Happy man! cried Wilson; this was a roving commission of a most tempting sort, and I hope your ancestor had too much gallantry to hesitate about embracing it. I beg your pardon, replied De Lancaster, my ancestor was not a man of that forward character as to aspire to situations, that ought to be above the ambition of a subject, but when this flattering offer was with all becoming thankfulness most modestly declined, King Bladud himself (as my ancestor no doubt foresaw) had the aforesaid wings fitted to his royal shoulders; ascended the roof of the temple of Apollo (at that time the loftiest edifice in the city of Troy-nouvant) and launching himself into the air confidently, as became a prince so sagacious and philosophical, committed his sacred person to the protection of Apollo and the artificial supporters, which promised him so delicious an excursion. Whether the fault was in the wings themselves, or in King Bladud’s want of dexterity in the management of them, is not for me to determine; but history puts it out of doubt that the attempt was fatal to the adventurous monarch. He fell headlong on the steps of the temple, (as you see in the picture fronting you) and was dashed in pieces in the twentieth year of his reign, and the two hundred and twentieth from the landing of Brute. All the world believed my ancestor a lost man, but Lear, son of Bladud and heir to his kingdom, being a prince of a most noble nature, and sensible to whom he was indebted for his so early elevation to the throne, rewarded the artificer of his father’s pinions by empowering him to affix them to his armorial bearing of the harp, and from that hour to this the harp of the bard between the wings of Bladud has been the proper and distinguishing shield of the De Lancasters, as not only the records of the herald’s office, but the head of every spout appertaining to the castle, can testify and evince. The spouts alone would satisfy me, said the colonel, but the heralds and the spouts together are authorities incontestible; but since you have named Lear, I should wish to know if he is that very Lear, who, according to the drama of our poet Shakespear, having parted his kingdom between his two ungrateful daughters Gonerill and Regan, ran mad upon the reflection of his own folly for having done it.