It will be seen from all this, that, though in his eccentricities Mr. Cuthbert Manwaring bore a resemblance to Captain Roland de Caxton, yet in that nobleness of soul which underlay those eccentricities he was no Roland at all, but simply his own selfish self. True, he had made “Honour,” “the Honour of his Family,” the ruling passion of his life; but he had mistaken the nature and basis of true honour, and had so misinterpreted it as altogether to ignore the principle of Justice, the rarest attribute of man, the most glorious attribute of God. Soon after the death of Lady Honoria, Mr. Manwaring began to compile a huge history of his family from the earliest known period, which, to say the truth, was anterior to the Norman Conquest. This work gradually became the one amusement and the one solace of his isolated life. In a voluminous preface he expounded the theory that his Race sprang from a noted Scandinavian “Ver,” “Wer,” or Warrior, and that his descendants hence acquired the name of “Veringas,” the Sons of the Hero, which was subsequently corrupted into “Waringas, or Warings.” This theory he supported by a mass of ponderous arguments, and he held that he had proved its truth beyond doubt or cavil. He was less positive as to the prefix “Man.” He showed, however, that from his noble and _manly_ qualities, his first historical progenitor _might_ have been, and probably _was_ called the “Man” _par excellence_, and that thus his posterity came to be know as Manwaringas, or Manwarings; but he rather inclined to the belief that the Family acquired the prefix on account of their possessing the Long Maen, Man, or Stone of Stanwick. The last syllable of this name, again, he was at great pains to connect with the Scandinavian Vik-ingas, or Vik-ings, some of whom, as was abundantly proved by numerous Northern names of places, had unquestionably settled on the coast of Lancashire; and he also conjectured that the Var-angian guard of the Byzantine Emperors was in all probability formed of members of the Man-war-angian, or Manwaring Family. During the progress of this great undertaking, the compiler opened out correspondence with all sorts and conditions of men whom he thought would be likely to throw light on his subject. Country clergymen were almost worried to death with applications for copies of registers, which were never paid for, as the applicant considered the honour of assisting in a work of such paramount importance a more than sufficient recompense for labour and trouble, howsoever great. “Garter” himself was heard to remark that he regretted he had ever been born; and “Spotted Leopard” said “he’d be hanged if he wouldn’t go and destroy himself, if that old fool of a Manwaring didn’t stop his nonsense and rubbishy questions.”