arriors for a parade
at Court; wars, though frequent, were not constant, and they wanted
occupation: they may even have felt that they were bound in no common
degree to the pursuit of an answer to what may be called the parent
question of humanity: Am I thy master, or thou mine? They put it to
lords of other castles, to town corporations, and sometimes brother to
brother: and notwithstanding that the answer often unseated and once
discastled them, they swam back to their places, as born warriors, urged
by a passion for land, are almost sure to do; are indeed quite sure, so
long as they multiply sturdily, and will never take no from Fortune. A
family passion for land, that survives a generation, is as effective as
genius in producing the object it conceives; and through marriages
and conflicts, the seizure of lands, and brides bearing land, these
sharp-feeding eagle-eyed earls of Romfrey spied few spots within their
top tower's wide circle of the heavens not their own.

It is therefore manifest that they had the root qualities, the prime
active elements, of men in perfection, and notably that appetite to
flourish at the cost of the weaker, which is the blessed exemplification
of strength, and has been man's cheerfulest encouragement to fight on
since his comparative subjugation (on the whole, it seems complete)
of the animal world. By-and-by the struggle is transferred to higher
ground, and we begin to perceive how much we are indebted to the
fighting spirit. Strength is the brute form of truth. No conspicuously
great man was born of the Romfreys, who were better served by a
succession of able sons. They sent undistinguished able men to army and
navy--lieutenants given to be critics of their captains, but trustworthy
for their work. In the later life of the family, they preferred the
provincial state of splendid squires to Court and political honours.
They were renowned shots, long-limbed stalking sportsmen in field and
bower, fast friends, intemperate enemies, handsome to feminine eyes,
resembling one another in build, and mostly of the Northern colour, or
betwixt the tints, with an hereditary nose and mouth that cried Romfrey
from faces thrice diluted in cousinships.

The Hon. Everard (Stephen Denely Craven Romfrey), third son of the
late Earl, had some hopes of the title, and was in person a noticeable
gentleman, in mind a mediaeval baron, in politics a crotchety
unintelligible Whig. He inherited the estate of Holdes