The London Directory, to every one who has the key that unlocks its treasures, is at once an epitome of all antiquarian knowledge. In it I can trace the lives of my countrymen backwards for many a century. In it is furnished a full and detailed account of the habits and the customs of my ancestry—the dress they wore, the food they ate, six hundred years ago; though that it is not so far back as the Welshman’s pedigree, which hung from his sitting-room ceiling to the floor, and half-way up had a note to the effect that “about this time Adam was born.” No, I can but pretend to go up some eighteen or twenty steps of the ladder of my family nomenclature. Nevertheless, by one glance at your name I can tell you—unless its spelling be hopelessly corrupted—whether the progenitor of your race was Scotch, Irish, English, Norman, French, German, or even Oriental. I can tell you what was his peculiar weakness, or his particular vocation in life. I can declare the complexion of his hair; whether he was long or short, straight or crooked, weak or strong. I can whisper to you what his neighbours thought of him; whether they deemed him generous or miserly, churlish or courteous. Yes, sometimes I must tell you unpleasant truths about your great, great, great (_ad infinitum_) grandfather. For the Directory is remarkably truthful; it won’t spare anybody, high or low, rich or poor. I have heard people telling of the greatness of their ancestral name, and the said name on their visiting card was laughing at them all the time “behind its back.” I have seen men dwelling in back slums contented with their sphere, and yet ignorant of the fact that they bore a sobriquet which six centuries ago would have brought them respect from the king on his throne down to the humblest cottager in the land. Oh, the ups and downs of life, as related in this big romance, put to paper by prosaic clerks, who never smiled at the fun, nor dropped a tear at the distress, simply because they lacked the manual that should explain its merriment and interpret its pathos! Hieroglyphics, believe me, are not confined to Egyptian obelisks or Oriental slabs.