We might go on like Tennyson’s brook, “for ever,” in this chat over local names,—but enough. We have only left ourselves space to remind the reader what vagrants we all are. Like Dickens’ little street boy (in “Bleak House,” I think it is), there seems ever to be a shadowy policeman at our elbow bidding us to “move on.” The Bible has foretold that this is to be our condition; and our names, at least those of local origin, have impressed on our very foreheads the truth of such a Divine prophecy. ’Tis well it should be so. Earth is not to be our dwelling-place for ever. And though at times we may feel that we should like repose, it is in mercy that God applies the goad, for thus are we reminded that— “Our rest is in Heaven, our rest is not here.” The day will assuredly dawn for the Christian when he shall be enabled to take off his travel-worn shoes, when he shall enter into the home to which he has been making his way through so many weary stages, and from which there shall be no going forth, even for ever and for ever. May every reader of this chapter be amongst that multitude of “vagabonds in the earth,” to use a Scripture phrase, who shall then “enter His gates with thanksgiving, and His courts with praise.” CHAPTER IV. ROBIN HOOD AND THE LONDON DIRECTORY. THE largest class of surnames in the London Directory, we showed in our second chapter, after local names, were those of patronymic origin: baptismal surnames we called them. If Richard has a son called Richard, it is easy to suppose that this child would go by the name of Richard Richard’s son, or Richard Dick’s son. A third generation having appeared in the form of a grandson, called Richard, after father or grandfather, it will be readily supposed that, he being also Richard Richard’s son, or Dick’s son, the surname Richardson would now be sufficiently familiarised to become the _hereditary_ cognomen of the descendants of this stock. Thus Richardson and Dickson have sprung into being. Thus every name of this class has originated. Names like Johnson, Jackson, Timpson, Wilson, Harrison, or Stephenson, simply prove that the bearers of these several titles are descended from some particular John, Tim, Will, Harry, or Stephen, who when he died bequeathed his baptismal name as a piece of property to his immediate descendants—not deliberately, as he would his money and estates, but in the casual and accidental fashion recorded above.