The family of Cornwallis is very ancient, and can point to many distinguished members. Its ancestral seat is at Brome, in Suffolk. This is a fine old mansion, and the hall, which is very lofty and open to the roof, is an excellent specimen of the work of other days. The chapel contains capital oak carving. In the village church there are monuments worth notice of the family. Following the fate of so many other places, Brome passed after the death of the second marquis to a _novus homo_, one Matthias Kerrison, who, having begun life as a carpenter, contrived in various ways to acquire a colossal fortune. His son rose to distinction in the army, obtained a seat in Parliament, which he held for thirty years, and was created a baronet. He left at his death a son and three daughters. The former, long married, is childless. The sisters are respectively the wives of Earl Stanhope, the well-known historian; Lord Henniker, a wealthy Suffolk proprietor; and Lord Bateman. It is understood that under the late baronet's will the son of the last will, in the event of the present baronet dying childless, succeed to the property. It will thus be observed that Brome, after having been for four centuries in one family, is destined to change hands repeatedly in a few years. When the second Marquis Cornwallis died sonless, the marquisate became extinct, but the earldom passed to his first cousin. This nobleman, by no means an able or admirable person, married twice. By his first marriage he had a daughter, who married Charles Wykeham-Martin, Esq., M.P., whose father, by a concatenation of chances, became the owner of Leeds Castle, near Maidstone, in Kent--a splendid moated baronial pile, dating from the thirteenth century, but added to and improved in admirable taste. Leeds was formerly the property of the Fairfax family, whose chief, the present lord, resides near Washington. It came to them from the once famous family of Colepepper.