AVERSE from field sports, and taking little

interest in public affairs, Mr. Manwaring had one hobby which he was never tired of riding. Genealogy and Heraldry were his favourite studies, and for him the Fine Arts only existed as the machinery by which Family portraits were transmitted to posterity, and as a means of emblazoning the Manwaring Coat of Arms with its sixty quarterings. Though he took no interest in agriculture or botany, the Family Tree of the Manwarings was an object of his never-ceasing care and solicitude.

The Squire's younger uncle, Edgar, who for some years had led a dissipated and extravagant life at Bath, Cheltenham, and other inland watering-places,

had an only son named Tresham; and as he never expected him to succeed to the family estates, he apprenticed him to a Mr. Grubbe, a solicitor of good repute and considerable practice at Clitheroe, and the young man, on the death of his principal, set up for himself. Tresham Manwaring had not, or at all events was not supposed to have, inherited the vices of his father. On the contrary, he was persevering to a degree, economical, and even parsimonious in his habits, and his worst enemy (and he had many) could not have accused him of the crime which Archbishop Whately so bitterly denounced, to wit, of having ever given a halfpenny to a beggar.

For the rest, Tresham was secretly self-indulgent, when self-indulgence could be purchased at a cheap rate; rude in his manners; and he took a delight in affecting a coarseness of behaviour and a vulgarity of diction which were altogether out of harmony with the education he had received. A more selfish man never existed, and the ruling maxim by which he steered his conduct was the base one, "Take care of Number One." When he set up on his own hook, the young lawyer felt the want of ready money, and he accordingly wooed and won the wealthy heiress of a retired cheesemonger of Halifax, who

rejoiced in the euphonious name of Sally Potts, on the easy condition of taking the name of Potts in lieu of his own, and of assuming the newly-granted arms of that family, to wit, on a Field, Vert, three Milk Pails Or, with the motto "Ex Vacca, sed Potabilis." The lady, who was considerably older than himself, was a vulgar, ambitious woman, whose main object in life was to obtain a position amongst the County Families." In her husband's eyes her sole merit was probably the grist that she brought to his mill. In nature, she was prolific, and she annually offered the tribute of a new daughter to her disgusted spouse, who would have been glad of a male heir to the family of Potts.

"

When the Head of the Family heard of this illstarred and ignominious match, he felt it his duty to make an example of the chief offender, and accordingly, before witnesses, he solemnly erased his name from the Family Pedigree, and gave strict orders that his cousin's name should never be mentioned in his presence again. Pride, like love, is blind; and in the performance of this judicial act, the Squire of Holmcastle forgot that his cousin Tresham was in the entail!

It will be seen from all this, that, though in his

eccentricities Mr. Cuthbert Manwaring bore a resemblance to Captain Roland de Caxton, yet in that nobleness of soul which underlay those eccentricities he was no Roland at all, but simply

his own selfish self.

True, he had made "Honour," "the Honour of his Family," the ruling passion of his life; but he had mistaken the nature and basis of true honour, and had so misinterpreted it as altogether to ignore the principle of Justice, the rarest attribute of man, the most glorious attribute of God.

Soon after the death of Lady Honoria, Mr. Manwaring began to compile a huge history of his family from the earliest known period, which, to say the truth, was anterior to the Norman Conquest. This work gradually became the one amusement and the one solace of his isolated life. In a voluminous preface he expounded the theory that his Race sprang from a noted Scandinavian "Ver," "Wer," or Warrior, and that his descendants hence acquired the name of "Veringas," the Sons of the Hero, which was subsequently corrupted into "Waringas, or Warings." This theory he supported by a mass of ponderous arguments, and he held that he had proved its truth beyond doubt or cavil. He was less positive as to the prefix "Man."

He

showed, however, that from his noble and manly qualities, his first historical progenitor might have been, and probably was called the "Man" par excellence, and that thus his posterity came to be know as Manwaringas, or Manwarings; but he rather inclined to the belief that the Family acquired the prefix on account of their possessing the Long Maen, Man, or Stone of Stanwick. The last syllable of this name, again, he was at great pains to connect with the Scandinavian Vik-ingas, or Vik-ings, some of whom, as was abundantly proved by numerous Northern names of places, had unquestionably settled on the coast of Lancashire; and he also conjectured that the Var-angian guard of the Byzantine Emperors was in all probability formed of members of the Man-war-angian, or Manwaring Family.

During the progress of this great undertaking, the compiler opened out correspondence with all sorts and conditions of men whom he thought would be likely to throw light on his subject. Country clergymen were almost worried to death with applications for copies of registers, which were never paid for, as the applicant considered the honour of assisting in a work of such paramount importance a more than sufficient recompense for labour and trouble, howsoever great. "Garter" himself was