“The new Assembly Room at Almack’s was opened the night before last, and they say is very magnificent, but it was empty; half the town is ill with colds, and many were afraid to go, as the house is scarcely built yet. Almack advertised that it was built with hot bricks and boiling water--think what a rage there must be for public places, if this notice, instead of terrifying, could draw anybody thither. They tell me the ceilings were dropping with wet--but can you believe me, when I assure you the Duke of Cumberland was there?--Nay, had had a levee in the morning, and went to the Opera before the assembly! There is a vast flight of steps, and he was forced to rest two or three times. If he dies of it,--and how should he not?--it will sound very silly when Hercules or Theseus ask him what he died of, to reply, ‘I caught my death on a damp staircase at a new club-room.’” The reader will be inclined to wonder how, with so many distractions, Walpole found time for all this letter-writing, and still more how he managed to come before the public as an author. His, however, was the pen of an extremely ready writer, and, when not otherwise engaged, he plied it with unwearied diligence. This appears in the following letter to Cole, the Cambridge antiquary, in which Horace gives an account of the origin and composition of his well-known romance. The letter shows also the writer’s love of collecting and designing curiosities: “Strawberry Hill, March 9, 1765.