brave youth, the kind but unavailing assiduities of friends, and the municipal honours accorded to him at his funeral, when the mayor and council, the volunteers and chief inhabitants of King William’s Town (every window shuttered) followed him to the grave, where Archdeacon Kitton read the solemn service; and some months after, a marble headstone was placed over his remains.  His two brothers have written some touching stanzas to his memory:  but they are private.

I mention all this sadness now by way of publicly acknowledging the kindness of Archdeacon Kitton and, other friends at King William’s Town, not forgetting a most friendly officer of the American navy, from whom we have received many excellent letters and presents from all round the world, ever since he was among the first to break to us the death of my son, now fifteen years ago:  I desire, then, cordially to thank T.G. for these kindnesses:  as also Mr. Robertson, of Brechin, N.B., whose son was Henry’s African comrade, with him at the time of the catastrophe, and following him to the grave.

Henry having been for good ancestral reasons christened de Beauvoir, reminds me of a memorable matter of our family history which, as it is on record, I will here relate.  In the days of King James I. (to quote with pedantic omissions from a pedigree), one Peter de Beauvoir, descended from a younger branch of the ducal house of Rutland, had an eldest son, James, whose daughter Rachel married Pierre Martin (my spiritual sponsor after Martin Luther), and her daughter married a Carey of Guernsey, whose descendant married my grandfather.  Peter’s second son, Richard, married a Priaulx, also related to us, and her daughter married a Benyon, in Charles II.’s time, whose descendant is now the millionaire, Sir Richard Benyon de Beauvoir of Reading, &c. &c.  Now, this is the strange fact which has always puzzled me as well as others.  The old De Beauvoir was a very thrifty miser, and died two hundred years ago possessed of great wealth, which has increased enormously up to our day, seeing he had landed property in the north of London, now including De Beauvoir Town.

In the second generation, his grand-daughters Rachel Martin of the elder branch and Marie Priaulx of the younger, contended at law for the inheritance after some intestacy:  and a terrible lawsuit raged in Chancery for 150 years, between the Tuppers and the Benyons,—­and was carried even to the House of Lords, being finally decided in my memory for the Benyons.  I remember my uncle saying he would not take thirty thousand pounds for his individual chance,—­but my less sanguine father cared not to join in the lawsuit,—­saying he would not “throw good money after bad.”  For my own judgment, and I can speak as an old conveyancing barrister (though without business or experience) of nearly fifty years’ standing, our side as the elder had the best right, though the two sisters might well and wisely have shared in a compromise.  But