domestic affections and private virtues that, unobserved by the world, expand in confidence towards ourselves, and often root themselves, like the banian of the East, and flourish with independent vigour in the heart to which a kind Providence has guided them. An affectionate regard for their memory is natural to the heart; it is an emotion totally distinct from pride,-an ideal love, free from that consciousness of requited affection and reciprocal esteem, which constitutes so much of the satisfaction we derive from the love of the living. They are denied, it is true, to our personal acquaintance, but the light they shed during their lives survives within their tombs, and will reward our search if we explore them. Be their light, then, our beacon,—not the glaring light of heroism which emblazons their names in the page of history with a lustre as cold, though as dazzling, as the gold of an heraldic illuminator; but the pure and sacred flame that descends from heaven on the altar of a Christian heart, and that warmed their naturally frozen affections till they produced the fruits of piety, purity, and loveevinced in holy thoughts and good actions, of which many a record might be found in the annals of the past, would we but search for them, and in which we may find as strong incentives to virtuous emulation as we gather every day from those bright examples of living worth, which it is the study of every good man to imitate.-And if the virtues of strangers be so attractive to us, how infinitely more so should be those of our own kindred, and with what additional energy should the precepts of our parents influence us, when we trace the transmission of those precepts from father to son through successive generations, each bearing the testimony of a virtuous, useful, and honourable life to their truth and influence, and all uniting in a kind and earnest exhortation to their descendants, so to live on earth that-followers of Him through whose grace alone we have power to obey Him-we may at last be re-united with those who have been before and those who shall come after us"No wanderer lost, A family in heaven." 'Anxious to avoid the suspicion of undue partiality, I have studied to adduce the testimony of contemporaries to the individual merits of our forefathers, rather than indulge myself in those general deductions of character which it would be equally difficult for a critical reader to assent to or disprove. But I may bespeak for them, collectively, a favourable censure-I may even avow that I shall be disappointed if their chequered annals be deemed devoid of a useful and animating moral. You will find them in peace and war, "under the mantle as the shield," equally eminent,-brave warriors in the field, and wise statesmen in the cabinet; you will contemplate the grandeur which they attained in the hour of prosperity-the devotion with which they perilled all, when gratitude and duty demanded the sacrifice. You will follow them to their homes, and will there recognise many whom you may love many whom, I hope, you will imitate; men, not ashamed of being Christians-women, meek and humble, yet in the hour of need approving themselves, in the highest sense of the word, heroines; while from the example of both you may, under God's blessing, learn the great, the all-important all-important lesson, that conviction of our own utter unworthiness, and faith in the atoning blood of our Redeemer, can alone give us peace in life, divest dissolution of its terrors, and hallow the remembrance of a death-bed to the survivors. 'Be grateful, then, for your descent from religious, as well as from noble, ancestors; it is your duty to be so, and this is the only worthy tribute you can now pay to their ashes. Yet, at the same time, be most jealously on your guard lest this lawful satisfaction degenerate into arrogance, or a fancied superiority over those nobles of God's creation, who, endowed in other respects with every exalted quality, cannot point to a long line of ancestry. Pride is of all sins the most hateful in the sight of God, and, of the proud, who is so mean, who so despicable as he that values himself on the merits of others?-And were they all so meritorious, these boasted ancestors? were they all Christians? Remember, remember-if some of them have deserved praise, others have equally merited censure,—if there have been "stainless knights,"{ never yet was there a stainless family since Adam's fall. "Where then is boasting?"-for we would not, I hope, glory in iniquity. "Only the actions of the just Smell sweet and blossom in the dust!" 'And, after all, what little reason has Europe to plume herself on ancestral antiquity! Not one of our most venerable pedigrees can vie with that of a Rajpoot of India or a Rechabite of the desert: nor is it but to our Christian birth that we owe a temporary superiority to the 'dispersed of Judah" and the "outcasts of Israel," whose fathers bent before the Ark of the Covenant when ours were nameless idolaters. One word more.-Times are changed, and in many respects we are blessed with knowledge beyond our fathers, yet we must not on that account deem our hearts purer or our lives holier than theirs were. Nor, on the other hand, should we for a moment assent to the proposition, so often hazarded, that the virtues of chivalry are necessarily extinct with the system they adorned. Chivalry, in her purity, was at holy and lovely maiden, and many were the hearts refined and ennobled by her influence, yet she proclaims to us no one virtue that is not derived from and summed up in Christianity. The "Age of Chivalry" may be past-the knight may no more be seen issuing from the embattled portal-arch, on his barbed charger, his lance glittering in the sun, his banner streaming to the breeze-but the Spirit of Chivalry can never die; through every change of external circumstances, through faction and tumult, through trial and suffering, through good report and evil report, still that Spirit burns, like love, the brighter and the purerstill, even in the nineteenth century, lights up its holiest shrine, the heart of that champion of the widow, that father of the fatherless, that liegeman of his God, his king, and his country-the noble-hearted but lowly-minded Christian gentleman of England.'-Preface, p. xv. Thus ends the preface to one of the very best specimens of Family History that our language affords. It is in great part a compilation ;-the third and fourth volumes are chiefly occupied VOL. LXXVII. NO. CLIV. 21 by by personal Narratives, left in MS. by Lindsays of the two last generations-and the older history of the race is largely interspersed with letters and documents now first disinterred, with quotations from the monastic and chivalric chronicles of Scotland, and with details extracted from the richly picturesque records of her criminal jurisprudence. But compilation, in the hands of Lord Lindsay, is a very different thing from what we commonly understand by that term. It is a work demanding delicate skill. With him nothing is compiled to save the trouble of composition -every fragment has been studiously chosen-and the whole are so dexterously arranged, and most of them so neatly inlaid upon his own narrative, that we have the charm of variety, without ceasing to lean on our guide or to feel the worth of his guidance. Should Lord Lindsay ever think fit to give the public access to these collections, he may improve the earlier chapters in some respects by availing himself of the elaborate CASE recently prepared for his father the Earl of Balcarres, as claiming the honours of the elder Earldom of Crawford-the oldest Scottish earldom that has not merged in a dukedom or marquisate. The CASE bears the signature of Mr. Riddell-the first peerage lawyer of this age in Scotland-we believe it would not be too much to say, the first genealogical antiquary in Britain; and it is the masterpiece of his diligence and ingenuity. Whether it ought to satisfy the House of Lords, we are not so presumptuous as to express or even to form an opinion. But it will survive their lordships' (favourable or unfavourable) decision, as a monument of research and a mine of lore, not equalled since the days of Sir David Dalrymple;-and meantime it will not only enable Lord Lindsay to enlarge the number of his genealogical links, but supply several curious particulars to heighten the interest of his biographical sketches. There is no doubt that the Lindsays were one of the many Norman families who settled in England under the Conqueror, and that they took their surname from an English fief-though it is not clear whether that fief was Lindesey in Essex or Lyndesey in Lincolnshire. Two brothers of the race, Walter and William, established themselves in Scotland early in the twelfth century; but though they both obtained great possessions, and founded powerful houses there, it is fully proved that during several subsequent generations they kept up a close connexion with their kinsmen of the same name that remained seated in England; and among those of the same name we must include the important house of Limesay-for that name is in sense identical and in sound all but so with Lindesay-both meaning the Isle of Limes -the tree having been pronounced and written Line or Lime indiscriminately indiscriminately down to a much later period *—and the original arms of Lindesay and Limesay were exactly the same. Down to the commencement of the wars caused by Edward the First's artful ambition, the Anglo-Norman knights who contrived so rapidly to supplant almost all the aboriginal landholders of southern Scotland-nay, from whom the great majority of the remoter northern nobles are descended—continued in intimate relations with those of their blood in England. The same person in numerous cases held great fiefs in both kingdoms, and not seldom in the duchy of Normandy also. The Scotch and the English Lyndesays frequently intermarried under the earlier Norman reigns; and in the thirteenth century the senior Scotch branch, after having intermarried with the original Celtic royal house, ended in an heiress, who carried its estates into the illustrious French family of De Coucy; as representing which House of De Coucy, thus intermixed with the blood of Lindsay, that primæval Scotch royalty is at this day represented directly by the Duchess of Angoulême-of whom France was not worthy. The De Coucys did not long hold their Lindsay estates in Scotland; but even from the time of that French alliance the headship of the Scotch Lindsays had vested in the line of Crawford; one of whom, marrying a daughter of King Robert I., was created Earl of Crawford on the same day when the ducal title was first introduced into Scotland in favour of two princes of the bloodroyal, made Dukes of Rothsay and Albany. After the downfall of the first house of Douglas, that of Crawford was during many generations one of the most powerful in the Northern Kingdom; and its power was, in general, arrayed on the side of the crown, against the turbulent insubordination of the other haughty barons. The original domain of Crawford is close to Douglasdale in Lanarkshire; but ultimately the chief seat of the family's influence was to the northwards of the Forth, in Fife and Angus. Here the Crawford-Lindsays were the great bulwark and barrier between the southern Lowlands and the restless clans of the Highlands. In process of time we find upwards of one hundred junior houses of the name of Lindsay, all designated after their own landed possessions-many of them ranking with the first class of the untitled gentry, and four of them cadets of such consequence that they ultimately acquired separate peerages (Lindsay of the Byres, Balcarres, Garnock, Spynie), all still acknowledging the Earls of Crawford for the chiefs of their name and race- principes illustrissimi sanguinis et nominis de Lyndesay.' *See Tempest, Act IV., where the glistering garments' brought in by Ariel are, by Prospero's command, hung on this line; with a world of punning on line and lime, Append. to Lives of the Lindsays, vol. i., p. 305–319. 212 There There can exist not the shadow of a doubt that the Earldom of Crawford was originally constituted a male fief-to descend for ever to the nearest heir of the male blood: but it is equally certain, and will surprise no one at all conversant with Scotch history, that the dignity was nevertheless transferred on divers occasions in a most irregular manner. With the details of these strange cases we shall not weary our readers;—it must suffice to say that Lord Balcarres now claims the premier earldom, as representing the male blood of Crawford-and the only question is, not whether the claimant has proved his own descent clearly and incontrovertibly, but whether Mr. Riddell has succeeded in extinguishing every one of the other Crawford cadets, who, if now represented by a male heir, would be entitled to claim the main honours in preference to Lord Balcarres. Since the line of Edzell or Balcarres branched off, exactly four centuries have passed away. All subsequent cadets who spent their lives within the British dominions have been, we may venture to say, effectually disposed of. These are all clearly extinct or merged in females, as far as it is possible to trace them in these kingdoms. But various younger sons, as was the case with all Scotch families, took service generation after generation under foreign princes. Patient of labour and prodigal of blood,' we have many a glimpse of them in the wars of France, Spain, Germany, Sweden -in most cases we see them recorded as dying on the field of honour far from their native shores, and consigned to the dust by friends who apparently had no suspicion of their ever having married. Whatever industry and acumen could do has been done-but the rules of the House of Lords are proudly distinguished by the very extremest strictness as to evidence in cases of this nature, and, we repeat, it is not for us to anticipate its decision that every one expatriated 'captain or colonel or knight in arms,' between the ages of Quentin Durward and Baron Bradwardine, has been proved to have died a bachelor-or even that no more peaceful adventurer of more recent days has left behind him in some corner of the backwoods a Yankee Lindsay in possession, unsuspected even by himself, of claims prior to Lord Balcarres's upon the honours of that pattern of chivalry the first Earl of Crawford. In Lord Lindsay's own pages we find recorded not a few circumstances that illustrate strongly the ups and downs' of a Scottish pedigree-the Cent ans de Bannières, Cent ans de Civières, of the French adage. For example, in treating of the once considerable family of Lindsay of Kirkforthar, he says The fortunes of a branch of this family, which sprang off about the end of the sixteenth century, might be cited as an illustration of King James's argument in defence of Davy Ramsay's gentility, in the "For tunes |