Wilberforce was exceedingly partial to Gore House, and his friends appear to have always found a ready home within it. In 1814, Mr. Henry Thornton, for many years M.P. for Southwark, and one of his most earnest supporters, came here for the benefit of the air and medical aid. He lingered a few weeks, and died here January 17th, 1815, aged fifty-three. Isaac Milner, too, an early friend, who came to London to attend the Board of Longitude, died here after five weeks’ illness, on April 1st, 1820. The following year Wilberforce quitted Gore House. He retired to Marden, in Surrey, a lovely spot and an interesting locality; but he regretted leaving “The still retreats that soothed his tranquil breast,” and often in after years alludes to his old home, its associations, and his “Kensington Gore breakfasts.” Great is the contrast Gore House next presents: strange are the mutabilities of a metropolitan mansion. After the philanthropist, a few unknown persons held the place ere the next celebrity, one of a totally opposite character, reigned. Lady Blessington—for to her allusion is made—came here in 1836; and the opposition of ideas called forth by such persons seems to have suggested to James Smith his GORE HOUSE: AN IMPROMPTU. Mild Wilberforce, by all beloved, Once own’d this hallow’d spot, Whose zealous eloquence improved The fetter’d Negro’s lot; Yet here still slavery attacks When Blessington invites: The chains from which he freed the Blacks, She rivets on the Whites. Lady Blessington came to Gore House in 1836; and the brilliant circle which thronged around her in Seamore Place was increased with the greater capabilities of the new residence. Haydon, writing February 27th, 1835, says, “Everybody goes to Lady Blessington’s. She has the first news of everything, and everybody seems delighted to tell her. She is the centre of more talent and gaiety than any woman of fashion in London.” To Gore House came novelists and dramatists, artists and actors, statesmen and refugees. Here Louis Napoleon, just escaped from captivity at Ham, first came for the shelter of an English roof; and afterwards—deep lesson too—a few years later she went forth as privately perhaps as her guest had entered, from the palace of which she had been Queen, to seek in the capital of him whom she had harboured, that support she had so freely bestowed on him; the late refugee then having an empire rapidly falling into his hands; her object was not gained, and on this occasion “hope left a wretched one that sought her.” Lady Blessington finally quitted Gore House April 14th, 1849. Marguerite, Countess of Blessington, was daughter of Edmund Power, a coarse, unfeeling squire of Tipperary. She was born September 1st, 1790, and at fifteen married to a Captain Farmer, as brutal a character as her father. They separated in 1807, and he, compelled to go to India, died there.