If you saw Sir Roger Rockville,—for there was an eternal Sir Roger filling his office of high sheriff,—he had a very fine carriage, and a very fine retinue in the most approved and splendid of antique costumes;—if you saw him sitting on the bench at quarter sessions, he was a tall, stately, and solemn man. If you saw Lady Rockville shopping, in her handsome carriage, with very handsomely attired servants; saw her at the county ball, or on the race-stand, she was a tall, aristocratic, and stately lady. That was in the last generation—the present could boast of no Lady Rockville. Great outward respect was shown to the Rockvilles on account of the length of their descent, and the breadth of their acres. They were always, when any stranger asked about them, declared, with a serious and important air, to be a very ancient, honourable, and substantial family. “Oh! a great family are the Rockvilles, a very great family.” But if you came to close quarters with the members of this great and highly distinguished family, you soon found yourself fundamentally astonished: you had a sensation come over you, as if you were trying, like Moses, to draw water from a rock, without his delegated power. There was a goodly outside of things before you, but nothing came of it. You talked, hoping to get talking in return, but you got little more than “noes” and “yeses,” and “oh! indeeds!” and “reallys,” and sometimes not even that, but a certain look of aristocratic dignity or dignification, that was meant to serve for all answers. There was a sort of resting on aristocratic oars or “sculls,” that were not to be too vulgarly handled. There was a feeling impressed on you, that eight hundred years of descent and ten thousand a-year in landed income did not trouble themselves with the trifling things that gave distinction to lesser people—such as literature, fine arts, politics, and general knowledge. These were very well for those who had nothing else to pride themselves on, but for the Rockvilles—oh! certainly they were by no means requisite. In fact, you found yourself, with a little variation, in the predicament of Cowper’s people, —— who spent their lives In dropping buckets into empty wells, And _growing tired_ of drawing nothing up. Who hasn’t often come across these “dry wells” of society; solemn gulphs out of which you can pump nothing up? You know them; they are at your elbow every day in large and brilliant companies, and defy the best sucking-buckets ever invented to extract anything from them. But the Rockvilles were each and all of this adust description. It was a family feature, and they seemed, if either, rather proud of it. They must be so; for proud they were, amazingly proud; and they had nothing besides to be proud of, except their acres, and their ancestors.