in shamol, painted

Engraved by Dean, from a Miniature in

by incke, & preserved in the Collection at Frawberry Will

THE

CASTLE OF OTRANTO:

A GOTHIC STORY.

BY

HORACE WALPOLE, EARL OF ORFORD.

LONDON:

RICHARD BENTLEY, 8. NEW BURLINGTON STREET (SUCCESSOR TO HENRY COLBURN):

BELL AND BRADFUTE, EDINBURGH,

J. CUMMING, DUBLIN.

1836.

SKETCH OF THE LIFE

OF

HORACE WALPOLE, EARL OF ORFORD.

BY THE RIGHT HON. LORD DOVER.

HORACE WALPOLE was the third and youngest son of that eminent minister, Sir Robert Walpole-the glory of the Whigs, the preserver of the throne of these realms to the present Royal Family, and under whose fostering rule and guidance the country flourished in peace for more than twenty years. The elder brothers of Horace were, Robert Lord Walpole, so created in 1723, who succeeded his father in the earldom of Orford in 1745, and died in 1751; and Sir Edward Walpole, Knight of the Bath, whose three natural daughters were, Mrs. Keppel, wife to the Hon. Frederick Keppel, Bishop of Exeter; the Countess of Waldegrave, afterwards Duchess of Gloucester; and the Countess of Dysart. Sir Edward Walpole died in 1784. His sisters were, Catherine, who died of consumption at the age of nineteen; and Mary, married to George Viscount Malpas, afterwards third Earl of Cholmondeley; she died in 1732. The mother of Horace, and of his brothers and sisters here mentioned, was Catherine Shorter, daughter of John Shorter, Esq. of Bybrook, in Kent, and grand-daughter of Sir John Shorter, lord mayor of London in 1688. She died in 1737, and her youngest son, who always professed the greatest veneration for her memory, erected a monument to her in Westminster Abbey, in one

*Abridged from the Memoir, by the noble Lord, prefixed to the recently pub'lished "Letters of Horace Walpole to Sir Horace Mann."