that species of crime to which it has ever been most partial--_Deathbed
robbery_; for as it is cruel, so is it dastardly. Yes, it went on
enlisting, plundering, and uttering its terrible threats till . . . till
it became, as it always does when left to itself, a fool, a very fool.
Its plunderings might have been overlooked, and so might its insolence,
had it been common insolence, but it . . ., and then the roar of
indignation which arose from outraged England against the viper, the
frozen viper which it had permitted to warm itself upon its bosom.

But thanks, Popery, you have done all that the friends of enlightenment
and religious liberty could wish; but if ever there were a set of foolish
ones to be found under Heaven, surely it is the priestly rabble who came
over from Rome to direct the grand movement--so long in its getting up.

But now again the damnation cry is withdrawn, there is a subdued meekness
in your demeanour, you are now once more harmless as a lamb. Well, we
shall see how the trick--"the old trick"--will serve you.

CHAPTER I

Birth--My Father--Tamerlane--Ben Brain--French Protestants--East
Anglia--Sorrow and Troubles--True Peace--A Beautiful Child--Foreign
Grave--Mirrors--Alpine Country--Emblems--Slow of Speech--The Jew--Strange
Gestures.

On an evening of July, in the year 18--, at East D---, a beautiful little
town in a certain district of East Anglia, I first saw the light. {1a}

My father was a Cornish man, the youngest, as I have heard him say, of
seven brothers. {1b} He sprang from a family of gentlemen, or, as some
people would call them, gentillatres, for they were not very wealthy;
they had a coat of arms, however, and lived on their own property at a
place called Tredinnock, {1c} which being interpreted means _the house on
the hill_, which house and the neighbouring acres had been from time
immemorial in their possession. I mention these particulars that the
reader may see at once that I am not altogether of low and plebeian
origin; the present age is highly aristocratic, and I am convinced that
the public will read my pages with more zest from being told that I am a
gentillatre by birth with Cornish blood {2} in my veins, of a family who
lived on their own property at a place bearing a Celtic name signifying
the house on the hill, or more strictly the house on the _hillock_.

My father was what is generally termed a posthumous child--in other
words, the gentillatre who b