Happily, however, the mania for ancestors does not often take such extreme and reprehensible forms; its manifestations are usually rather amusing than criminal. A common weakness is, however plebeian and obvious in its origin a surname may be, to dignify it with a Norman or at least French cradle. Thus we are solemnly assured that the Smithsons (a name which bluntly proclaims its own derivation) are "a branch of the baronial family of Scalers, or De Scallariis, which flourished in Aquitaine as long ago as the eighth century." The first Cooper was not, as the unlearned might imagine, a modest if respectable tradesman of that name--no, he was a member of the great house of De Columbers, one of whom was "Le Cupere, being probably Cup-bearer to the King"; Pindar, the patronymic of the Earls Beauchamp, is, of course, a translation of the Norman Le Bailli, and its bearers are "probably descended from William, a Norman of distinction"; while at least one family of Brownes springs lineally from "Turulph, a companion of Rollo," founder of the Ducal House of Normandy. After this, one learns with meek resignation that the honourable cognomen Smith is derived from _Smeeth_, "a level plain"; and that some, at least, of the Parker family had for ancestors certain De Lions, who flourished bravely under William the Conqueror. Another favourite vanity is to glorify a name by the prefix De: "a particle which has been all but unknown in England since the first half of the fifteenth century, and which has never possessed in Great Britain that nobiliary character which the French nation have chosen to assign to it. De Bathe, De Trafford, and the rest are restorations in the modern Gothic manner." It is, we fear, a similar vanity which has displaced such modest surnames as Bear, Hunt, Wilkins, Mullins, Green, and Gossip in favour of De Beauchamp, De Vere, De Winton, De Moleyns, De Freville, and De Rodes. This ludicrous yearning for a Norman ancestry is responsible for many of the absurdities in the pedigrees of even our most exalted families. Thus it is that we find such statements as this widely circulated, and accepted with a quite childlike credence: "This noble family (Grosvenor) is descended from a long train in the male line of illustrious ancestors, who flourished in Normandy with great dignity and grandeur from the time of its first erection into a sovereign Dukedom, A.D. 912, to the Conquest of England. The patriarch of this ancestral house was an uncle of Rollo, the famous Dane...." And again: "The blood of the great Hugh Lupus, Duke (_sic_) of Chester, flows in the Grosvenor veins."