other. Never were such people for family
gatherings, which, were you a stranger, or sensitive, you might think
had better not have been gathered together. For during the whole time of
their being together they luxuriate in telling one another their minds
on whatever subject turns up; and their minds are wonderfully
antagonist, and all their opinions are downright beliefs. Till you've
been among them some time and understand them, you can't think but that
they are quarrelling. Not a bit of it; they love and respect one another
ten times the more after a good set family arguing bout, and go back,
one to his curacy, another to his chambers, and another to his regiment,
freshened for work, and more than ever convinced that the Browns are the
height of company.

This family training too, combined with their turn for combativeness,
makes them eminently quixotic. They can't let anything alone which they
think going wrong. They must speak their mind about it, annoying all
easy-going folk; and spend their time and money in having a tinker at
it, however hopeless the job. It is an impossibility to a Brown to leave
the most disreputable lame dog on the other side of a stile. Most other
folk get tired of such work. The old Browns, with red faces, white
whiskers, and bald heads, go on believing and fighting to a green old
age. They have always a crotchet going, till the old man with the scythe
reaps and garners them away for troublesome old boys as they are.

And the most provoking thing is, that no failures knock them up or make
them hold their hands, or think you, or me, or other sane people in the
right. Failures slide off them like July rain off a duck's back
feathers. Jem and his whole family turn out bad, and cheat them one
week, and the next they are doing the same thing for Jack; and when he
goes to the treadmill, and his wife and children to the workhouse, they
will be on the look-out for Bill to take his place.

However, it is time for us to get from the general to the particular;
so, leaving the great army of Browns, who are scattered over the whole
empire on which the sun never sets, and whose general diffusion I take
to be the chief cause of that empire's stability, let us at once fix our
attention upon the small nest of Browns in which our hero was hatched,
and which dwelt in that portion of the royal county of Berks which is
called the Vale of White Horse.

Most of you have probably travelled down the Great Western