There are few things more impressive to the model British mind--of which mine is, I am proud to say, a very tidy specimen--than a genuine series of ancestors in oil, proved (by internal and external evidence) extraneous to Wardour Street. Monuments perhaps have a still grander savour, especially recumbent figures of the Knight, and his Lady, on a slab together, with the little ones that failed to come to harm, sculpturally coming up, like frogs for the blessing. But these are very rarely to be found in any Chancel, or Chapel, by the dozen; while the pictures have an old family habit of keeping together. And to me it appeared that the Twentifold race were what our dear cousins, (who supply our slang, after stealing our standards) call "real grit," for never having driven me, or anybody else, into this caravan of dead Twentifolds. For my gallery of ancestors was restricted to a photograph of my dear father, and an ancient daguerreotype of Uncle Bill. "Oh, Laura," I cried, when I saw them stretching, (like the windows of a Stop-at-all-Stations-train) for a furlong without any corner; "how can you look at all these great people, and come down from them, to a nobody like me?" "Hush!" she said. "How dare you talk like that? I didn't bring you here, to be impudent, Tommy." "But I am astonished," I replied, "astonished, that with all these looking at you, you can look at me!" "What is there astonishing in it?" she asked, coming up, and putting both hands on my shoulders. "It is, because I love you, dear." At any other time, I must have kissed her, for those simple, and noble words. It was no thought of all those ancestors that robbed me of that pleasure; but I could not bear that she should look into my eyes, and see how full they were of tears. Then I ventured to put my arm round her waist, and she gave me her left hand, to comfort me. "Here's the fine old gentleman, I brought you in to look at;" her voice was quite gay again, to pass the fuss over; "does he look, as if he would surrender our fleet, to the enemies of England?" "He looks fitter to make all her enemies surrender. What a resolute face, and how his foot is planted! Ah, if we had any man to plant his foot, and shut his mouth in that style, now! All open mouth now--as Roly says--open mouth, tongue instead of chin, and instead of strong fist, chattering fingers. A man of that stamp can never have belonged to any time later than Nelson's. No Government would employ him now, in any of our trumpery 'demonstrations.' Let me look at him. It does me good."