this savage commander gained intelligence of a French spy coming over, he displayed him at once before the army on a gallows, dangling in his muff and boots.  When one of the surgeons begged for the body of a deserter to dissect, ‘Well,’ said the wretch, ’but you must let me have the skeleton to hang up in the guard-room,’ Such was the temper of the times; vice, childishness, levity at court, brutality in the camp, were the order of the day.  Horace, even Horace, worldly in all, indifferent as to good and bad, seems to have been heart sick.  His brother’s matrimonial infidelity vexed him also sorely.  Lady Orford, ‘tired,’ as he expresses it, of ‘sublunary affairs,’ was trying to come to an arrangement with her husband, from whom she had been long separated; the price was to be, he fancied, L2,000 a year.  Meantime, during the convulsive state of political affairs, he interested himself continually in the improvement of Strawberry Hill.  There was a rival building, Mr. Bateman’s Monastery, at Old Windsor, which is said to have had more uniformity of design than Strawberry Hill.  Horace used indeed to call the house of which he became so proud a paper house; the walls were at first so slight, and the roof so insecure in heavy rains.  Nevertheless, his days were passed as peacefully there as the premature infirmities which came upon him would permit.

From the age of twenty-five his fingers were enlarged and deformed by chalk-stones, which were discharged twice a year.  ’I can chalk up a score with more rapidity than any man in England,’ was his melancholy jest.  He had now adopted as a necessity a strict temperance:  he sat up very late, either writing or conversing, yet always breakfasted at nine o’clock.  After the death of Madame du Deffand, a little fat dog, scarcely able to move for age and size—­her legacy—­used to proclaim his approach by barking.  The little favourite was placed beside him on a sofa; a tea-kettle, stand, and heater were brought in, and he drank two or three cups of tea out of the finest and most precious china of Japan—­that of a pure white.  He breakfasted with an appetite, feeding from his table the little dog and his pet squirrels.

Dinner at Strawberry Hill was usually served up in the small parlour in winter, the large dining-room being reserved for large parties.  As age drew on, he was supported down stairs by his valet; and then, says the compiler of Walpoliana, ’he ate most moderately of chicken, pheasant, or any light food.  Pastry he disliked, as difficult of digestion, though he would taste a morsel of venison-pie.  Never but once, that he drank two glasses of white wine, did the editor see him taste any liquor, except ice-water.  A pail of ice was placed under the table, in which stood a decanter of water, from which he supplied himself with his favourite beverage.’