irics have fabled, by transfusion.

Who it was by dying that had earned the splendid trophy, I know not,
I inquired not; but its fading rags, and colours cobweb-stained, told
that its subject was of two centuries back.

And what if my ancestor at that date was some Damoetas--feeding
flocks, not his own, upon the hills of Lincoln--did I in less
earnest vindicate to myself the family trappings of this once proud
AEgon?--repaying by a backward triumph the insults he might possibly
have heaped in his life-time upon my poor pastoral progenitor.

If it were presumption so to speculate, the present owners of the
mansion had least reason to complain. They had long forsaken the
old house of their fathers for a newer trifle; and I was left to
appropriate to myself what images I could pick up, to raise my fancy,
or to soothe my vanity.

I was the true descendant of those old W----s; and not the present
family of that name, who had fled the old waste places.

Mine was that gallery of good old family portraits, which as I have
gone over, giving them in fancy my own family name, one--and then
another--would seem to smile, reaching forward from the canvas, to
recognise the new relationship; while the rest looked grave, as
it seemed, at the vacancy in their dwelling, and thoughts of fled
posterity.

That Beauty with the cool blue pastoral drapery, and a lamb--that hung
next the great bay window--with the bright yellow H----shire hair, and
eye of watchet hue--so like my Alice!--I am persuaded she was a true
Elia--Mildred Elia, I take it.

Mine too, BLAKESMOOR, was thy noble Marble Hall, with its mosaic
pavements, and its Twelve Caesars--stately busts in marble--ranged
round: of whose countenances, young reader of faces as I was, the
frowning beauty of Nero, I remember, had most of my wonder; but the
mild Galba had my love. There they stood in the coldness of death, yet
freshness of immortality.

Mine too, thy lofty Justice Hall, with its one chair of authority,
high-backed and wickered, once the terror of luckless poacher, or
self-forgetful maiden--so common since, that bats have roosted in it.

Mine too--whose else?--thy costly fruit-garden, with its sun-baked
southern wall; the ampler pleasure-garden, rising backwards from the
house in triple terraces, with flower-pots now of palest lead, save
that a speck here and there, saved from the elements, bespeak their
pristine state to have been gilt and glittering; the verdant qua