ots
were the direct descendants.

Our French ancestress, according to the family tradition, was of no very
exalted origin, being in fact the only daughter and heiress of one
Monsieur Tartine, Perruquier in chief at the Court of Versailles. But
what this lady wanted in birth, she made up in fortune, and the modest
estate which her husband purchased with her dowry came down to us
unimpaired through five generations. In the substantial and somewhat
foreign-looking red-brick house which he built (also, doubtless, with
Madame's Louis d'ors) we, his successors, had lived and died ever since.
His portrait, together with the portraits of his wife, son, and
grandson, hung on the dining-room walls; and of the quaint old
spindle-legged chairs and tables that had adorned our best rooms from
time immemorial, some were supposed to date as far back as the first
founding and furnishing of the house.

It is almost needless to say that the son of the non-juror and his
immediate posterity were staunch Jacobites, one and all. I am not aware
that they ever risked or suffered anything for the cause; but they were
not therefore the less vehement. Many were the signs and tokens of that
dead-and-gone political faith which these loyal Arbuthnots left behind
them. In the bed-rooms there hung prints of King James the Second at the
Battle of the Boyne; of the Royal Martyr with his plumed hat, lace
collar, and melancholy fatal face; of the Old and Young Pretenders; of
the Princess Louisa Teresia, and of the Cardinal York. In the library
were to be found all kinds of books relating to the career of that
unhappy family: "Ye Tragicall History of ye Stuarts, 1697;" "Memoirs of
King James II., writ by his own hand;" "La Stuartide," an unfinished
epic in the French language by one Jean de Schelandre; "The Fate of
Majesty exemplified in the barbarous and disloyal treatment (by
traitorous and undutiful subjects) of the Kings and Queens of the Royal
House of Stuart," genealogies of the Stuarts in English, French and
Latin; a fine copy of "Eikon Basilike," bound in old red morocco, with
the royal arms stamped upon the cover; and many other volumes on the
same subject, the names of which (although as a boy I was wont to pore
over their contents with profound awe and sympathy) I have now for the
most part forgotten.

Most persons, I suppose, have observed how the example of a successful
ancestor is apt to determine the pursuits of his descendants down to the