ABSTRACT
The Gallery must have presented a noble spectacle when it was filled with all its treasures. Though not a remarkably large room (it was fiftysix feet by thirteen) it was the largest room at Strawberry Hill: and in it Walpole assembled many of his finest pictures, his most spectacular pieces of porcelain, his most precious marbles and bronzes. Light streamed through the five large windows in which Peckitt had depicted all the quartering of the Walpoles in painted glass. On the other side of the room were five deep canopied recesses, the middle recess containing a chimney-piece designed by Chute and Pitt. The furniture was covered with the same crimson damask as the walls; its woodwork was painted in black and gold. The walls were loaded with pictures, the recesses were filled with them - portraits of relations and friends, portraits of the celebrities of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the painting by Mabuse of the marriage of Henry VII, landscapes and SUbject-pieces by an endless
FROM THE CASTLE OF OTRANTO
themselves at the miracle of the helmet. They conveyed the disfigured corse into the hall, without receiving the least direction from Manfred. As little was he attentive to the ladies who remained in the chapel; on the contrary, without mentioning the unhappy princesses his wife and daughter, the first sounds that dropped from Manfred's lips were, Take care of the lady Isabella.
