This inordinate pugnacity of my brother, this rabid appetite for trials of prowess, had, indeed, forced itself into display on the very first interview I ever had with him. On the night of his return from Louth, an artisan, employed in the decorations of Greenhay, had entered into conversation with him upon the pre-eminence of Lancashire among the provinces of England. According to _him_, the county of Lancaster (to translate his meaning into Roman phrase) was the _prerogative tribe_ of England. And really I am disposed to think that it still _is_ such, mongrelized as it has long been by Cambrian and Hibernian immigrations. There is not on earth such another focus of burning energy. Among other things, the man had magnified the county as containing (which it then _did_) by very much the largest remnant of old Roman Catholic families--families that were _loyal_ to the back-bone (in those days a crowning honor); that were of the ancient faith, and of the most ancient English blood; none of your upstart, dissenting _terræ filii_, but men that might have shaken hands with Coeur de Lion, or at least come of ancestors that _had_. "And, in short, young gentleman," he concluded, "the whole county, not this part, or that part, but take it as you find it, north and south, is a very tall county." What it was exactly that he meant by _tall_, I can not say. From the intense predominance in Lancashire of old genuine mother English, it is probable that he meant _stout-hearted_, for _that_ was the old acceptation of the word _tall_, and not (as it is now understood) _high in stature_. "A tall ship" meant a stout and sea-worthy ship; "a tall man," meant a man that was at once able-bodied and true-hearted. My brother, however, chose to understand it in the ordinary modern sense, and he replied, "Yes, it's tall enough, if you take it south and north: from Bullock Smithy in the south, to beyond Lancaster in the north, it measures a matter of sixty miles or more; certainly it's tall, but then it's very thin, generally speaking." "Ay, but," said the man, "thick or thin, it's a county palatine." "Well, I don't care much for that," rejoined my brother; "palatine or not palatine, thick or thin, I wouldn't take any _jaw_ (which meant insolence) from Lancashire, more than from any other shire." The man stared a little at this unlooked-for attitude of defiance to a county palatine; but, recovering himself, he said, that my brother _must_ take it, if Lancashire chose to offer it. "But I wouldn't," replied my brother. "Look here: Lincolnshire, the county that I've been staying in for these, I don't know how many years--and a very tall county, too, tall and fat--did I take any jaw from _her_? Ask the sheriff. And Leicestershire, where I've generally spent my holidays, did I take jaw from _her_? Tell me _that_. Neither, again, did Louth ever dream of giving me any of _her_ jaw; then why should I stand it from Lancashire?"