f of our pause to
whisk homeward--we proceed on our way to Ragland. Welsh precisians, we
perceive, call it Rhaglan--and probably attach a nobler meaning to the
name than can be forced out of the Saxon Rag and Land; but as
novelists and historians have agreed in calling it Ragland, we shall
keep to the old spelling in spite of sennachie and bard. A short way
beyond Llansaintfraed is the handsome gate and beautiful park of
Clytha; the gate surmounted by a magnificent and highly ornamented
Gothic arch, and the mansion-house pure Grecian--an allegory, perhaps,
of the gradual civilization of mankind, or the process by which
chivalrous knights are turned into Christian gentlemen. The house is
modern, and even the arch without much pretension to antiquity; but
the family stretching far back into the gloom of ages, and lineal
ancestors of the antediluvian patriarchs. Since the Deluge, however,
they have restricted themselves to this part of Monmouthshire; and
judging from the number of Joneses--which is the great name in the
neighbourhood--there seems no great chance of the genealogical tree
being in want of branches. There is nothing so strange in a new
vicinity as the different weight attached to family names. We have
known districts where the word Smith itself, even without the
fictitious dignity of _y_ in the middle and _e_ at the end, was
pronounced with great veneration. Jones--elsewhere sacred to the comic
muse--is of as potent syllable--unluckily it has only one--along the
banks of the Usk, as Scott or Douglas on the Nith and Yarrow. And such
is the effect of territorial or moral association, that we shall
willingly withdraw an objection we made to a line in the tragedy of
our late friend J---- S----, where some one, speaking of the patriot
Pym--to eye and ear the most pithless and contemptible of
cognomens--says,

"There is a sound of thunder in the name."

We have no doubt there was a very distinct peal of heaven's dread
artillery in the ear of that bitter-hearted Roundhead every time he
heard the magic word--Pym.

The family highest in mere antiquity in Monmouthshire, we are told,
rejoices in the curious-looking name of Progers. From them are
descended the noble Beauforts, and even the Joneses of Clytha. For
hundreds of years, the Progerses had kept going down-hill; estate
after estate had disappeared; farm after farm took to flight; till,
thirty or forty years ago, the blood of the Progerses flowed in the
v