great. I do not think, when that function is over, that I shall
repent my resolution. What could I see but sons and grandsons
playing over the same knaveries that I have seen their fathers
and grandfather's act? Could I hear oratory beyond my Lord
Chatham's? Will there ever be parts equal to Charles Towns@ends?
Will George Grenville cease to be the most tiresome of beings?"
(27)

>From this time Walpole devoted himself more than ever to his
literary and antiquarian pursuits; though the interest he still,
in society at least, took in politics, is obvious, from the
frequent reference to the subject in his letters.

In the course of his life, his political opinions appear to have
undergone a great change. In his youth, and indeed till his old
age, he was not only a strenuous Whig, but, at times, almost a
Republican. How strong his opinions were in this sense may be
gathered, both from the frequent confessions of his political
faith, which occur in his letters, and from his reverence for the
death-warrant of Charles the First, of which he hung up the
engraving in his bed-room, and wrote upon it with his own hand
the words "Major Charta." The horrors of the French Revolution
drove him, in the latter period of his life, into other views of
politics; and he seems to have become, in theory at least, a
Tory, though he probably would have indignantly repudiated the
appellation, had it been applied to him.

Even during the earlier part of his career, his politics had
varied a good deal (as, indeed, in a long life, whose do not?);
but, in his case, the cause of variation was a most amiable one.