Her Grace of Queensberry, Prior’s ‘Kitty, beautiful and young,’ lorded it, with a tyrannical hand, over the court.  Her famed loveliness was, it is true, at this time on the wane.  Her portrait delineating her in her bib and tucker, with her head rolled back underneath a sort of half cap, half veil, shows how intellectual was the face to which such incense was paid for years.  Her forehead and eyebrows are beautiful:  her eyes soft though lively in expression:  her features refined.  She was as whimsical in her attire as in her character.  When, however, she chose to appear as the grande dame, no one could cope with her, Mrs. Delany describes her at the Birth-day,—­her dress of white satin, embroidered with vine leaves, convolvuluses, rose-buds, shaded after nature; but she, says her friend, ’was so far beyond the master-piece of art that one could hardly think of her clothes—­allowing for her age I never saw so beautiful a creature.’

Meantime, Houghton was shut up:  for its owner died L50,000 in debt, and the elder brother of Horace, the second Lord Orford, proposed, on entering it again, after keeping it closed for some time, to enter upon ‘new, and then very unknown economy, for which there was great need:’  thus Horace refers to the changes.

It was in the South Sea scheme that Sir Robert Walpole had realized a large sum of money, by selling out at the right moment.  In doing so he had gained 1000 per cent.  But he left little to his family, and at his death, Horace received a legacy only of L5,000, and a thousand pounds yearly, which he was to draw (for doing nothing) from the collector’s place in the Custom House; the surplus to be divided between his brother Edward and himself:  this provision was afterwards enhanced by some money which came to Horace and his brothers from his uncle Captain Shorter’s property; but Horace was not at this period a rich man, and perhaps his not marrying was owing to 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