two in the morning, in miscellaneous chit-chat, full of singular
anecdotes, strokes of wit, and acute observations, occasionally sending
for books, or curiosities, or passing to the library, as any reference
happened to arise in conversation. After his coffee, he tasted nothing;
but the snuff-box of _tabac d'etrennes_, from Fribourg's, was not
forgotten, and was replenished from a canister lodged in an ancient
marble urn of great thickness, which stood in the window seat, and
served to secure its moisture and rich flavour.'

In spite of all his infirmities, Horace Walpole took no care of his
health, as far as out-door exercise was concerned. His friends beheld
him with horror go out on a dewy day: he would even step out in his
slippers. In his own grounds he never wore a hat: he used to say, that
on his first visit to Paris he was ashamed of his effeminacy, when he
saw every meagre little Frenchman whom he could have knocked down in a
breath walking without a hat, which he could not do without a certainty
of taking the disease which the Germans say is endemical in England, and
which they call _to catch cold_. The first trial, he used to tell his
friends, cost him a fever, but he got over it. Draughts of air, damp
rooms, windows open at his back, became matters of indifference to him
after once getting through the hardening process. He used even to be
vexed at the officious solicitude of friends on this point, and with
half a smile would say, 'My back is the same as my face, and my neck is
like my nose.' He regarded his favourite iced-water as a preservative to
his stomach, which, he said, would last longer than his bones. He did
not take into account that the stomach is usually the seat of disease.

One naturally inquires why the amiable recluse never, in his best days,
thought of marriage: a difficult question to be answered. In men of that
period, a dissolute life, an unhappy connection, too frequently