MR. LOZELL’S ESSAY ON WEATHERCOCKS. “Round he spun.”--BYRON. We have a great respect for a Weathercock! There is something about it so springy, so sprightly, and, at the same time, so complying and so accommodating, that we are not ashamed to confess that we have long taken it for our model. It changes sides perpetually, yet always preserves one unvaried elevation; it is always in motion, yet always remains the same. We could look at a Weathercock for hours! To us, however, it has another charm, independent of its intrinsic good qualities. Its name, not less than its character, recalls to our recollection a family which is entitled, in the highest degree, to our esteem; of which we should never cease to think, even if our memory were not daily sharpened by the little remembrancer, which is at once their namesake, their crest, and their model. The family of the Weathercocks is one of considerable antiquity. The first of the name, whom we find distinguishing himself in any extraordinary degree, is Sir Anthony Weathercock of Fetherly, Staffordshire; who changed his party seven times during the unfortunate dissensions between the houses of York and Lancaster. And this he contrived to do with so much tact, that he was a considerable gainer by his six first defections. By his seventh he certainly sustained a trifling loss--he lost his head! It is a well-known observation, that the descendants of surpassingly great men are often either blockheads or idiots. The present instance certainly affords us an exemplification of the truth of the remark. The successor of this genuine Weathercock was a poor weak fellow, who had no more idea of turning to the rightabout, without compulsion, than he had of breakfasting without beef. Upon his refusing to deliver up the castle of Nounhame to the celebrated Warwick, he was besieged, compelled to surrender, and immediately hung up upon the gates of the fort, to learn to behave like his forefathers. The religious prosecutions which followed the union of the White and Red Roses afforded fresh opportunity for the manifestation of the merits of the Weathercocks. Theirs was almost the only family of any note in England which did not lose one or other of its members from the indiscriminate fury of superstition. The head of the house appears to have embraced as many religions, and more wives, than Henry himself; and a younger branch is said to have been, within a week, a serving-man in the train of Gardiner and a clerk in the household of Cranmer. But we are forgetting that we and our friends live in 1821, and that we shall weary the patience of our reader by tracing those dry historical facts _ab ovo_.