grander and more
durable than the plain wooden edifice in which he had been content to
live, so that his heirs might have a habitation worthy of their noble
name. Several of Madam Warrington's neighbours had built handsome houses
for themselves; perhaps it was her ambition to take rank in the country,
which inspired this desire for improved quarters. Colonel Esmond, of
Castlewood, neither cared for quarters nor for quarterings. But his
daughter had a very high opinion of the merit and antiquity of her
lineage; and her sire, growing exquisitely calm and good-natured in his
serene, declining years, humoured his child's peculiarities in an easy,
bantering way,--nay, helped her with his antiquarian learning, which was
not inconsiderable, and with his skill in the art of painting, of which
he was a proficient. A knowledge of heraldry, a hundred years ago,
formed part of the education of most noble ladies and gentlemen: during
her visit to Europe, Miss Esmond had eagerly studied the family history
and pedigrees, and returned thence to Virginia with a store of documents
relative to her family on which she relied with implicit gravity and
credence, and with the most edifying volumes then published in France
and England, respecting the noble science. These works proved, to her
perfect satisfaction, not only that the Esmonds were descended from
noble Norman warriors, who came into England along with their victorious
chief, but from native English of royal dignity: and two magnificent
heraldic trees, cunningly painted by the hand of the Colonel,
represented the family springing from the Emperor Charlemagne on the
one hand, who was drawn in plate-armour, with his imperial mantle and
diadem, and on the other from Queen Boadicea, whom the Colonel insisted
upon painting in the light costume of an ancient British queen, with
a prodigious gilded crown, a trifling mantle of furs, and a lovely
symmetrical person, tastefully tattooed with figures of a brilliant blue
tint. From these two illustrious stocks the family-tree rose until
it united in the thirteenth century somewhere in the person of the
fortunate Esmond who claimed to spring from both.

Of the Warrington family, into which she married, good Madam Rachel
thought but little. She wrote herself Esmond Warrington, but was
universally called Madam Esmond of Castlewood, when after her father's
decease she came to rule over that domain. It is even to be feared that
quarrels for preceden