rid of. The King offered a pension of 3000l. which Lord Hervey declined, on what principle is not very clear, seeing his lordship was willing to take a pension if a place were given him at the same time.

Lord Hervey was forced to surrender his seals of office to Lord Gower, and from that moment assumed the character of a sturdy patriot. He made speeches in the House and pamphlets out of the House,* but as neither placed him in the prominent position for which he had fancied himself peculiarly fitted, he withdrew from public affairs, and amused his leisure by writing memoirs of the court, with materials for which he was well supplied. The disappointment he had experienced in being dismissed from his post, while it sufficiently accounts for his joining the Opposition, accounts also for the opposition feeling which pervades to so great an extent his characters of many of the persons who belonged to the Court. His course as a patriot was more brief than had been his career as a courtier. His health, which had always been delicate, now broke down altogether, and he died on the 8th of August, 1743. Under the influence of that irritation which disappointed ambition engenders, probably much increased by an originally weak constitution, Lord Hervey affected to be something

* His principal speeches were against the Gin Act and the Hanoverians; his pamphlets, "Miscellaneous Thoughts on the present posture of Foreign and Domestic Affairs," and "The Question stated with regard to our Army in Flanders."

† Published in 1848, edited by the Right Hon. J. W. Croker, and frequently referred to in this volume.

VOL. I.

2 A

of a misanthrope, and something more of a satirist and cynic. In one of his "Satires" he ventures to express a most comprehensive amount of dissatisfaction he says,

"I loathe my being, and abhor mankind."

Throughout his memoirs, however, he appears to be on particularly good terms with himself, though for mankind he certainly affords no indications of affection. The true state of the case may have been, he was partial and prejudiced.

CHAPTER IX.

HORACE WALPOLE AT HOUGHTON.

HOUGHTON HALL had served several generations of Norfolk squires as a country residence, but it was not the Houghton Hall that obtained such celebrity as the mansion of the powerful minister of George II. The ancestral seat of the Walpoles had been pulled down to make room for an edifice more in accordance with the greatness of their descendant. The new building was erected on a scale that amazed Sir Robert's friends and irritated his enemies: the former dreaded the effect upon his income of so vast an expenditure, while the latter affected to see in it evidence of that corruption through which they said all this wealth was accumulated at the expense of the public.

Like many other men who have raised themselves to wealth and eminence, Lord Orford felt the desire of leaving some splendid memorial of his greatness, and was thus led into an extravagance, which in another he would have been the first to condemn. Indeed it is asserted that when Harley was building

a mansion, Sir Robert observed that a minister who raised a great house for himself committed a great imprudence. Sir John Hynde Cotton, to whom this remark had been addressed, when he was shown the splendours of Houghton, reminded its master of this observation. "Your recollection is too late,” replied the Earl, "I wish you had reminded me of it before I began building, it might then have been of service to me."*

He expressed the same sense of having exceeded a warrantable ambition, when, on visiting the more moderate sized mansion built at Wolterton by his brother Horace, he regretted not having contented himself with such a house. Indeed, the elevation of the new building at Houghton, presented all the features of a palace, and made the magnates of the county look upon their ancestral mansions, hitherto the admiration of the neighbourhood, with discontent.

The Lord of Houghton, too, chose to live as he had built. A hospitality so comprehensive astonished his neighbours quite as much as the glories of the place in which it was so freely proffered. For three weeks in spring he entertained his private friends and coadjutors in the Ministry, with a sumptuousness which they could scarcely have looked for in the palace of a prince-and for nearly two months of the shooting season in autumn he kept open house, where every gentleman of the county was a welcome visitor, and every political acquaintance might claim

*Coxe. "Sir Robert Walpole." Vol. 1, p. 758.

At

the fullest enjoyment of his hospitality.* these banquets, a jovial spirit presided, that warmed the heart of the most frigid guest. Lord Orford had a very keen sense of the humourous, and great facility in the expression of social pleasantry: and he managed to draw around him, in his more select carousals, men the most eminent for facetious talent.

The nights at Houghton were worthy of being red-lettered in the calendar of good fellowship. It was Sir Robert's intense enjoyment of social pleasures, that drew forth from Pope the well-known lines:"Seen him, I have, but in his happier hour Of social pleasure, ill exchanged for power! Seen him, uncumber'd with the venal tribe, Smile without art, and win without a bribe."

Never was host happier than was the great Minister while presiding over his sumptuous banquets never were guests more abundantly entertained than those who surrounded his hilarious board. It is made a reproach by some, even of his admirers, that on these occasions he abandoned himself more unrestrainedly to the spirit of the hour than became a high officer of the State, labouring under so many serious responsibilities; but the Lord of Houghton played his part in the best mode practised in his day. His was not the wasteful excess

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* Lord Hervey says that he went to Norfolk ten days in summer and twenty days in winter. 'Memoirs." Vol. 1, p. 414. † Lord Brougham seems to consider him blameable for following in his convivial enjoyments, "rather the fashion of his own day than of ours." We do not see how he could follow a fashion that did not come into vogue for at least a century after his death.