ays 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But now again the damnation cry is withdrawn, there is a subdued meekness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.

My father was a Cornish man, the youngest, as I have heard him say, of
seven brothers. 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, 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 {1} 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 begot him never had the satisfaction of
invoking the blessing of the Father of All upon his head, having departed
this life some months before the birth of his youngest son. The boy,
therefore, never knew a father's care; he was, however, well tended