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walked up and down the room, in a perturbed manner; Ada looking at him the while. He stopped short:

"Ah! that is it, Ada," said he; "whatever am I to do, whatever are we to do?

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"Do! good gracious, Tom! what do you mean ?" And Ada's blue eyes opened very wide.

"I mean about my vote!"

"Well, Tom, and what about your vote? You don't intend to go against my father, surely?" and she looked as if such a thing were impossible.

"But I am bound by an oath-and they swore me on a drawn sword, Ada; and you know I can't break that."

"A drawn fiddlestick!" said Ada, pettishly; "and I am told they made you tipsy too! Oh, Tom, how could you be the dupe of such a set? I am really quite ashamed of you!"

Tom, now, began to feel very much ashamed of himself, but he faltered out something about his duty to his country.

"Don't talk nonsense, Tom! Does your duty to your country require you to associate with a parcel of idle, discontented people, who call themselves patriots because they have nothing to lose, and spend their evenings in drinking, smoking, and making seditious speeches at publichouses, instead of caring for their families at home, like Christian men? Warming with the subject, and startled at the sketch her imagination had "bodied forth," Ada exclaimed, in conclusion, "Heaven defend me from a patriot-husband ! I had ten times rather have a kind-hearted, honest man, who never made a speech in his life!"

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"And so you shall!" said Tom, catching her in his arms, upon my soul, Ada, dear, what I said there was n't worthy to be called a speech, and I'll promise you never to make another."

"Well, well!" said Ada, disengaging herself, and trying to preserve her dignity, "do as my father wishes you, and you will not find it very difficult to make your peace with me. But, above all things, I advise you to get clear of that terrible drinking and swearing Association, before you see my father again, and I am now expecting him home every minute!"

With a vague impression on his mind that his choice now lay between a row with the Association and losing Ada, Tom rose to take his leave. It seemed easier to him to fight every member of it seriatim -beginning comfortably with Sniggers-than to face, just now, the indignant and uncompromising Mr. Brancrust.

After his departure, it was not long before Ada laid her head upon her pillow, and was soon in a complete chaos of weddings and elections, and

uncles and fathers; crowding and jostling one another, in the myste rious region of dreams.

Mr. Brancrust came home late from his orthodox smoking-club, and was somewhat surprised that Ada was not up to bring his slippers and offer his pipe. He had been rather ruffled in temper since the day before, when he had heard of Tom's going to the Democratic Association meeting; but when the servant-girl told him, on enquiry, that "miss" had gone to bed rather poorly, as she thought, all the good man's love for his dear Ada came to the surface; and he went up-stairs, as carefully as his anxious heart would allow him to tread, and looked at her sleeping. His fatherly heart was satisfied by her calm breathing, and smiling lips; and he went down to have one more pipe, and sat and thought far into the morning, about her whom he valued even more than his Mill- -or his money-or his life!

(To be continued.)

PART OF A CHAPTER ON

THE ORIGIN OF GREAT NAMES.

LORD RAYLEIGH.

Belief, so long as we can coax it to continue, in pleasurable subjects, unquestionably is happiness: and, for our own part, we had rather believe at once and be sure of a thing, though it be ever so vexatious, than be tossed upon a sea of uncertainty; for suspensc-besides that it is a positive evil, and that a very considerable one, of itself—is certainly one of the most tiresome of all mental ordeals.

Being, then, firmly of opinion that a trustful and relying frame of mind is far more agrecable, in any case, than suspicion and scepticism, we make it a point never to examine too closely into an etymology or derivation. So that they do but strike us as being novel and ingenious, we welcome them with an easy faith, reserving our doubts and a cold greeting for the arguments that may be raised against them. For we are not, we gratefully thank heaven! of that petulant and discontented disposition which prompted the great Scaliger, when a most plausible and erudite interpretation of an obscure passage in an ancient poet was brought before his notice, to burst out, so impatiently, "Pulchré atque docté dictum "—'t is prettily and learnedly propounded; "at ubinam, O, Jupiter, ubinam est veritas!". '—a monstrous lie, though, from the beginning to the end of it. We hold, on the contrary, the famous Lord Digby to have been a very wise man; of whom we are told, by our greatest historian, that " he had

so great a power over himself, that he could readily be convinced of anything which it was grateful to him to believe."

Few things, indeed, annoy us more than to have any favourite etymological idol dashed down from its pedestal in our bosom, and trodden beneath the feet of some unbelieving Iconoclast of an antiquary or grammarian. We look, seriously, upon such a person as a sort of impudent Edie Ochiltree, the vagabond blue-gown of the great northern novelist, or an envious and jealous Mr. Blotton, the haberdasher, of Aldgate; only they have, commonly, much worse grounds to go upon than was the case with those provoking worthies, when they blew into thin air Mr. Oldbuck's and Mr. Pickwick's crotchets. Rude and troublesome, we consider them, beyond measure; for, as Queen Christina, of Sweden, said of Menage, they will not allow a word or a theory to pass muster without demanding a sight of its passport, and minutely comparing the description which it contains with the figure and features of the bearer. Kindred spirits, almost every one of them, to that unconscious housemaid who scrubbed the shield of unhappy Cornelius, the father of the famous Martinus Scriblerus-" parmulâ non bene relictâ," as he pathetically exclaimed with Horace, so indiscreetly trusted to such hands; or to the Job's comforters that consoled him with the assurance that is was no shield at all, but only a sconce with the nozzle off: and that would not be restrained, by any scruples of reverence or decency, from putting a Tuscan vase, or a Roman amphora, to a like ingnominious use to that which certain ill-conditioned females in Mr. Johnson's amusing book-so much less read than it deserves to be-" The Adventures of a Guinea," applied a vessel, which for aught that they knew was a most precious piece of antiquity.

We are fully persuaded in our own mind of the truth of that traditionary origin, in Scottish story, of the illustrious name of Napier. King James the First or Second, of that country, we do not exactly remember which, having witnessed, with admiration, the prodigious valour of three peasant brothers, in one of his battles against the Danes, called out-we have no manner of doubt-when the victory was achieved by their exertions, "Sandie and Willie ha' fought brawly, but Steenie has nae peer !” We believe the tale the more readily because there were lately living three noble kinsmen of that name-now, unhappily, reduced to two-between whom, if our gracious Queen had been suddenly called upon to determine which was the best and bravest, she would probably have experienced a still greater difficulty than befell the Scottish monarch. Sure, at least are we, that if such a question had been proposed to ourselves, we should have been tempted, instead of answering it, to say that there was scarcely a family, in the whole of the British dominions, which could

"peer" with that of Napier in the number of its members who have splendidly distinguished themselves in the service of their country.

Many of our readers, we dare say, are old enough to remember the name of the Duke of Ayala, the Spanish Ambassador, several years ago, at the Court of St. James. We recollect him personally, ourselves, on account of two little circumstances. The first was the singular size of his head—a common peculiarity, to some extent, with Castilian grandees of ancient lineage, but which Nature, in his case, had pushed to such an extreme that he might have been called the Bous-kephalos, or Bishop Grosse-Tête of his order. The other was, that it occurred to us, and a friend of ours, with whom we were walking in company, to have the honour of helping him to alight from his carriage, when one of his horses had tumbled down beneath the weight of its silver harness.

In the derivation of the name of this nobleman, as it is related in Spanish historians, we are implicit believers. A certain Hidalgo, so runs the chronicle, having performed some signal public service, the King, in the fervour of his gratitude, bade him fix his own recompense. The Spaniard was a wiser man, in his generation, than several other persons have shewn themselves under similar circumstances. He demanded something so exorbitant, that the King, before acceding to it, thought it expedient to consult the Cortez: "Haya-lo "—let him have it—was the unanimous reply of that body. And hence the origin of that Dukedom.

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Some little hesitation we honestly confess to, as to the etymology of the name of Levis-or Levez, as it was originally spelt-that of a wellknown Henriquinist lord, at the mimic Court of Frohsdorf. "The first that bore it," says a French Debrett, was so highly esteemed by the blessed Virgin, that when he prostrated himself before her, 'Levezvous bien, mon ami,' said she and henceforth stand erect and wear your hat in our presence.'" The first word of that gracious speech served thereafter for his proper name. "The latter privilege," continues the writer, "doubtless, furnished a precedent to two English Sovereigns, John and Henry the Eighth, when they respectively authorized a De Courcy and a Forester to remain covered in their royal presences, and those of their successors."

Neither are we converts absolutely, and "in toto," to what is reported by Speed and Hollingshed, as to the "fons et origo" of the name Percy. "The governor," say they, "of the castle of Alnwick, which was beleaguered by the King of Scots, and reduced to the greatest extremity, having been summoned to surrender, issued forth, as though for that purpose, bearing the keys of the fortress on the point of his spear; but instead of placing them in the King's hand, as he held it out to receive them, he thrust the spear into his eye, and killed him;

and escaping back, in the confusion, to the castle, was known thereafter by the name of 'Pierce-eye.'" What a worthy old bishop (Ashe of Clogher) said of "Gulliver's Travels," when they first appeared-" that there were some things in that book which he could not bring himself to believe —we are obliged to say of this anecdote.

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But that Saint George of Cappadocia was Georgos-one that had subdued his passions and cultivated his spirit towards God, as the husbandman subdues and cultivates the earth, according to the notion of that excellent Prelate,* the author of the "Aurea Legenda;" that the first Tollemache was a Saxon bell-ringer; that the Northumbrian family of Surtees anciently held lands "super Tesam," on the banks of the Tees; that the ancestor of the Isle-of-Wight Bowermans carried a bow before the Plantagenet kings; that the first Thynne was John o' the Inn; and that the enigmatical word "Through," the device of the Ducal-house of Hamilton, took its rise in an historical incident;—are but half-a-dozen out of half-adozen hundred etymons and origins which are quite within the scope of our credulity. The latter fact not being generally known, save by persons heraldically learned, we will take the liberty to narrate it. Sir Gilbert Hambledon, an English Knight, flying from London on a charge of hightreason—a gentleman's offence, says Miss Die Vernon, in every age and `country-descried his pursuers close at hand, while he was yet a league distant from the Scottish border. Looking round, in great consternation, for a means of escape, his eye fell upon a sawyer, who was standing by the side of a pit, plying a huge double-handled saw. Without a moment's hesitation he sprang into the pit and laid hold of the lower handle of the saw. He had scarcely done this, when his pursuers arrived at the spot. The sawyer at the top-by no means a top-sawyer, it would seem, in quickness of apprehension and the helping of a man at a sore pinch-left

* Jacobus de Voragine, Archbishop of Genoa; in the twelfth century. His book -which, as Johnson says of the writings of the great Picus, "qui omne quod scibile scivit," is only to be found amidst the dust and silence of libraries—was the delight of the middle ages. It passed through fifty editions, of a ponderous quarto, in the space of two hundred years; not to mention the innumerable Acta Sanctorum into which a great portion of its contents have been incorporated. To us the good father's etymologies are almost as amusing as his biographies, and for the most part quite as authentic; only, unluckily, like a great painter of antiquity, he never knows when to leave off— quando detrahere manum-but accompanies one pretty good one with half-a-dozen that are past enduring. The "Aurea Legenda," says its author, were written for this end: "quod prædicatores in suis prædicationibus exempla magis convenientia citiùs et levius inveniant." Its use, in this respect, is by no means extinct in the present day. We ourselves once heard a Capucin Monk preach a sermon on the miracles of a certain Saint, almost every word of which was literally translated from Jacobus de Voragine.

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