array of large-acred squires who sealed the doom of Sir Robert Peel's Government in 1846.*

Nor will any judicious critic deem these comparisons invidious after reading the prefatory remarks to the Catalogue, in which Mr. Robins speaks in his own proper person. For example:

'Whether he considers the hallowed recollections that surround a pictorial and historical abode, so dear to its distinguished originator, and so often and so tenderly referred to in his letters and writings, or the extreme rarity and value of the collection contained in it, rich in all that can delight the antiquarian, the scholar, the virtuoso, or the general lover of art, so perfect and unapproachable in all its details that each will quit it with the fixed opinion that his peculiar tastes were those to which the energies, the learning, and the research of the noble founder were directed; when there pass before him in review, the splendid gallery of paintings teeming with the finest works of the greatest masters;† matchless enamels, of immortal bloom, by Petito, Boit, Bordice, and Zincke; chasings, the workmanship of Cellini and Jean de Bologna; noble specimens of Faenza Ware, from the pencils of Robbia and Bernard Palizzi; glass, of the rarest hues and tints, executed by Jean Cousin and other masters of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries; Limoges Enamels of the period of the Renaissance, by Leonard and Courtoise; Roman and Grecian antiquities in bronze and sculpture; Oriental and European china, of the choicest forms and colours; exquisite and matchless missals, painted by Raphael and Julio Clovis; magnificent specimens of cinquecento armour; miniatures illustrative of the most interesting periods of history; a valuable collection of drawings and manuscripts; engravings in countless numbers and of infinite value; a costly library, extending to fifteen thousand volumes, abounding in splendid editions of the classics; illustrated, scarce and unique works, with ten thousand other relics of the arts and histories of bygone ages; he may well feel overpowered at the evident impossibility of rendering to each that lengthened notice which their merits and their value demand.'

This is a magnificent sentence, in linked richness long drawn out: indeed, one of the longest in the language; yet, considering the weight of the matter, it cannot be censured for redundancy. Judging merely from the abridged reports in the newspapers,

We refer to the paragraph beginning: They trooped on all the men of metal and large-acred squires whose spirit he had so often quickened and whose counsels he had so often solicited in his fine Conservative speeches in Whitehall Gardens Mr. Bankes, with a parliamentary name of two centuries, and Mr. Christopher from that broad Lincolnshire which Protection had created . . . and Devon had sent there the stout heart of Mr. Buck, and Wiltshire the pleasant presence of Walter Long,' &c.- Life of Lord George Bentinck.

Holbein, Rembrandt, Vandyck, Giorgione, Annibale Caracci, Poussin, Canaletto, Watteau, Van Eyck, Mytens, Zucchero, Lely, Kneller, Reynolds, Romney, &c.

we

we should say that Mr. Robins's opening address, delivered from a state chair that had belonged to the great Cardinal, was on a par with his prefatory remarks:

'He concluded by saying that he should have considered it sacrilege to have altered the disposition or arrangement of a single lot; that those who did him the honour to bid should live for ever in his heart, and that he would charge them no rent for the tenancy. This eloquence produced good prices.'*

The prices were far from good. With the marked catalogue now before us, we should say they were surprisingly low. The Sèvres porcelain, for example, did not sell for a tenth of what it would fetch now. Fancy this lot knocked down at 47. :—

'A cabinet cup and saucer, embellished with strawberries, a present from Madame du Deffand, and a ditto, with wreath of flowers and gold border.'

The whole contents of the China Room, 140 lots, went for 6487. 15s. 6d. The sale realised 33,4507. We speak within compass when we say that it would now realise three times that

sum.

When the last blow of the auctioneer's hammer had sounded, the guardian genius of poor, stripped, despoiled, desecrated, degraded Strawberry must have resembled the White Lady of Avenel when her golden zone had dwindled to the fineness of a thread; and only too appropriate in the mouth of the present owner, when, as its uncontrolled mistress, she paced the denuded gallery, would have been the words of Moore's song:

'I feel like one who treads alone

Some banquet hall deserted,

Whose lights are fled, whose garlands dead,
And all but he departed.'

But she had head, heart, imagination, energy, and a will as resolute as Warren Hastings when he made it the set purpose of his life to regain and reinstate his ancestral home of Daylesford. Animated instead of depressed by the self-imposed task of repairing what seemed irreparable-with views opening and plans expanding as she went on-she restored, renovated, improved, added, acquired and annexed to give breathing-room, till the villa had grown into a first-class country-house in a land where country-houses are palaces, and this without destroying or materially impairing the distinctive character which the founder had so perseveringly impressed upon it or (what

The Times,' April 26, 1842.

would

would be still worse) producing inside or outside an impression of incongruity.

This is not the place for details. But take up a position on the south-east side so as to command a complete view of the portions constructed at four different periods, and you will find that they slide into each other without a break. Enter the house, pass through the gallery, round-room and ante-room, into the finely-proportioned richly-furnished drawing-room, with the famous Reynolds (the three Ladies Waldegrave) confronting you, and you will see nothing to remind you abruptly or disagreeably of the fact that you have been passing from one epoch of internal decoration to another. The transition is softened down and rendered less perceptible by the adoption of a happy thought of the celebrated Marquise de Rambouillet, who had a room devoted to portraits of her friends. The walls of the gallery at Strawberry Hill are now exclusively occupied by portraits of intimate friends and illustrious or distinguished visitors, including the Prince and Princess of Wales, whose grace, affability, and charm of look and manner, faithfully reflected, would most assuredly have cured Walpole, had he fallen beneath their influence, of his dislike to royal visitors.

First come, first served. Those to whom places have been assigned form only a section of the illustrious or distinguished visitors and friends. When an increase of the peerage was proposed at the Restoration, Buckingham remarked that, if every Cavalier with a claim were created, the House of Lords must meet on Salisbury Plain. If Lady Waldegrave persists in her original plan, she must extend the gallery by roofing over the lawn.*

All Walpole's smaller rooms have been preserved pretty nearly as he left them, although their destination has been changed. It was in the narrow passage leading from the hall

*Besides the portraits of the Prince and Princess of Wales in a single picture, the gallery contains separate portraits of the Duc and Duchesse d'Aumale, the late Earl and Countess of Clarendon, Earl Russell, Earl Grey, Viscount Palmerston, Mr. Gladstone, Viscount Halifax, the Marchioness of Clanricarde, the late Countess of Morley, Lord Lyndhurst, M. Van de Weyer, Bishop Wilberforce, Viscount Stratford de Redcliffe, the Duchess of Sutherland and the late Duchess, the Duchess of Westminster, Lady Churchill, Lady Augusta Sturt, the Countess of Shaftesbury, the Marchioness of Northampton, Madame Alphonse de Rothschild, Lady Selina Bidwell, the Hon. Mrs. F. Stonor, the Countess Spencer, the Countess Somers, and Lady Waldegrave herself. The next addition, we believe, will be the charming habituée who, at a ball given by Lady Waldegrave at the Secretary's Lodge, Dublin, caused an old Irish gentleman to exclaim: I have come fifty miles to attend this ball, and I would have come a hundred to look at that beautiful Duchess.' This compliment may pair off with that of the drayman who asked Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, to let him light his pipe at her eyes.

to

to the Beauty Room (now a bedroom) that a late Chancellor of Ireland, his thoughts reverting to the natural enemies of his youth, exclaimed: What a capital place if a man was pursued by bailiffs!'

Walpole was constantly haunted by the fear that his creations and collections would not be respected by his successors, whatever indulgent friends might think or say of them :

'I wish' (he writes to Montague in 1755) 'you would visit it (Strawberry Hill) when it is in its beauty, and while it is mine. You will not, I flatter myself like it so well when it belongs to the Intendant of Twickenham, when a cockle shell walk is made across the lawn, and everything without doors is made regular, and everything within modern and riant; for this must be its fate.

May, 1772.

In short this old, old, very old castle, as his prints called Old Parr, is so near being perfect, that it will certainly be ready by the time I die to be improved with Indian paper, or to have the windows let down to the ground by some travelled lady.'

May 4, 1774. (To Cole.) 'Consider, Strawberry is almost the last monastery left, at least, in England. Poor Mr. Bateman's is despoiled. Lord Bateman has stripped and plundered it, has advertised the site, and is dirtily selling by auction what he neither would keep nor sell for a sum that is worth while. Surely it is very indecent for a favourite relation, who is rich, to show so little remembrance and affection. I suppose Strawberry will share the same fate. It has already happened to two of my friends.'

His melancholy forebodings have been partly realised:

'Jove heard and granted half the suppliants' prayer,
The rest the winds dispersed in empty air.'

His collection has been dispersed through both hemispheres. But the fixed (we can hardly say, solid) fabric of his creation, his monastic castle or castellated monastery, the historic Strawberry Hill, has risen with renovated splendour from its temporary prostration; and-thanks to the taste, spirit, munificence, and cordial graceful abounding hospitality of an accomplished highly-gifted woman-has regained and surpassed all the interest, attraction, and celebrity which it possessed in his lifetime, and which he sorrowfully foretold would die with him.

ART.

ART. II.-Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, with a Sketch of their Habits, Religion, Language, and other Peculiarities. By Dr. Henry Rink, Director of the Royal Greenland Board of Trade. Translated from the Danish by the Author, and Edited by Dr. Robert Brown; with numerous illustrations, drawn and engraved by Eskimo. London, 1875.

A

6

S is well known, this is a sceptical, fault-finding age, and so our readers must not be surprised if they find old forms and names overthrown in the very heading of our article. Our grandfathers talked of the Esquimaux' and were content; just as our grandmothers when they sucked eggs extracted the yolk by an old and time-honoured process. So far as regards these venerable women, a new generation has sprung up which will not allow them to pursue such a hand-to-mouth means of alimentation, but insists on a more scientific treatment of barn-door deposits. In the same way we are not suffered to write Esquimaux' after the good old spelling, but are quite behind the age unless we adopt the form Eskimo.' Well, where no principle is involved, we are quite ready to comply with any change which will ensure us a quiet life, and so we are willing to follow the learned Dr. Rink in the orthography of the name of the tribes for which he has done so much, and to call these interesting members of the great human race no longer 'Esquimaux,' but Eskimo.' If there is any joking on so serious a subject as the nomenclature of a family so widely spread over the Arctic regions, we may add that the best of the joke is that the Eskimo do not speak of themselves by the name so commonly given them by foreigners, but simply and proudly as Innuit, that is, the people,' as though they were the only people on the face of the earth; a confidence all the more remarkable if we consider that isolated tribes have been met with, numbering not a hundred individuals, who were convinced, until discovered by Arctic explorers, that they were the only members of their race that existed; so completely, while they kept the language spoken by the whole race, had the memory and tradition of a common origin with other Eskimo tribes died out among them. And yet the Eskimo straggle over, if they do occupy and fill, vast regions, which, fortunately for them, are never likely to excite the cupidity of the Alexanders, Napoleons, and Frederick Williams, of this civilised and wicked world.

Some years ago our attention was attracted by the heading of an article in a periodical too much given to supply its readers with chaff rather than grain. It was entitled, 'An Enquiry into

the