reign of William and Mary, a number of portraits dating from the days of
James I onward, and a wall paper representing life-size savages under
palm trees, which was part of the plunder of a French vessel during the
time of the Napoleonic wars. To this meager list, however, up to my
father's time might have been added another item of a more eloquent and
more unusual kind--namely, a gilded coach, in which, according to
village tradition, an old Madam Mallock (as she was called) used to be
dragged by six horses along the execrable lanes of the neighborhood for
her daily airing in the early part of the reign of George III. It is a
great pity that, of all the appliances of life, carriages are those
which are least frequently preserved. The reason doubtless is that they
take up a good deal of room, and become absurdly old-fashioned long
before they become interesting. The old coach of which I speak was
bequeathed, with other heirlooms, to my father, who, I may say without
filial impiety, proved altogether unworthy of it. He left it in a shed
near a pond, into which it subsequently fell, its _disjecta membra_
being presumably at the bottom still.

But whatever the house may have lost in the way of hereditary contents,
the church contained, in my childhood, other symbols of the past--they
have now likewise vanished--which spoke of "the family" rather than the
mysteries of the Christian faith. The family shrouded its devotions, and
sometimes its slumbers, in a pew which was furnished with a large
fireplace, and eclipsed with its towering walls something like half the
altar. All the panels of the western gallery were emblazoned with coats
of arms and quarterings, and all the available wall space was dark with
family hatchments. One afternoon, some five-and-forty years ago, a
daughter of the house, who happened to be alone indoors, was alarmed by
a summons to show herself and receive the Queen of Holland, who was then
staying at Torquay, and who wished to inspect an old English house and
its appurtenances. My cousin, who took her into the church, and who was
somewhat confused by the presence of so august a visitor, explained the
hatchments, with regard to which the queen questioned her, by saying
that one was put up whenever a member of the Mallock family married.

As for myself, these solemn heraldic objects vaguely imbued me with a
sense, of which I took long in divesting myself, that my own family was
one of the most importan