Lady Mary did not live long after her return to England. Horace Walpole’s letter is written on the 2nd February 1762, and she died on the 21st August in the same year. Her husband had died just before her return, and perhaps, after so many years, she would not have returned unless he had done so. _Requiescat in pace_; for she quarrelled all her life. _WILLIAM COWPER._[31] (1855.) For the English, after all, the best literature is the English. We understand the language; the manners are familiar to us; the scene at home: the associations our own. Of course, a man who has not read Homer is like a man who has not seen the ocean. There is a great object of which he has no idea. But we cannot be always seeing the ocean. Its face is always large; its smile is bright; the ever-sounding shore sounds on. Yet we have no property in them. We stop and gaze; we pause and draw our breath; we look and wonder at the grandeur of the other world; but we live on shore. We fancy associations of unknown things and distant climes, of strange men and strange manners. But we are ourselves. Foreigners do not behave as we should, nor do the Greeks. What a strength of imagination, what a long practice, what a facility in the details of fancy is required to picture their past and unknown world! They are deceased. They are said to be immortal, because they have written a good epitaph; but they are gone. Their life and their manners have passed away. We read with interest in the catalogue of the ships— ‘The men of Argos and Tyrintha next, And of Hermione, that stands retired With Asine, within her spacious bay; Of Epidaurus, crowned with purple vines, And of Træzena, with the Achaian youth Of sea-begirt Ægina, and with thine Maseta, and the dwellers on thy coast, Waveworn Eïonæ; ... And from Caristus and from Styra came Their warlike multitudes, in front of whom Elphenor marched, Calchodon’s mighty son. With foreheads shorn and wavy locks behind, They followed, and alike were eager all To split the hauberk with the shortened spear.’