English literature -- 18th century -- History and criticism; Great Britain -- Intellectual life -- 18th century
Once more under Bentley's japanned tin lantern in the gloomy little
hall, your host, pending the scribbling of half-a-dozen pressing
letters' to Lady Ossory, Mr. Pinkerton, or one or other of his many
correspondents, would beg you to await him in the Picture Gallery. Here,
long before you had exhausted your admiration of the Emperor Vespasian
in basalt, or the incomparable Greek Eagle from the baths of Caracalla,
he would resume his post of _cicerone_, leading you almost at once to
the portraits of his three beautiful nieces, Edward Walpole's daughters,
one of whom, painted by Reynolds, had been fortunate enough to marry
King George's own brother, William Henry, Duke of Gloucester (a fact of
which her uncle Horace is ill-disguisedly proud). From the Gallery you
would pass to the Round Drawing-Room, whose chief glory was Vasari's
'Bianca Capello;' and thence to the adjoining Tribune, a curious
yellow-lit chamber, with semicircular recesses, in which were
accumulated most of the choicest treasures of Strawberry,--miniatures by
Cooper and the Olivers, enamels by Petitot and Zincke, gems from Italy,
bas-reliefs in ivory, coins and seal-rings and reliquaries and filigree
work, in the dispersed profusion of which you would afterwards dimly
recall such items as a silver bell carved with masks and insects by
Benvenuto Cellini, a missal attributed to Raphael, a bronze Caligula
with silver eyes, and a white snuff-box with a portrait purporting to be
a gift from Madame de Sévigné in the Elysian Fields, but sent in reality
by the faithful Madame du Deffand. Each object would bring its train
of associations and traditions; and the fading of the 'all-golden
afternoon' would find your companion still promising fresh marvels in
the yet unexplored rooms beyond, where are the speculum of cannel coal
once used by the notorious starmonger, Dr. John Dee; the red hat of his
Eminence Cardinal Wolsey; and the very spurs worn by King William the
Third, of immortal memory, at the ever-glorious Battle of the Boyne.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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