death-bed.  He was the head of the clan Young, which, with the clan Smith, still haunts two of the eastern counties.

* * * * *

‘I say, Jasper, what remarkable names your people have!’

‘And what pretty names, brother; there’s my own for example, Jasper; then there’s Ambrose and Sylvester; then there’s Culvato, which signifies Claude; then there’s Piramus—that’s a nice name, brother.’

‘Then there’s your wife’s name, Pakomovna; then there’s Ursula and Morella.’

‘Then, brother, there’s Ercilla.’

‘Ercilla! the name of the great poet of Spain, how wonderful; then Leviathan.’

‘The name of a ship, brother; Leviathan was named after a ship, so don’t make a wonder out of her.  But there’s Sanpriel and Synfye.’

‘Ay, and Clementina and Lavinia, Camillia and Lydia, Curlanda and Orlanda; wherever did they get those names?’

‘Where did my wife get her necklace, brother?’

‘She knows best, Jasper.  I hope—’

‘Come, no hoping!  She got it from her grandmother, who died at the age of 103, and sleeps in Coggeshall churchyard.  She got it from her mother, who also died very old, and who could give no other account of it than that it had been in the family time out of mind.’

‘Whence could they have got it?’

‘Why, perhaps where they got their names, brother.  A gentleman, who had travelled much, once told me that he had seen the sister of it about the neck of an Indian queen.’

‘Some of your names, Jasper, appear to be church names; your own, for example, and Ambrose, and Sylvester; perhaps you got them from the Papists, in the times of Popery; but where did you get such a name as Piramus, a name of Grecian romance?  Then some of them appear to be Slavonian; for example, Mikailia and Pakomovna.  I don’t know much of Slavonian; but—’

‘What is Slavonian, brother?’

‘The family name of certain nations, the principal of which is the Russian, and from which the word slave is originally derived.  You have heard of the Russians, Jasper?’

‘Yes, brother, and seen some.  I saw their crallis at the time of the peace; he was not a bad-looking man for a Russian.’

‘By-the-bye, Jasper, I’m half-inclined to think that crallis is a Slavish word.  I saw something like it in a lil called Voltaire’s Life of Charles.  How you should have come by such names and words is to me incomprehensible.’

* * * * *

‘What is your opinion of death, Mr. Petulengro?’ said I, as I sat down beside him.

‘My opinion of death, brother, is much the same as that in the old song of Pharaoh, which I have heard my grandam sing:—

‘“Cana marel o manus chivios andé puv,
Ta rovel pa leste o chavo ta romi.”

When a man dies, he is cast into the earth, and his wife and child sorrow over him.  If he has neither wife nor child, then his father and mother, I suppose; and if he is quite alone in the world, why, then, he is cast into the earth, and there is an end of the matter.’

‘And do you think that is the end of a man?’

‘There’s an end of him, brother, more’s the pity.’

‘Why do you say so?’

‘Life is sweet, brother.’

‘Do you think so?’

‘Think so!  There’s night and day, brother, both sweet things; sun, moon, and stars, brother, all sweet things; there’s likewise the wind on the heath.  Life is very sweet, brother; who would wish to die?’

‘I would wish to die—’

‘You talk like a gorgio—which is the same as talking like a fool—were you a Rommany Chal you would talk wiser.  Wish to die, indeed!  A Rommany Chal would wish to live for ever!’

‘In sickness, Jasper?’

‘There’s the sun and stars, brother.’

‘In blindness, Jasper?’

‘There’s the wind on the heath, brother; if I could only feel that, I would gladly live for ever.  Dosta, we’ll now go to the tents and put on the gloves; and I’ll try to make you feel what a sweet thing it is to be alive, brother!’

* * * * *

Beating of women by the lords of the creation has become very prevalent in England since pugilism has been discountenanced.  Now the writer strongly advises any woman who is struck by a ruffian to strike him again; or if she cannot clench her fists, and he advises all women in these singular times to learn to clench their fists, to go at him with tooth and nail, and not to be afraid of the result, for any fellow who is dastard enough to strike a woman, would allow himself to be beaten by a woman, were she to make at him in self-defence, even if, instead of possessing the stately height and athletic proportions of the aforesaid Isopel, she were as diminutive in stature, and had a hand as delicate, and foot as small, as a certain royal lady, who was some time ago assaulted by a fellow upwards of six feet high, whom the writer has no doubt she could have beaten had she thought proper to go at him.  Such is the deliberate advice of the author to his countrymen and women—advice in which he believes there is nothing unscriptural or repugnant to common sense.

* * * * *

Of my wife I will merely say that she is a perfect paragon of wives—can make puddings and sweets and treacle posset, and is the best woman of business in Eastern Anglia—of my step-daughter—for such she is, though I generally call her daughter, and with good reason, seeing that she has always shown herself a daughter to me—that she has all kinds of good qualities, and several accomplishments, knowing something of conchology, more of botany, drawing capitally in the Dutch style, and playing remarkably well on the guitar—not the trumpery German thing so-called—but the real Spanish guitar.

* * * * *

In the summer of the year 1854 myself, wife, and daughter determined upon going into Wales, to pass a few months there.  We are country people of a corner of East Anglia, and, at the time of which I am speaking, had been residing so long on our own little estate, that we had become tired of the objects around us, and conceived that we should be all the better for changing the scene for a short period.  We were undetermined for some time with respect to where we should go.  I proposed Wales from the first, but my wife and daughter, who have always had rather a hankering after what is fashionable, said they thought it would be more advisable to go to Harrowgate, or Leamington.  On my observing that those were terrible places for expense, they replied that, though the price of corn had of late been shamefully low, we had a spare hundred pounds or two in our pockets, and could afford to pay for a little insight into fashionable life.  I told them that there was nothing I so much hated as fashionable life, but that, as I was anything but a selfish person, I would endeavour to stifle my abhorrence of it for a time, and attend them either to Leamington or Harrowgate.  By this speech I obtained my wish, even as I knew I should, for my wife and daughter instantly observed, that, after all, they thought we had better go into Wales, which, though not so fashionable as either Leamington or Harrowgate, was a very nice picturesque country, where, they had no doubt, they should get on very well, more especially as I was acquainted with the Welsh language.

* * * * *

‘Fear God, and take your own part.  There’s Bible in that, young man; see how Moses feared God, and how he took his own part against everybody who meddled with him.  And see how David feared God, and took his own part against all the bloody enemies which surrounded him—so fear God, young man, and never give in!  The world can bully, and is fond, provided it sees a man in a kind of difficulty, of getting about him, calling him coarse names, and even going so far as to hustle him: but the world, like all bullies, carries a white feather in its tail, and no sooner sees the man taking off