CHAPTER LXXII.

IN WHICH THE FOURTH OF THE QUESTIONS PROPOSED IN CHAPTER II. P. I. IS BEGUN TO BE ANSWERED; SOME OBSERVATIONS UPON ANCESTRY ARE INTRODUCED, AND THE READER IS INFORMED WHY THE AUTHOR DOES NOT WEAR A CAP AND BELLS.

Boast not the titles of your ancestors,
Brave youths! they're their possessions, none of yours.
When your own virtues equall'd have their names,
'Twill be but fair to lean upon their fames,
For they are strong supporters; but till then
The greatest are but growing gentlemen.
                                                                    BEN JONSON.

Who was Mrs. Dove?

A woman of the oldest family in this or any other kingdom, for she was beyond all doubt a legitimate descendant of Adam. Her husband perhaps might have rather said that she was a daughter of Eve. But he would have said it with a smile of playfulness, not of scorn.

To trace her descent somewhat lower, and bring it nearer to the stock of the Courtenays, the Howards, the Manriques, the Bourbons and Thundertentronks, she was a descendant of Noah, and of his eldest son Japhet. She was allied to Ham however in another way, besides this remote niece-ship.

As how I pray you, Sir?

Her maiden name was Bacon.

Grave Sir, be not disconcerted. I hope you have no antipathy to such things: or at least that they do not act upon you, as the notes of a bagpipe are said to act upon certain persons whose unfortunate idiosyncrasy exposes them to very unpleasant effects from the sound.

Mr. Critickin,—for as there is a diminutive for cat, so should there be for critic,—I defy you! Before I can be afraid of your claws, you must leave off biting your nails.

I have something better to say to the Reader, who follows wherever I lead up and down, high and low, to the hill and to the valley, contented with his guide, and enjoying the prospect which I shew him in all its parts, in the detail and in the whole, in the foreground and home scene, as well as in the Pisgah view. I will tell him before the chapter is finished, why I do not wear a cap and bells.

To you my Lady, who may imagine that Miss Bacon was not of a good family, (Lord Verulam's line, as you very properly remark, being extinct,) I beg leave to observe that she was certainly a cousin of your own; somewhere within the tenth and twentieth degrees, if not nearer. And this I proceed to prove.

Every person has two immediate parents, four ancestors in the second degree, eight in the third, and so the pedigree ascends, doubling at every step, till in the twentieth generation, he has no fewer than one million, thirty thousand, eight hundred and ninety-six

Great, great, great,
great, great, great,
great, great, great,
great, great, great,
great, great, great,
great, great, great,

grandfathers and grandmothers. Therefore my Lady, I conceive it to be absolutely certain, that under the Plantagenets, if not in the time of the Tudors, some of your ancestors must have been equally ancestors of Miss Deborah Bacon.

“At the conquest,” says Sir Richard Phillips, “the ancestry of every one of the English people was the whole population of England; while on the other hand, every one having children at that time, was the direct progenitor of the whole of the living race.”

The reflecting reader sees at once that it must be so. Plato ait, Neminem regem non ex servis esse oriendum, neminem non servum ex regibus. Omnia ista longa varietas miscuit, et sursum deorsum fortuna versavit. Quis ergo generosus? ad virtutem bene à natura compositus. Hoc unum est intuendum: alioqui, si ad vetera revocas, nemo non inde est, ante quod nihil 1 est. And the erudite Ihre in the Proemium to his invaluable Glossary, says, ut aliquoto cognationis gradu, sed per monumentorum defectum hodie inexplicabile, omnes homines inter se connexi sunt.

1 SENECA.

Now then to the gentle reader. The reason why I do not wear a cap and bells is this.

There are male caps of five kinds which are worn at present in this kingdom; to wit, the military cap, the collegiate cap, the jockey cap, the travelling cap, and the night cap. Observe reader, I said kinds, that is to say in scientific language genera,—for the species and varieties are numerous, especially in the former genus.

I am not a soldier; and having long been weaned from Alma Mater, of course have left off my college cap. The gentlemen of the ——— hunt would object to my going out with the bells on, it would be likely to frighten their horses; and were I to attempt it, it might involve me in unpleasant disputes, which might possibly lead to more unpleasant consequences. To my travelling cap the bells would be an inconvenient appendage; nor would they be a whit more comfortable upon my night-cap. Besides, my wife might object to them.

It follows that if I would wear a cap and bells, I must have a cap made on purpose. But this would be rendering myself singular; and of all things a wise man will most avoid any ostentatious appearance of singularity.

Now I am certainly not singular in playing the fool without one.

And indeed if I possessed such a cap, it would not be proper to wear it in this part of my history.