of action and ambition opened upon the aristocracy of England.  Our fleets and armies abroad, our legislature at home, law and the church, presented brilliant paths to the ambition of those thirsting for distinction, and the good things that follow it.  But somehow the Rockvilles did not expand with this expansion.  So long as it required only a figure of six feet high, broad shoulders, and a strong arm, they were a great and conspicuous race.  But when the head became the member most in request, they ceased to go a-head.  Younger sons, it is true, served in army and in navy, and filled the family pulpit, but they produced no generals, no admirals, no archbishops.  The Rockvilles of Rockville were very conservative, very exclusive, and very stereotype.  Other families grew poor, and enriched themselves again by marrying plebeian heiresses.  New families grew up out of plebeian blood into greatness, and intermingled the vigor of their fresh earth with the attenuated aristocratic soil.  Men of family became great lawyers, great statesmen, great prelates and even great poets and philosophers.  The Rockvilles remained high, proud, bigoted, and borne.

The Rockvilles married Rockvilles, or their first cousins, the Cesgvilles, simply to prevent property going out of the family.  They kept the property together.  They did not lose an acre, and they were a fine, tall, solemn race—­and nothing more.  What ailed them?

If you saw Sir Roger Rockville,—­for there was an eternal Sir Roger filling his office of high sheriff,—­he had a very fine carriage, and a very fine retinue in the most approved and splendid antique costumes; if you saw him sitting on the bench at quarter sessions, he was a tall, stately, and solemn man.  If you saw Lady Rockville shopping, in her handsome carriage, with very handsomely attired servants; saw her at the county ball, or on the race-stand, she was a tall, aristocratic, and stately lady.  That was in the last generation—­the present could boast of no Lady Rockville.

Great outward respect was shown to the Rockvilles on account of the length of their descent, and the breadth of their acres.  They were always, when any stranger asked about them, declared, with a serious and important air, to be a very ancient, honorable, and substantial family.  “Oh! a great family are the Rockvilles, a very great family.”

But if you came to close quarters with the members of this great and highly distinguished family, you soon found yourself fundamentally astonished:  you had a sensation come over you, as if you were trying, like Moses, to draw water from a rock, without his delegated power.  There was a goodly outside of things before you, but nothing came of it.  You talked, hoping to get talking in return, but you got little more than “noes” and “yeses,” and “oh! indeeds!” and “reallys,” and sometimes not even that, but a certain look of aristocratic dignity or dignification, that was meant to serve for all answers.  There was a sort of