still the possessors of that not exactly euphonious cognomen can reflect with pride upon not merely a long pedigree, but lofty relationships. Another form of the same word, familiar, too, to early registers, was ‘de la Bere,’ and to this we owe our ‘Berrys,’ ‘Berrimans,’ ‘Beers,’ and ‘Beares.’ It is wonderful how the strict meaning of ‘shelter’ is preserved in all the terms founded upon its root ‘beorgan,’ to hide. Is it a repository to guard the ashes of the dead?—it is a _barrow_, the act of sepulture itself being the _burial_. Is it a refuge for the coneys?—it is a _burrow_, or _beare_, as in ‘Coneybeare.’[131] Is it a raised mound for the security of man?—it is a _bury_, _borough_, _brough_, or _burgh_. How altered now the meaning of these two words ‘borough’ and ‘town.’ Once but the abiding-place of a scattered family or two, they are now the centres of teeming populations. Of these, while some are still extending their tether, others have passed the middle age of their strength and vigour, and from the accidents of physical and industrial life are but surely succumbing to that dotage which, as in man so in man’s works, seems to be but premonitory of their final decay. How true is it that the fashion of this world passeth away. Even now this ever restless spirit of change is going on. We ourselves can scarce tell the spot upon which we were born. We need not wait for death to find that our place very soon knoweth us no more, and when we talk of treading in the footprints of the generations that have gone before, it would seem as though it were but to blind ourselves to the sober and unwelcome truth that we are rather treading upon the _débris_ of the changing years.