was a Christian, it is said, upon conviction,
and yet could quarrel with a man about
a trifle, and insist upon fighting him,
notwithstanding all that could be done to adjust
the difference. The reason he gave was, that
his antagonist was too good a shot to make it
up with. This antagonist was a Mr. Best.
Lord Camelford went up to him in Stevens's
Hotel in Bond Street, and addressed him in
the following placid words: "Mr. Best, I am
glad to see you face to face, and to tell
you, you are an infamous scoundrel." He
afterwards confessed that he had been the
aggressor.

But, an old house is not perfect without a
ghost; Holland House has two. They do
not indeed haunt it, and were very transient
in their appearance; but they will serve to
give a bit of ghostly interest to the spot, for
those whose imaginations like to "catch a
fearful joy" on such points. The account is
in Aubrey's Miscellanies, which were written
in the reign of William the Third.

"The beautiful Lady Diana Rich, daughter
to the Earl of Holland, as she was walking
in her father's garden at Kensington, to take
the fresh air before dinner, about eleven
o'clock, being then very well, met with her
own apparition, habit and everything, as in a
looking-glass. About a month after she died
of the small-pox. And it is said that her
sister, the Lady Isabella Thynne, saw the like
of herself, also, before she died. This account
I had from a person of honour."

Aubrey, though his gossip is valuable to a
lover of books, was credulous to excess.
Nicolai, the German bookseller, was in
the habit of seeing hosts of spectral men
and women pass through his room; and
a sick young lady, just dressed for dinner,
and full of thoughts of herself, sickly or otherwise,
might as well see her own image as
that of any one else. The Lady Isabella
Thynne, here mentioned, wife of one of the
ancestors of the Marquess of Bath, is
mentioned in another of Aubrey's books (the
Lives and Letters of Eminent Men) as
addicted to anything but ghostly communications.
She and a friend of hers, he says,
while on a visit to Oxford, used to come to
morning prayers at Trinity College Chapel,
"half-dressed, like angels." She would also
make her entrance upon the college walks,
with a "lute playing before her;" and must
have been a great puzzle to the college ethics,
for she is described as possessing all kinds of
virtues but one. She is the "Lady Isabella"
whose playing on the lute is recorded in a set
of complimentary verses by Waller:

   "The trembling strings about her fingers crowd,
   And tell their joy for every kiss aloud:
   Small force there needs to make them tremble so:
   Touch'd by that hand, who would not tremble
         too?"

We think we have read somewhere, but
cannot call to mind in what book, that she
suffered a good deal of affliction before she
died.

We just now regretted, that the
interior of Holland House has been so
modernised, as, with little exception, to retain
no appearance of the antiquity to be
expected from its appearance outside. We
found, nevertheless, so much to interest us
in it (the conversation included of the
gallant kinsman of the family, who was so
kind as to be our cicerone) that, as is too
often the case with something one is bent
upon recollecting, we forgot to ask for
the chamber in which Addison died. We
believe, however, it is among the few apartments
that are not shown. Among those
which are, is Charles Fox's bed-room; that
of Mr. Rogers (a frequent visitor), with a
poet's view over the country towards Harrow;
and that of Sheridan, in the next room
to which a servant was regularly in attendance
all night; partly to furnish, we believe,
a bottle of champagne to the thirsty orator
in case he should happen to call for one
betwixt his slumbers (at least we heard so
a long while ago, and it was quite in keeping
with his noble host's hospitality; but we
forgot to verify the anecdote on this occasion)
and partly (of this there is no doubt)
to secure the bed curtains from being set on
fire by his candle. A pleasanter apartment
to contemplate, was the one in which Lord
Holland used to hear his children say their
lessons, and induct them into the beauties of
Spenser—an unexpected trait in the predilections
of a man of letters brought up in the
town tastes of the eighteenth century. But
his uncle Charles was fond of Spenser; and
so was Burke, and the great Earl of Chatham.
It is difficult to hinder great men from
discerning the merits of greatness. The
poetry of Spenser was to their other books
what their parks and retirements were to
the town itself.

The library must originally have been a
place for exercise; for, in its first condition, it
appears to have been scarcely anything but
windows; and it is upwards of ninety feet
long, by only seventeen feet four inches wide,
and fourteen feet seven inches in height.
The moment one enters it, one looks at the
two ends, and thinks of the tradition about
Addison's pacings in it to and fro. It represents
him as meditating his Spectators between
two bottles of wine, and comforting his ethics
by taking a glass of each, as he arrived at
either end of the room. The regularity of this
procedure is, of course, a jest; but the main
circumstance is not improbable, though Lord
Holland seems to have thought otherwise.
He says (for the words in Faulkner's
Kensington are evidently his): "Fancy may
trace the exquisite humour which enlivens
his papers to the mirth inspired by wine; but
there is too much sober, good sense in all his
lucubrations, even when he indulges most in
pleasantry, to allow us to give implicit credit