of something beyond; and to have taken, if but a peep, in childhood, at the contrasting accidents of a great fortune.

To have the feeling of gentility, it is not necessary to have been born gentle. The pride of ancestry may be had on cheaper terms than to be obliged to an importunate race of ancestors; and the coatless antiquary in his unemblazoned cell, revolving the long line of a Mowbray's or De Clifford's pedigree, at those sounding names may warm himself into as gay a vanity as these who do inherit them. The claims of birth are ideal merely; and what herald shall go about to strip me of an idea? Is it trenchant to their swords? Can it be hacked off as a spur can? or torn away like a tarnished garter?

What else were the families of the great to us? What pleasure should we take in their tedious genealogies, or their capitulatory brass monuments? What to us the uninterrupted current of their bloods, if our own did not answer within us to a cognate and correspondent elevation ?

Or wherefore else, O tattered and diminished 'Scutcheon that hung upon the time-worn walls of thy princely stairs, BLAKES MOOR, have I in childhood. so oft stood poring upon the mystic characters-thy emblematic supporters, with their prophetic "Resurgam"-till, every dreg of peasantry purging off, I received into myself Very Gentility? Thou wert first in my mourning eyes; and of nights hast detained my steps from bedward, till it was but a step from gazing at thee to dreaming on thee.

This is the only true gentry by adoption; the veritable change of blood, and not, as empirics have fabled, by transfusion.

Who it was by dying that had earned the splendid trophy, I know not, I inquired not; but its fading rags, and colours cobweb-stained, told that its subject was of two centuries back.

And what if my ancestor at that date was some Damætas, feeding flocks, not his own, upon the hills of Lincoln,-did I in less earnest vindicate to myself the family trappings of this once proud Egon? repaying by a backward triumph the insults he might possibly have heaped in his life-time upon my poor pastoral progenitor.

If it were presumption so to speculate, the present owners of the mansion had least reason to complain. They had long forsaken the old house of their fathers for a newer trifle; and I was left to appropriate to myself what images I could pick up, to raise my fancy or to soothe my vanity.

I was the true descendant of those old W—s, and not of the present family of that name, who had fled the old waste places.

Mine was that gallery of good old family portraits, which as I have gone over, giving them in fancy my own family name, one-and then another-would seem to smile, reaching forward from the canvas, to recognise the new relationship; while the rest looked grave, as it seemed, at the vacancy in their dwelling, and thoughts of fled posterity.

The Beauty with the cool blue pastoral drapery, and a lamb, that hung next the great bay window, with the bright yellow H-shire hair, and eye of watchet hue, (so like my Alice !) I am persuaded she was a true Elia-Mildred Elia, I take it.

Mine, too, BLAKE SMOOR, was thy noble Marble Hall, with its mosaic pavements, and its Twelve

Cæsars-stately busts in marble-ranged round; of whose countenances, young reader of faces as I was, the frowning beauty of Nero, I remember, had most of my wonder: but the mild Galba had my love. There they stood in the coldness of death, yet freshness of immortality.

Mine, too, thy lofty Justice Hall, with its one chair of authority, high-backed and wickered, once the terror of luckless poacher or self-forgetful maiden; so common since, that bats have roosted in it.

Mine, too,-whose else?-thy costly fruit-garden, with its sun-baked southern wall; the ampler pleasure-garden, rising backwards from the house in triple terraces, with flower-pots now of palest lead, save that a speck here and there, saved from the elements, bespake their pristine state to have been. gilt and glittering; the verdant quarters backwarder still; and stretching still beyond, in old formality, thy firry wilderness, the haunt of the squirrel, and the day-long murmuring wood-pigeon, with that antique image in the centre, God or Goddess I wist not; but child of Athens or old Rome paid never a sincerer worship to Pan or to Sylvanus in their native groves, than I to that fragmental mystery.

Was it for this that I kissed my childish hands too fervently in your idol-worship, walks and windings of BLAKESMOOR! For this, or what sin of mine, has the plough passed over your pleasant places? I sometimes think that as men, when they die, do not die all, so of their extinguished habitations there may be a hope-a germ to be revivified.

POOR RELATIONS.

A POOR Relation is the most irrelevant thing in nature, a piece of impertinent correspondency,-an odious approximation, a haunting conscience,-a preposterous shadow, lengthening in the noon-tide of our prosperity, an unwelcome remembrancer,—a perpetually recurring mortification,—a drain on your purse, a more intolerable dun upon your pride,—a drawback upon success,- -a rebuke to your rising,—a stain in your blood,-a blot on your 'scutcheon,— a rent in your garment,—a death's-head at your banquet,-Agathocles's pot,-a Mordecai in your gate, a Lazarus at your door,-a lion in your path,-a frog in your chamber,—a fly in your ointment,—a mote in your eye, a triumph to your enemy, an apology to your friends, the one thing not needful,-the hail in harvest, the ounce of sour in a pound of sweet.

He is known by his knock. Your heart telleth you "That is Mr. ." A rap between familiarity and respect, that demands, and at the same time seems to despair of, entertainment. He entereth smiling and embarrassed. He holdeth out his hand to you to shake, and draweth it back again. He casually looketh in about dinner time, when the table is full.

He offereth to go away, seeing you have company, but is induced to stay. He filleth a chair, and your visitor's two children are accommodated at a sidetable. He never cometh upon open days, when your wife says, with some complacency, "My dear, perhaps Mr. will drop in to-day." He remembereth

birth-days, and professeth he is fortunate to have stumbled upon one. He declareth against fish, the turbot being small, yet suffereth himself to be importuned into a slice, against his first resolution. He sticketh by the port, yet will be prevailed upon to empty the remainder glass of claret, if a stranger press it upon him. He is a puzzle to the servants, who are fearful of being too obsequious or not civil enough to him. The guests think "they have seen him before." Every one speculateth upon his condition; and the most part take him to be a tide-waiter. He calleth you by your Christian name, to imply that his other is the same with your own. He is too familiar by half, yet you wish he had less diffidence. With half the familiarity, he might pass for a casual dependant; with more boldness, he would be in no danger of being taken for what he is. He is too humble for a friend; yet taketh on him more state than befits a client. He is a worse guest than a country tenant, inasmuch as he bringeth up no rent; yet 'tis odds, from his garb and demeanour, that your guests take him for one. He is asked to make one at the whist table; he refuseth on the score of poverty, and resents being left out. When the company break up, he proffereth to go for a coach, and lets the servant go. He recollects your grandfather; and will thrust in some mean and quite unimportant anecdote of the family. He knew it when it was not quite so