boasted, at that period, a collection of pictures that not only every lover of painting, but every British patriot in the arts, must lament that it can boast no longer.[14]
It had, however, in the heir and grandson of its
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founder, Sir Robert Walpole, first Earl of Orford, a possessor of the most liberal cast; a patron of arts and artists; munificent in promoting the prosperity of the first, and blending pleasure with recompense to the second, by the frank equality with which he treated all his guests; and the ease and freedom with which his unaffected good-humour and good sense cheered, to all about him, his festal board.
Far, nevertheless, from meriting unqualified praise was this noble peer; and his moral defects, both in practice and example, were as dangerous to the neighbourhood, of which he ought to have been the guide and protector, as the political corruption of his famous progenitor, the statesman, had been hurtful to probity and virtue, in the courtly circles of his day, by proclaiming, and striving to bring to proof, his nefarious maxim, “that every man has his price.”
At the head of Lord Orford’s table was placed, for the reception of his visitors, a person whom he denominated simply “Patty;” and that so unceremoniously, that all the most intimate of his associates addressed her by the same free appellation.
Those, however, if such there were, who might
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conclude from this degrading familiarity, that the Patty of Lord Orford was “every body’s Patty,” must soon have been undeceived, if tempted to make any experiment upon such a belief. The peer knew whom he trusted, though he rewarded not the fidelity in which he confided; but the fond, faulty Patty loved him............