country houses of the better class of the same date, save that it contained more family portraits than usual, and that it had a fine entrance hall, and a remarkably curious and interesting Library! Upon entering the room, which opened out of a long corridor upstairs, not a book was visible, but the walls were panelled in dark Spanish chestnut wood, each panel being divided from the next by a handsome pilaster. The visitor would then be shown that, by applying a curiously shaped key which lay on a central table to a groove in each pilaster, the latter could be turned back, and then the neighbouring panel flew open, discovering shelves filled with ancient books, not one of which was of less ancient date than the year 1720, while many of them were of far greater antiquity. One of these compartments was reserved for books of poetry, another for divinity and theology, another for the classics, and so on, all the books being in admirable preservation, and well chosen by the Sir Miles Manwaring who, on the destruction of the older mansion by fire, had rebuilt the house in its present form. Underneath the book-shelves were drawers filled with ancient charters, title-deeds, and other archives of the past.

WR. CUTHBERT MANWARING had succeeded ΑΟΑ to the estate of Holmcastle under the provisions. of the will of an old bachelor uncle, Algernon by name, who had seldom visited his estate, and who died, where he had lived the best, or worst part of his life, in a small street off St. James's Square. This Algernon had been a friend of the Prince Regent, and although a very fine gentleman, as fine gentlemen were in those days, he was a very worthless person, and had much impoverished the family estate by his extravagance. Probably there were but few of the friends of the "First Gentleman in Europe," so called, who, in consequence of the intimacy which subsisted between them, escaped

serious injury "in mind, body, and estate," and to this rule Algernon Manwaring was certainly no exception. The estate was left in the first instance to the elder brother, Cuthbert's father, Captain Crackenrode Manwaring, and to his heirs male after him; and then, failing these, to the second brother, Edgar, a somewhat dissipated and dilapidated Queen's Counsel; and then, in case of his demise, to his son or sons after him. It chanced, however, that both the younger brothers, Crackenrode and Edgar, died in their eldest brother's lifetime, and so it fell out that, on the death of Algernon, the estate passed at once to his nephew, Cuthbert Piercey, the son of Captain Crackenrode Manwaring, who, brought up to no definite profession, had lately married the beautiful, but almost penniless daughter of the last Earl of Ingleborough. This lady bore to her husband three children-first, a boy named Lionel; and then, after an interval of five years, a daughter, Evelyn; and lastly, the following year, another boy, who was christened Wilfred. In giving birth to this her youngest child, the gentle Lady Honoria herself died. It would be too much to say that the Squire was much affected or disturbed by the death of his young wife. He was a cold, or rather a thin-blooded person, who had married,

not for love, but solely and simply to secure a male heir for the Holmcastle property, and to transmit the name of Manwaring to succeeding generations in his own line. He looked upon his wife mainly as a means to that all-important end; and, that end being obtained, he was not the man to care much about the means.

That Lady Honoria had received nothing but a mere pittance on her father's death had in no ways affected her husband's equanimity. He knew, before he married her, that Lord Ingleborough's property would go away under the law of entail to a distant cousin, as a matter of course, and just as if there were no such things in the world as daughters to be provided for; and he was perfectly content that it should be so. He had felt, and he had felt rightly, that it was dishonourable to marry a woman for her money, and therefore, since family considerations compelled him to take a wife, he did not do that, but he choose her for her blood, which even he, the heir of all the Manwarings, allowed to be unexceptionable; and when the sweet, bright little lady, who ought to have been the joy and crown of her husband, fell asleep a few moments after she had kissed and blessed her new-born boy, he felt consoled by

the idea that henceforth the blood of the direct line of the Weathercotes would blend with and go to enhance the blueness of that of his own family.

The fact is that Cuthbert Manwaring was a man of one idea, and that idea was the importance and honour of his Family. There was indeed scarcely a family in all Lancashire, except perhaps the Elthornes of Elthorne, the Formbys of Formby, the extinct Weathercotes, and the Stanleys, which he would allow even to have any pretensions to vie with his own. It will be seen, therefore, that the Squire was no vulgar tuft-hunter. On the contrary, one of his most marked peculiarities was the supreme contempt with which he regarded the titled aristocracy of England, and he could scarcely be got to be decently civil to a Baronet. "Dukes," he was wont to say to a casual visitor, are mere mushrooms; Marquises a modern growth of Frenchified funguses, things of yesterday; two or three Earls perhaps can claim to be considered gentlemen; Viscounts I disallow altogether; and of the Barons of England there are perhaps a score who date the patents of their creation to a period earlier than that robber and plunderer, Henry VIII. Baronets! What do I know or care about Baronets? Why,