graces of the patrician letter-writer. In his epistles are to
be seen, even in more vivid tints than those of Watteau, these
splendid creatures in all the pride of their beauty and of
their wardrobe, pluming themselves as if they never could grow
old, and casting around them their piercing glances and no
less poignant raillery. But Horace Walpole is not content
with thus displaying his dazzling bevy of heroines; he reveals
them in their less ostentatious moments, and makes us as
familiar with their weaknesses as with the despotic power of
their beauty. Nothing that transpired in the great world
escaped his knowledge, nor the trenchant sallies of his wit,
rendered the more cutting by his unrivalled talent as a
raconteur. Whatever he observed found its way into his
letters, and thus is formed a more perfect narrative of the
Curt-of its intrigues, political and otherwise-of the
manoeuvres of statesmen, the cabals of party, and of private
society among the illustrious and the fashionable of the last
century, at home and on the continent-than can elsewhere be
obtained. And how piquant are his disclosures! how much of
actual truth do they contain! how perfectly, in his
anecdotes, are to be traced the hidden and often trivial
sources of some of the most important public events! "Sir
Joshua Reynolds," say the Edinburgh reviewers, "used to
observe, that, though nobody would for a moment compare Claude
to Raphael, there would be another Raphael before there was
another Claude; and we own, that we expect to see fresh Humes
and fresh Burkes, before we again fall in with that peculiar
combination of moral and intellectual qualities to which the
writings of Horace Walpole owe their extraordinary
popularity."