r, Patrick senior.

Mr. Reid cries _fiat lux_, and carries the proclamation into effect,
like the impatient gentleman who broke the windows which were obscured
by the too frequent repetition of that motto burnt in on every pane. And
he suggests, or leaves to dawn upon our after-perception, more light
than he directly makes. To carry out the glass simile, panes merely
cracked by him drop out piecemeal after he has withdrawn his hand, and
we come to see more and farther than our guide himself.

In this way he unwittingly enlightens us in the trivial matter of the
family name. Everybody has wondered how an English country parson came
to have for patronymic Lord Nelson's second title, won in battle from
the Mediterranean. This Mr. Reid explains by a short cut like the
well-known solution of an extraordinary story: "The man lied." Bronte,
with or without an unaccountable diaeresis on the last letter, was an
assumed name, adopted by the first and last who bore it purely for the
sake of euphony. Now, while we could believe anything sombre and stern
of one sporting that deep, nasal and majestic appellative, we find it
impossible to associate thoughts of unearthly gloom with the airy
Milesian cognomen of Pat Prunty, even though weighted with the solemn
prefix of "Reverend." Sure enough, we satisfy ourselves very speedily
that the parent we have been accustomed to denounce as having blighted
three or four young lives, and cheated English literature out of several
good novels, was by no means the savage depicted by Mrs. Gaskell, or
even by Mr. Reid. His worst recorded exploits have something of the
bizarre about them, as when he cut into bits a dress presented to his
wife by one to whom he was not willing she should be indebted, and fired
off pocket-pistols at unseasonable hours and places. Mrs. Prunty does
not appear to have run short in her wardrobe, nor did the pistols ever
hit any one. The old gentleman, in spite of narrow circumstances, gave
his daughters and son a good education and what social advantages lay
within his reach. The world was clearly more open to them than it was to
him. A widower from the infancy of all his children, he not unnaturally
became a little peculiar and exacting. When, his only son having drunk
himself to death, the last of three daughters who had reached elderly
and acidulated maidenhood indicated a wish to marry a man she confesses
she did not love, he objected. Yet he persisted in his opposition