[56] ‘I went to the House of Commons the other day to hear Charles Fox, contrary to a resolution I had made of never setting my foot there again. It is strange how disuse makes one awkward. I felt a palpitation, as if I were going to speak there myself. The object answered: Fox’s abilities are amazing at so very early a period, especially under the circumstances of such a dissolute life. He was just arrived from Newmarket, had sat up drinking all night, and had not been in bed. How such talents make one laugh at Tully’s rules for an orator, and his indefatigable application! His laboured orations are puerile in comparison with this boy’s manly reason.’--_Walpole to Mann, April 9, 1772._ [57] Walpole’s playful name for Little Strawberry Hill, a cottage near his villa, and belonging to him, which he gave to Mrs. Clive, the actress, for her life. [58] Mrs. Clive’s brother, who lived with her. [59] A new singer who attained great celebrity. [60] A comedy by Hugh Kelly. [61] Lady Louisa Fitzpatrick, Lord Ossory’s sister, afterwards married to the Earl of Shelburne. [62] The period of the year when Lady Ossory left Ampthill for Farming Woods. [63] His quitting Parliament. [64] Lord Clive, in fact, cut his throat, as Walpole, correcting himself, mentions in a postscript to this letter. [65] In 1760, Walpole wrote: “General Clive is arrived, all over estates and diamonds. If a beggar asks charity, he says, ‘Friend, I have no small brilliants about me.’” [66] They poisoned Pope Ganganelli.--WALPOLE. [67] “Who knows but that hereafter some traveller like myself will sit down upon the banks of the Seine, the Thames, or the Zuyder Zee?… Who knows but that he will sit down solitary amid silent ruins?” etc.--Volney’s _Ruins_. “When London shall be an habitation of bitterns, when St. Paul’s and Westminster Abbey shall stand, shapeless and nameless ruins, in the midst of an unpeopled marsh; … some Transatlantic commentator will be weighing … the respective merits of the Bells and the Fudges, and their historians.”--Shelley, _Dedication to Peter Bell the Third_. The rest are still more remote. [68] Walpole, as well as Macaulay, repeats himself: “Nations at the acme of their splendour, or at the eve of their destruction, are worth observing. When they grovel in obscurity afterwards, they furnish neither events nor reflections; strangers visit the vestiges of the Acropolis, or may come to dig for capitals among the ruins of St. Paul’s; but nobody studies the manners of the pedlars and banditti that dwell in mud huts within the precincts of a demolished temple.”--_Letter to Mason, dated May 12, 1778, first published in 1851._ [69] Thomas, second Lord Lyttelton; he had been at Florence. [70] Thomas Lennard Barret; his wife was sister of Lord Camden. [71] The lady’s dog, which, on her death, passed into the care of Walpole.