In my library there are many volumes that belonged to these great-aunts; and they are just the books that all “right-minded” persons would desire to read. There are three editions of Pascal’s _Pensées_ and none of his _Provinciales_; and there are five Tassos to one Dante, and that one has nothing but the _Paradiso_. The last of these great-uncles and great-aunts lived on till 1886. I remember several of them in my earliest years, especially at Cheltenham; and, when I first read _Cranford_ some years after that, I felt that I had met the characters before. Cheltenham was perhaps more opulent, but the people were the same. They were full of genuine kindness, but incredibly slow and ceremonious, always giving precedence to the wife of my great-uncle Joseph, because she was the daughter of a Peer. I can hardly imagine people of that type except in shaded drawing-rooms with china bowls of rose-leaves; yet some of them had figured in less tranquil scenes. As a lieutenant in the 15th Light Dragoons--now 15th Hussars--my great-uncle Edward Knight was in command of Sir John Moore’s escort at Corunna. He was close by, when Moore was hit, and he helped to bury him, 17 January 1809; and in after years he inveighed against the celebrated poem on the Burial. It was not like that, and “had no damned poetry in it.” He went through the rest of the Peninsular War; and, as a major, he took over the command of the 11th Portuguese Dragoons at the battle of Vittoria, 21 June 1813. He received the gold medal and several foreign decorations, and retired with brevet of lieutenant-colonel. His brother Henry Knight went through the whole of the Peninsular War, 1808 to 1814, as paymaster of the 5th battalion of the King’s German Legion; and he was at the battle of Waterloo, 18 June 1815, as was his brother John Knight, then paymaster of the 2nd battalion. They were both in La Haye Sainte; and the position was shown me carefully, when I visited the battlefield, 13 August 1868. The buildings had been loopholed; and I was told that it was very unpleasant inside, when the enemy put their muskets through the loopholes and began to fire in. John and Henry had the Waterloo medal, and Henry also had the Gwalior star, as he was at the battle of Punniar, 29 December 1843. He was then in the 9th Lancers, to which he was transferred in 1819. He was with his old battalion at the taking of Copenhagen, 7 September 1807; and curiously his brother Christopher Knight was there also, as a midshipman on the Minotaur. These four great-uncles of mine saw a great deal of hard fighting without ever being wounded; but I find it recorded of Christopher at the bombardment of Algiers, 27 August 1816, that “the gallant officer had the misfortune to be severely contused.” When the old wooden ships were hit by heavy shot, great chunks of wood came flying off inside; and, if you were hit by one of these, you were not wounded but contused.