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Small is the worth

Of beauty from the light retired:
Bid her come forth,

Suffer herself to be desired,

And not blush so to be admired.

Then die! that she

The common fate of all things rare
May read in thee!

How small a part of time they share
That are so wondrous sweet and fair!

FROM "A PANEGYRIC TO MY LORD PROTECTOR."
WHILE with a strong and yet a gentle hand,
You bridle faction, and our hearts command,
Protect us from ourselves, and from the foe;
Make us unite, and make us conquer too.

Let partial spirits still aloud complain,
Think themselves injured that they cannot reign,
And own no liberty, but where they may
Without control upon their fellows prey.

Above the waves, as Neptune showed his face,
To chide the winds and save the Trojan race,
So has your Highness, raised above the rest,
Storms of ambition tossing us repressed.

Your drooping country, torn with civil hate,
Restored by you, is made a glorious State;
The seat of empire, where the Irish come,
And the unwilling Scots, to fetch their doom.

HORACE WALPOLE.

WALPOLE, HORACE, fourth Earl of Orford, an English literary critic and wit; born at Houghton, in Norfolk, October 5, 1717; died at Strawberry Hill, near Twickenham, March 2, 1797. He was educated at Eton and Cambridge, entered Parliament, and continued to be a member of it twenty-seven years. His fame rests on his letters, descriptive of people and events of his time, and numbering nearly three thousand. Besides these, he was author of "Catalogue of Noble and Royal Authors" (1758); "Anecdotes of Painting" (1761-71); "Catalogue of Engravers" (1763); "The Castle of Otranto" (1764); "The Mysterious Mother," a tragedy (1768); "Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of Richard III." (1768); " Ædes Walpoliana" (1774); "Reminiscences of the Courts of George I. and George II.," and memoirs and journals relating to the reigns of the second and the third Georges.

COCK-LANE GHOST AND LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU.

(From Letter to Sir Horace Mann.)

I AM ashamed to tell you that we are again dipped into an egregious scene of folly. The reigning fashion is a ghost, a ghost that would not pass muster in the paltriest convent in the Apennine. It only knocks and scratches; does not pretend to appear or to speak. The clergy give it their benediction; and all the world, whether believers or infidels, go to hear it. I, in which number you may guess, go to-morrow; for it is as much the mode to visit the ghost as the Prince of Mecklenburg, who is just arrived. I have not seen him yet, though I left my name for him. But I will tell you who is come too, Lady Mary Wortley. I went last night to visit her; I give you my honor (and you who know her would credit it me without it), the following is a faithful description. I found her in a little miserable bedchamber of a ready-furnished house, with two tallow candles, and a bureau covered with pots

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and pans. On her head, in full of all accounts, she had an old black-laced hood, wrapped entirely round, so as to conceal all hair or want of hair. No handkerchief, but up to her chin a kind of horseman's riding-coat, calling itself a pet-en-l'air, made of a dark green (green I think it had been) brocade, with colored and silver flowers, and lined with furs; boddice laced, a foul dimity petticoat sprig'd, velvet muffeteens on her arms, gray stockings and slippers. Her face less changed in twenty years than I could have imagined: I told her so, and she was not so tolerable twenty years ago that she needed have taken it for flattery; but she did, and literally gave me a box on the She is very lively, all her senses perfect, her languages as imperfect as ever, her avarice greater. She entertained me at the first with nothing but the dearness of provisions at Helvoet. With nothing but an Italian, a French, and a Prussian, all men-servants, — and something she calls an old secretary, but whose age till he appears will be doubtful, — she receives all the world, who go to homage her as Queen Mother, and crams them into this kennel. The Duchess of Hamilton, who came in just after me, was so astonished and diverted that she could not speak to her for laughing. She says that she has left all her clothes at Venice.

ear.

A YEAR OF FASHION IN WALPOLE'S DAY.

(From Letter to the Earl of Hertford.)

You are sensible, my dear lord, that any amusement from my letters must depend upon times and seasons. We are a very absurd nation (though the French are so good at present as to think us a very wise one, only because they themselves are now a very weak one); but then that absurdity depends upon the almanac. Posterity, who will know nothing of our intervals, will conclude that this age was a succession of events. I could tell them that we know as well when an event, as when Easter, will happen. Do but recollect these last ten years. The beginning of October, one is certain that everybody will be at Newmarket, and the Duke of Cumberland will lose, and Shafto win, two or three thousand pounds. After that, while people are preparing to come to town for the winter, the ministry is suddenly changed, and all the world comes to learn how it happened, a fortnight sooner than they intended; and fully persuaded that the new arrangement cannot last a month. The

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