walls--the fashionables, who herded together, impelled by caste, that
free-masonry of social life, enter the Beauclerk closet to look over
Lady Di's scenes from the 'Mysterious Mother'--the players and
dramatists, finally, who crowded round Hogarth's sketch of his 'Beggars'
Opera,' with portraits, and gazed on Davison's likeness of Mrs.
Clive:--how could poor Horace have tolerated the sound of their
irreverent remarks, the dust of their shoes, the degradation of their
fancying that they might doubt his spurious-looking antiquities, or
condemn his improper-looking ladies on their canvas? How, indeed, could
he? For those parlours, that library, were peopled in his days with all
those who could enhance his pleasures, or add to their own, by their
presence. When Poverty stole in there, it was irradiated by Genius. When
painters hovered beneath the fretted ceiling of that library, it was to
thank the oracle of the day, not always for large orders, but for
powerful recommendations. When actresses trod the Star Chamber, it was
as modest friends, not as audacious critics on Horace, his house, and
his pictures.

Before we call up the spirits that were familiar at Strawberry--ere we
pass through the garden-gate, the piers of which were copied from the
tomb of Bishop William de Luda, in Ely Cathedral--let us glance at the
chapel, and then a word or two about Walpole's neighbours and anent
Twickenham.

The front of the chapel was copied from Bishop Audley's tomb at
Salisbury. Four panels of wood, taken from the Abbey of St. Edmund's
Bury, displayed the portraits of Cardinal Beaufort, of Humphrey Duke of
Gloucester, and of Archbishop Kemp. So much for the English church.

Next was seen a magnificent shrine in mosaic, from the church of St.