have upon their veneration or regard. Is it not in these noble ancestral houses, amid their ancestral woods and lands, that the spirit of our gentry is most likely to acquire a right tone? Here, where they are surrounded by objects and memories of worth, of greatness and renown, that the fire of a generous and glorious emulation is most likely to be kindled; and that all the best feelings of their nature are likely to be touched, and their best affections quickened? Even Horace Walpole himself furnishes an instance in proof. Little as he had of the pensive and poetical in him, his visit to the family place at Houghton called up such thoughts and emotions as, if encouraged instead of avoided, might have made him aware of higher qualities in himself than he was habitually accustomed to display. “Here am I,” says he in one of his letters, “at Houghton! and alone; in this spot where, except two hours last month, I have not been in sixteen years! Think what a crowd of reflections! No!--Gray and forty churchyards could not furnish so many; nay, I know one must feel them with greater indifference than I possess, to have patience to put them into verse. Here I am, probably for the last time in my life, though not for the last time; every clock that strikes tells me that I am one hour nearer to yonder church,--that church into which I have not yet had courage to enter; where lies the mother on whom I doated, and who doated on me! There are the two rival mistresses of Houghton, neither of whom ever wished to enjoy it. There too lies he who founded its greatness; to contribute to whose fall, Europe was embroiled. There he sleeps in quiet and dignity, while his friend and his foe, rather his false ally and real enemy, Newcastle and Bath, are exhausting the dregs of their pitiful lives in squabbles and pamphlets. “The surprise the pictures gave me is again renewed. Accustomed for many years to see wretched daubs and varnished copies at auctions, I look at these as enchantment.... A party arrived just as I did, to see the house: a man and three women, in riding dresses, and they rode fast through the apartments. I could not hurry before them fast enough; they were not so long in seeing for the first time, as I could have been in one room, to examine what I knew by heart. I remember formerly being often diverted by this kind of _seers_; they come, ask what such a room is called, in which Sir Robert lay: admire a lobster, or a cottage in a market-piece; dispute whether the last room was green or purple; and then hurry to the inn, for fear the fish should be overdressed. How different my situation! Not a picture here but recals a history; not one but I remember in Downing-street, or Chelsea, where queens and crowds admired them, though seeing them as little as these travellers.