Again:  ’Dear George, were not the playing-fields at Eton food for all manner of flights?  No old maid’s gown, though it had been tormented into all the fashions from King James to King George, ever underwent so many transformations as these poor plains have in my idea.  At first I was contented with tending a visionary flock, and sighing some pastoral name to the echo of the cascade under the bridge ...  As I got further into Virgil and Clelia, I found myself transported from Arcadia to the garden of Italy; and saw Windsor Castle in no other view than the Capitoli immobile saxum.’

Horace Walpole’s humble friend Assheton was another of those Etonians who were plodding on to independence, whilst he, set forward by fortune and interest, was accomplishing reputation.  Assheton was the son of a worthy man, who presided over the Grammar School at Lancaster, upon a stipend of L32 a year.  Assheton’s mother had brought to her husband a small estate.  This was sold to educate the ‘boys:’  they were both clever and deserving.  One became the fellow of Trinity College; the other, the friend of Horace, rose into notice as the tutor of the young Earl of Plymouth; then became a D.D., and a fashionable preacher in London; was elected preacher at Lincoln’s Inn; attacked the Methodists; and died, at fifty-three, at variance with Horace—­this Assheton, whom once he had loved so much.

Horace, on the other hand, after having seen during his travels all that was most exclusive, attractive, and lofty, both in art and nature, came home without bringing, he declares, ’one word of French or Italian for common use.’  He professed, indeed, to prefer England to all other countries.  A country tour in England delighted him:  the populousness, the ease in the people also, charmed him.  ’Canterbury was a paradise to Modena, Reggio, or Parma.’  He had, before he returned, perceived that nowhere except in England was there the distinction of ’middling people;’ he now found that nowhere but in England were middling houses.  ‘How snug they are!’ exclaims this scion of the exclusives.  Then he runs on into an anecdote about Pope and Frederick, Prince of Wales.  ’Mr. Pope, said the prince, ‘you don’t love princes.’  ’Sir, I beg your pardon.’  ‘Well, you don’t love kings, then.’  ’Sir, I own I like the lion better before his claws are grown.’  The ‘Horace Walpole’ began now to creep out:  never was he really at home except in a court atmosphere.  Still he assumed, even at twenty-four, to be the boy.

‘You won’t find me,’ he writes to Harry Conway, ’much altered, I believe; at least, outwardly.  I am not grown a bit shorter or fatter, but am just the same long, lean creature as usual.  Then I talk no French but to my footman; nor Italian, but to myself.  What inward alterations may have happened to me you will discover best; for you know ’tis said, one never knows that one’s self.  I will answer, that that part of it that belongs to you has not suffered the least change—­I took care of that.  For virtu, I have a little to entertain you—­it is my sole pleasure.  I am neither young enough nor old enough to be in love.’