thoughts. All was confusion, disorder, debts, mortgages, sales, pillage,
villainy, waste, folly, and madness. The nettles and brambles in the
park were up to his shoulders; horses had been turned into the garden,
and banditti lodged in every cottage.

The perpetuity of livings that came up to the very park-palings had been
sold, and the farms let at half their value. Certainly, if Houghton were
bought by Sir Robert Walpole with public money, that public was now
avenged.

The owner of this ruined property had just stemmed the torrent; but the
worst was to come. The pictures were sold, and to Russia they went.

Whilst thus harassed by family misfortunes, other annoyances came. The
mournful story of Chatterton's fate was painfully mixed up with the
tenour of Horace Walpole's life.

The gifted and unfortunate Thomas Chatterton was born at Bristol in
1752. Even from his birth fate seemed to pursue him, for he was a
posthumous son: and if the loss of a father in the highest ranks of life
be severely felt, how much more so is it to be deplored in those which
are termed the working classes!

The friendless enthusiast was slow in learning to read; but when the
illuminated capitals of an old book were presented to him, he quickly
learned his letters. This fact, and his being taught to read out of a
black-letter Bible, are said to have accounted for his facility in the
imitation of antiquities. Pensive and taciturn, he picked up education
at a charity-school, until apprenticed to a scrivener, when he began
that battle of life which ended to him so fatally.