“John Holies, Duke of Newcastle, and Marquis of Clare, owns Bolsover, with its majestic square keeps; his also is Haughton, in Nottinghamshire, where a round pyramid, made to imitate the Tower of Babel, stands in the centre of a basin of water.

“William, Earl of Craven, Viscount Uffington, and Baron Craven of Hamstead Marshall, owns Combe Abbey in Warwickshire, where is to be seen the finest water-jet in England; and in Berkshire two baronies, Hamstead Marshall, on the facade of which are five Gothic lanterns sunk in the wall, and Ashdown Park, which is a country seat situate at the point of intersection of cross-roads in a forest.

“Linnaeus, Lord Clancharlie, Baron Clancharlie and Hunkerville, Marquis of Corleone in Sicily, derives his title from the castle of Clancharlie, built in 912 by Edward the Elder, as a defence against the Danes.  Besides Hunkerville House, in London, which is a palace, he has Corleone Lodge at Windsor, which is another, and eight castlewards, one at Burton-on-Trent, with a royalty on the carriage of plaster of Paris; then Grumdaith Humble, Moricambe, Trewardraith, Hell-Kerters (where there is a miraculous well), Phillinmore, with its turf bogs, Reculver, near the ancient city Vagniac, Vinecaunton, on the Moel-eulle Mountain; besides nineteen boroughs and villages with reeves, and the whole of Penneth chase, all of which bring his lordship L40,000 a year.

“The 172 peers enjoying their dignities under James II. possess among them altogether a revenue of L1,272,000 sterling a year, which is the eleventh part of the revenue of England.”

In the margin, opposite the last name (that of Linnaeus, Lord Clancharlie), there was a note in the handwriting of Ursus:  Rebel; in exile; houses, lands, and chattels sequestrated.  It is well.

IV.

Ursus admired Homo.  One admires one’s like.  It is a law.  To be always raging inwardly and grumbling outwardly was the normal condition of Ursus.  He was the malcontent of creation.  By nature he was a man ever in opposition.  He took the world unkindly; he gave his satisfecit to no one and to nothing.  The bee did not atone, by its honey-making, for its sting; a full-blown rose did not absolve the sun for yellow fever and black vomit.  It is probable that in secret Ursus criticized Providence a good deal.  “Evidently,” he would say, “the devil works by a spring, and the wrong that God does is having let go the trigger.”  He approved of none but princes, and he had his own peculiar way of expressing his approbation.  One day, when James II. made a gift to the Virgin in a Catholic chapel in Ireland of a massive gold lamp, Ursus, passing that way with Homo, who was more indifferent to such things, broke out in admiration before the crowd, and exclaimed, “It is certain that the blessed Virgin wants a lamp much more than these barefooted children there require shoes.”