentence, in linked richness long drawn out: indeed, one of the longest in the language; yet, considering the weight of the matter, it cannot be censured for redundancy.

Judging merely from the abridged reports in the newspapers, we should say that Mr. Robins's opening address, delivered from a state chair that had belonged to the great cardinal, was on a par with his prefatory remarks.

He concluded by saying that he should have considered it sacrilege to have altered the disposition or arrangement of a single lot; that those who did him the honor to bid should live forever in his heart, and that he would charge them no rent for the tenancy. This eloquence produced good prices.*

the marked catalogue now before us, we The prices were far from good. With should say they were surprisingly low. The Sèvres porcelain, for example, did not sell for a tenth of what it would fetch now. Fancy this lot marked down at 4/.:

strawberries, a present from Madame du A cabinet cup and saucer, embellished with Deffand, and a ditto, with a wreath of flowers and gold border.

The whole contents of the china room, one hundred and forty lots, went for 6487. 15s. 6d. The sale realized 33,450l. We speak within compass when we say that it would now realize three times that sum.

When the last blow of the auctioneer's hammer had sounded, the guardian genius of poor, stripped, despoiled, desecrated, degraded Strawberry must have resembled the White Lady of Avenel when her golden zone had dwindled to the fineness of a thread; and only too appropriate in the mouth of the present owner, when, as its uncontrolled mistress, she paced the denuded gallery, would have been the words of Moore's song:

I feel like one who treads alone
Some banquet hall deserted,
Whose lights are fled, whose garlands dead,
And all but he departed.

Animated

But she had head, heart, imagination, energy, and a will as resolute as Warren Hastings when he made it the set purpose of his life to regain and reinstate his ancestral home of Daylesford. instead of depressed by the self-imposed task of repairing what seemed irreparable trooped on: all the men of metal and large-acred squires with views opening and plans expandwhose spirit he had so often quickened and whose counsels he had so often solicited in his fine Conserva-ing as she went on-she restored, renotive speeches in Whitehall Gardens: Mr. Bankes, with vated, improved, added, acquired, and a Parliamentary name or two centuries, and Mr. Chris- annexed to give breathing-room, till the topher from that broad Lincolnshire which protection had created. and Devon had sent there the stout Villa had grown into a first-class countryheart of Mr. Buck, and Wiltshire the pleasant presence house in a land where country-houses are of Walter Long," etc. ("Life of Lord George Bentinck.") palaces, and this without destroying or materially impairing the distinctive character

Holbein, Rembrandt, Vandyck, Giorgione, Annibale, Caracci, Poussin, Canaletto, Watteau, Van Eyck, Mytens, Zucchero, Lely, Kneller, Reynolds, Romney, etc.

The Times, April 26, 1842.

which the founder had so perseveringly impressed upon it or (what would be still worse) producing inside or outside an impression of incongruity.

preserved pretty nearly as he left them, although their destination has been changed. It was in the narrow passage leading from the hall to the beauty room (now a bedroom) that a late chancellor of Ireland, his thoughts reverting to the natural enemies of his youth, exclaimed: "What a capital place if a man was pursued by bailiffs!"

Walpole was constantly haunted by the fear that his creations and collections would not be respected by his successors, whatever indulgent friends might think or say of them.

I wish [he writes to Montagu in 1755] you would visit it [Strawberry Hill] when it is in I flatter myself, like it so well when it belongs its beauty, and while it is mine. You will not, to the intendant of Twickenham, when a

This is not the place for details. But take up a position on the south-east side so as to command a complete view of the portions constructed at four different periods, and you will find that they slide into each other without a break. Enter the house, pass through the gallery, round room, and ante-room into the finely-proportioned, richly-furnished drawing-room, with the famous Reynolds (the three Ladies Waldegrave) confronting you, and you will see nothing to remind you abruptly or disagreeably of the fact that you have been passing from one epoch of internal decoration to another. The transition is softened down and rendered less perceptible by the adop-cockle-shell walk is made across the lawn, and tion of a happy thought of the celebrated everything without doors is made regular, and Marquise de Rambouillet, who had a room everything within modern and riant; for this devoted to portraits of her friends. The must be its fate. walls of the gallery at Strawberry Hill are May, 1772. now exclusively occupied by portraits of intimate friends and illustrious or distinguished visitors, including the Prince and Princess of Wales, whose grace, affability, and charm of look and manner, faithfully reflected, would most assuredly have cured Walpole, had he fallen beneath their influence, of his dislike to royal visitors.

First come, first served. Those to whom places have been assigned form only a section of the illustrious or distinguished visitors and friends. When an increase of the peerage was proposed at the Restoration, Buckingham remarked that, if every cavalier with a claim were created, the House of Lords must meet on Salisbury Plain. If Lady Waldegrave persists in her original plan, she must extend the gallery by roofing over the lawn.*

All Walpole's smaller rooms have been

Besides the portraits of the Prince and Princess of Wales in a single picture, the gallery contains separate portraits of the Duc and Duchesse d' Aumale, the late Earl and Countess of Clarendon, Earl Russell, Earl Grey, Viscount Palmerston, Mr. Gladstone, Viscount Halifax, the Marchioness of Clanricarde, the late Countess of Morley, Lord Lyndhurst, M. Van de Weyer, Bishop Wilberforce, Viscount Stratford de Redcliffe, the Duchess of Sutherland and the late duchess, the Duchess of Westminster, Lady Churchill, Lady Augusta Sturt, the Countess of Shaftesbury, the Marchioness of Northampton, Madame Alphonse de Rothschild, Lady Selina Bidwell, the Hon. Mrs. F. Stoner, the Countess Spencer, the Countess Somers, and Lady Waldegrave herself. The next addition, we believe, will be the charming habituée who, at a ball given by Lady Waldegrave at the Secretary's Lodge, Dublin, caused an old Irish gentleman to exclaim: "I have come fifty miles to attend this ball, and I would have come a hundred to look at that beautiful duchess." This compliment may pair off with that of the drayman who asked Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, to let him light his pipe at her eyes.

In short this old, old, very old castle, as his prints called Old Parr, is so near being perfect, that it will certainly be ready by the time I die to be improved with Indian paper, or to have the windows let down to the ground by some travelled lady.

May 4, 1774. [To Cole.] Consider, Strawberry is almost the last monastery left, at least in England. Poor Mr. Bateman's is despoiled. Lord Bateman has site, and is dirtily selling by auction what he stripped and plundered it, has advertised the neither would keep nor sell for a sum that is worth while. Surely it is very indecent for a favorite relation, who is rich, to show so little remembrance and affection. I suppose Strawberry will share the same fate. It has already happened to two of my friends.

His melancholy forebodings have been partly realized: —

Jove heard and granted half the suppliants'
prayer,
The rest the winds dispersed in empty air.

His collection has been dispersed through both hemispheres. But the fixed (we can hardly say, solid) fabric of his creation, his monastic castle or castellated monastery, the historic Strawberry Hill, has risen with renovated splendor from its temporary prostration; and thanks to the taste, spirit, munificence, and cordial, graceful, abounding hospitality of an accomplished, highly-gifted woman has regained and surpassed all the interest, attraction, and celebrity which it possessed in his lifetime, and which he sorrowfully

foretold would die with him.