easures of musketooning,
and calivering, and gambriling those of the meaner sort, or those of
better degree (as Mr. Hampden, Mr. Pym, and Another whom I shudder to
mention), who, for Conscience' sake, opposed themselves to the King's
Government. He was in this wise at issue with some of his hotter
Cavalier neighbours, as, for instance, Sir Basil Fauconberg, who,
whenever public matters were under question, began with "Neighbour, you
must first show me Pym, Hampden, Haslerigge, and the rest, swinging as
the Sign of the Rogue's Head, and then I will begin to chop Logic with
you." For a long time Mr. Greenville, my Great-grandfather (and my
enemies may see from this that I am of no Rascal Stock), cherished hopes
that affairs might be brought to a shape without any shedding of Blood;
but his hope proved a vain and deceiving one; ungovernable passions on
either side caused not alone the drawing of the Sword, but the flinging
away of the Scabbard; and my Grandmother was yet but a schoolmaid at
Madam Ribotte's academy for gentlewomen at Bristol when that dreadful
sinful war broke out which ended in the barbarous Murther of the Prince,
and the Undoing of these kingdoms.

Mr. Greenville had two children: a son, whose name, like his own, was
Richard, and who was born some five years before his sister Arabella.
Even as a child this last named person was exceedingly beautiful, very
gracious, fair, grave, and dignified of deportment, with abundant brown
hair, and large and lustrous blue eyes, which, when the transient
tempests of childhood passed over her, were ever remarked as having the
wild, fierce look, shared in sometimes by the males of her family. Her
mother, to her sorrow, died when she was quite a babe. The Esquire was
passionately fond of this his only daughter; but although it was torture
for him to part with her, and he retained her until she was thirteen
years of age in his mansion-house, where she was instructed in reading
and devotion, pickling and preserving (and the distilling of strong
waters), sampler work, and such maidenly parts of education, by the
housekeeper, and by a governante brought from London,--he had wisdom
enough to discern and to admit that his daughter's genius was of a
nature that required and demanded much higher culture than could be
given to her in an old Country Seat, and in the midst of talk about
dogs, and horses, and cattle, and gunning and ploughing, and the
continual disputes of hot-headed