Page:Ethel Churchill 3.pdf/57

Rh the most costly exotics reached to the glass roof, which was partly covered by a luxuriant vine, or by a small scarlet creeper. Set in arches of the most beautiful flowers, but with colours that bore comparison even with those of nature, were hung pictures of the old masters. Sir Robert Walpole was, like Cardinal Mazarin, a great collector of paintings. In both, the love of art was the only glimpse of the ideal, the one single touch of the imaginative. There never was a nature less allied to the poetical or to the picturesque than Sir Robert's. It never could have entered his head to clothe His highest idea of inspiration was that— His perceptions were cold, clear, and defined: he never went beyond the actual, though that he took in at a glance. His contempt for mankind grew out of never looking beyond