Walpole by John Morley ~ Full Audiobook [biography]
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The Cost of Wallpole's Collection of Pictures
Horace wallpole's collection of pictures was said to have cost him 40,000 pounds more but this I suspect to be a very doubtful figure for according to a contemporary letter in Nichols literary anecdotes so many of the pictures were presents that the whole cost could hardly have reached 30,000 pounds. His foes contended that the income of his estate in the known salary of his offices were inadequate they assumed therefore that the requisite funds were acquired by the sale of honors places and pensions and by the plunder of the secret service money This charitable hypothesis is not really required by the facts for we have a very tolerable explanation without it as rents all over England had gone up by more than one third since he came
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