incontrovertible facts, acquired in long intimacy, the memory
of an old and beloved friend, from the giant grasp of an
author and a critic from whose judgment, when deliberately
formed, few can hope to appeal with success. The candour, the
good-nature of this critic,-the inexhaustible stores of his
literary acquirements, which place him in the first rank of
those most distinguished for historical knowledge and critical
acumen,-will allow him, I feel sure, to forgive this appeal
from his hasty and general opinion, to the judgment of his
better informed mind, on the peculiarities of' a character
often remarkably dissimilar from that of his works.

Lord Dover has justly and forcibly remarked, "that what did
the most honour both to the head and the' heart of Horace
Walpole, was the friendship which he bore to Marshal Conway; a
man who, according to all the accounts of him that have come
down to us, was so truly worthy of inspiring such a decree of
affection." (6)
He then quotes the character given of him by the editor of
Lord Orford's works in 1798. This character of Marshal Conway
was a portrait drawn from the life, and, as it proceeded from
the same pen which now traces these lines, has some right to
be inserted here. "It is only those who have had the
opportunity of penetrating into the most secret motives of his
public conduct, and into the inmost recesses of his private
life, who can do real justice to the unsullied purity of his
character;-who saw and knew him in the evening of his days,
retired from the honourable activity of a soldier and of a
statesman, to the calm enjoyments of private -life; happy in
the resources of his own mind, and in the cultivation of