“Some cry up Gunnersbury,
       For Sion some declare;
    And some say that with Chiswick House
       No villa can compare. 
    But ask the beaux of Middlesex,
       Who know the country well,
    If Strawb’ry Hill, if Strawb’ry Hill
       Don’t bear away the bell?

    “Since Denham sung of Cooper’s,
       There’s scarce a hill around
    But what in song or ditty
       Is turned to fairy ground. 
    Ah, peace be with their memories! 
       I wish them wondrous well;
    But Strawb’ry Hill, but Strawb’ry Hill
       Must bear away the bell.”

It is no way surprising that a noble poet capable of writing such a ballad should have admired the villa of Horace Walpole:  it is no way surprising that a proprietor capable of admiring such a ballad should have printed his own glorification of Strawberry Hill.

I am not insensible to the easy grace and the piquancy of his letters; no man could ever pour more delightful twaddle into the ear of a great friend; no man could more delight in doing it, if only the friend were really great.  I am aware that he was highly cultivated,—­that he had observed widely at home and abroad,—­that he was a welcome guest in distinguished circles; but he never made or had a real friend; and the news of the old man’s death made no severer shock than if one of his Fayence pipkins had broken.

But what most irks me is the absurd dilettanteism and presumption of the man.  He writes a tale as if he were giving dignity to romance; he applauds an artist as Dives might have thrown crumbs to Lazarus; vain to the last degree of all that he wrote or said, he was yet too fine a gentleman to be called author; if there had been a way of printing books, without recourse to the vulgar media of type and paper,—­a way of which titled gentlemen could command the monopoly,—­I think he would have written more.  As I turn over the velvety pages of his works, and look at his catalogues, his bon-mots, his drawings, his affectations of magnificence, I seem to see the fastidious old man shuffling with gouty step up and down, from drawing-room to library,—­stopping here and there to admire some newly arrived bit of pottery,—­pulling out his golden snuff-box, and whisking a delicate pinch into his old nostrils,—­then dusting his affluent shirt—­frill with the tips of his dainty fingers, with an air of gratitude to Providence for having created so fine a gentleman as Horace Walpole, and of gratitude to Horace Walpole for having created so fine a place as Strawberry Hill.

I turn from this ancient specimen of titled elegance to a consideration of Mr. Burke, with much the same relief with which I would go out from a perfumed drawing-room into the breezy air of a June morning.  Lord Kames has told us that Mr. Burke preferred oxen to horses for field-labor; and we have Burke’s letters to his bailiff, showing a nice attention to the economies of farming, and a complete mastery of its working details.  But more than anywhere else does his agricultural sagacity declare itself in his “Thoughts and Details on Scarcity."[N]