gallant; but, if two negatives make an affirmative, why may not two
ridicules compose one piece of sense? and, therefore, as I am in love
with you both, I trust it is a proof of the good sense of your
devoted--H. WALPOLE,'

He was doomed, in the decline of life, to witness two great national
convulsions: of the insurrection of 1745 he wrote
feelingly--justly--almost pathetically: forty-five years later he was
tired, he said, of railing against French barbarity and folly.
'Legislators! a Senate! To neglect laws, in order to annihilate
coats-of-arms and liveries!' George Selwyn said, that Monsieur the
king's brother was the only man of rank from whom they could not take a
title. His alarm at the idea of his two young friends going to the
Continent was excessive. The flame of revolution had burst forth at
Florence: Flanders was not a safe road; dreadful horrors had been
perpetrated at Avignon. Then he relates a characteristic anecdote of
poor _Marie Antoinette!_ She went with the king to see the manufacture
of glass. As they passed the Halle, the _poissardes_ hurra'd them. 'Upon
my word,' said the queen, 'these folks are civiller when you visit them,
than when they visit you.'

Walpole's affection for the Miss Berrys cast a glow of happiness over
the fast-ebbing years of his life, 'In happy days,' he wrote to them
when they were abroad, 'I called you my dear wives; now I can only think
of you as darling children, of whom I am bereaved.' He was proud of
their affection; proud of their spending many hours with 'a very old
man,' whilst they were the objects of general admiration. These charming
women survived until our own time: the centre of a circle of the leading
characters in literature, politics, art, rank, and virtue. They are
remembered with true regret. The fulness of their age perfected the