Clement were sitting, and his look was full of sympathy and commiseration. Some kindly wonder and curiosity were expressed in it as well. He almost stopped for a moment as he was about to leave the room, in order to turn one other glance upon the old man who had so strangely interrupted his discourse. Every one saw Montana thus employ his sympathetic eyes; and many thought it but another evidence, if such were needed, of Montana's tenderness for all men. There were persons who might have been so vexed, even preachers and professed ministers of religion, by any interruption of the kind as to lose patience and pity for the author of the disturbance. But Montana had only sympathy and kindly feeling for this foolish old man, who had so nearly turned the whole proceedings of the day into ridicule.

Why did a sudden ray of strange conviction pierce into the perplexity of Geraldine's mind just at that moment? She never could tell; but the expression on Montana's face, which deceived so many others, carried instant enlightenment to her. She felt sure that the old man was Montana's father, and that Montana knew it. This had not occurred to her at first. She thought, like everybody else, that the poor old man was simply the victim of an hallucination born of his love and his hope. But Montana's expression as he looked across at Mr. Varlowe seemed to strike home to her very heart with the conviction that he was acting a part. The expression was so carefully, so artificially adjusted for the occasion, as it seemed to her, that it could only be put on for the purpose of playing out a part. It may be that she was helped to this belief by the striking likeness which she suddenly saw in Montana's face and figure to the face and figure of the old man who claimed him as a son. Mr. Varlowe was but Montana whitened with the hoar-frost of time. Montana was but a dark haired and cold-hearted Mr. Varlowe. Geraldine felt terribly satisfied of the truth of her conviction; terribly, because there was something appalling in the belief that such a man was an utter impostor, and that nobody would believe it but herself, and that she would have to be that very day, almost every day, in his company.

As Montana passed out of the room, he fixed on Clement a special look of affectionate interest and sympathy. Mr. Varlowe gazed wistfully after him, and made a movement as if he would leave his seat. Clement quietly kept him in his place. Geraldine could see that to Mr. Varlowe's start and gaze of imploring affection Montana only responded by the same look of interested kindliness and commiseration, the look of one who feels for some apparent

delusion or sorrow on the part of a perfect stranger. Geraldine felt as if the blood in her veins were turning chill.

over.

Montana remained in the room alone until the short service was He was waiting with quiet composure, although with a mind far from quiet, for the inevitable moment, not many moments off, when he must be confronted with his father. The time came. A knock was heard at the door. Montana opened it, and his father and Clement Hope came in. Mr. Varlowe began in his rough Northern way :—

"You don't mean to say you don't know me, Edmund, my boy? You don't mean to say you don't recognise your father? You are Edmund Varlowe. Good God! of course you are. I'd know you among ten thousand."

Montana turned to Clement and looked into his eyes. Clement's own gaze had wonder and bewilderment in it. Montana looked him full in the face, and shook his head with a kindly commiserating expression. "This is Mr. Varlowe, your father?" he asked of the young man.

66 Yes," said Clement; "he thinks you are his son."

"Thinks he is my son!" Mr. Varlowe exclaimed; "God! I know he is my son. Do you think I could ever be mistaken? I have waited, and watched, and prayed for him to come back these years, and I knew he would come back. I knew he would come all the time, and I knew him the moment I saw him come into that pulpit to preach. Why won't you speak? Why won't you say you know me?"

"My dear old friend," said Montana sweetly, "I am sorry, so sorry, to have to disappoint your hopes, your very very natural hopes, to see your son. Assuredly you will see him one day yet-pray Heaven you may. But you are mistaken about me. I am not your son. I could wish I were, to be the son of so fond a father, and to be able to give him back the hope of his life; but you will trust to a better and a higher hope than I can give you. I am not your

son."

Mr. Varlowe threw his arms wildly out, as if he would call all the world and all nature to bear witness for him in his extraordinary bewilderment.

This is what I have been This is what I have longed My son comes back, and he What are you ashamed of,

"Well," he said, "this beats all! waiting for and praying for these years. for; and now it all comes to this! don't know me, and he won't know me! Edmund? Do you think I am poor? I am not poor. I have

plenty of money.

you? I will not.

Do you think I will trouble you or interfere with

You may have any career you like now. I will help you to it. You shall have all my money. You shall have anything. Don't say you are not my boy. Don't, don't say it !"

Montana shook his head sadly and sweetly. He felt no mental or moral difficulty, now that the step was taken. He had decided that he was not the son of the old livery-stable keeper, and, in his present condition, that decision had settled everything. He felt no trouble of conscience, but was serenely satisfied with himself. He was sorry for the old man, but it was only as one is sorry for somebody in a play, or at most is sorry for some stranger whose grief one sees and pities, but cannot share.

Clement tried to draw Mr Varlowe away.

"You had better come, father; and don't you think you ought to say something to Mr. Montana to explain your mistake? You see it is a mistake now, don't you?"

"It is not a mistake," Mr. Varlowe exclaimed in a thundering voice, smiting the floor with his stick. "I never was mistaken; I could not be mistaken in my boy. That is my Edmund, though he casts me off; and he is my Edmund still, though I cast him off now. Come away, Clem, my lad. You are my son now, and you alone; but as sure as God's in heaven, that man there is Edmund Varlowe, who was the son of my wife, Catherine Varlowe, and of myself; and all the world will know it one day just as well as he knows it now. Come away, lad."

(To be continued.)

537

FACTS OF FAMILY NOMENCLATURE.

W

7 E were told on good authority many years since that the surnames of England and Wales probably numbered from thirtyfive to forty thousand. A separate estimate, dating also some time back, reckoned them as reaching to about the same figures. We shall find reason in the course of these observations for believing that at the present time they must be more numerous still than they were when the calculations quoted were made. To what is it owing that our cognomens are so many-as many, it would seem, at least, as (excluding technicalities) are the words in the English language itself? In pursuing this inquiry, as we propose to do in the following pages, we shall find ourselves brought into contact with several facts of family nomenclature which, as we hope, will prove to be not without interest for our readers.

It will be convenient if at the outset we name a few leading dates with which the subject connects itself, and set down a few memoranda as to the stuff of which English surnames have been made.

From earliest days, wherever the stock of personal names was small in proportion to the number of persons bearing them, there surnames of some kind must have been used for the sake of personal distinction; and it would be hard, nay, impossible, to say when such usage began. But the perpetuation of these added appellatives, in the shape of hereditary surnames such as we now use, is quite another matter. It is not difficult to state approximately the time at which this latter practice arose. Speaking roughly, we may mention the year 1000 as the date of its origin, and the year of the Norman Conquest as that of its introduction into England. But the fashion. then imported was not for several centuries generally adopted. It spread but slowly downwards through the social ranks, until in 1538 Lord Cromwell's injunction, under which parochial registration was begun, tended to establish it finally among all classes. It was during the five hundred years thus covered that most of our family surnames were created. After this the possibilities of addition to the stock

' Registrar-General's Sixteenth Annual Report.

* Quoted in Lower's Patronymica Britannica, p. xxiv.

were na rowed. They were very far, however, from being destroyed, and this will become abundantly apparent as we go on. For three centuries longer-namely, up to 1837, when Lord John Russell's Civil Registration Act came into force-there were certainly frequent augmentations of the cognominal fund. We shall find reason, moreover, for believing that even under the general and greatly improved registration system last referred to-which is still substantially in force-accessions to the number of surnames must have continued to take place.

It will be noticed that the eras here suggested have reference to registration; and there is justification for thus dividing the history of hereditary surnames, since their stability is undoubtedly to some extent affected by the degree of completeness and care with which they are recorded. The periods are three. The first begins in 1066 and ends in 1538. It yields unlimited scope for the creation of permanent cognomens, for it is not only the era in which they were but coming into use, but it is also the pre-registration period. Such namerecords as it produces, whether ecclesiastical, monastic, municipal, or otherwise, are partial and irregular. The second period extends from 1538 to 1837, and presents diminished opportunities for cognominal increase. It is the era of parochial registers. The surnames of the people, now hereditary in all ranks, are more or less regularly set down in writing. The third period consists of the forty-four years of modern civil registration. This system remedies many defects and omissions peculiar to that which preceded it, and which it supersedes without destroying. Hence it restricts more than ever the possibilities of addition to the denominational total.

Passing on to the materials out of which our surnames have been made, we must set in the first place the names of towns, villages, and estates. Under the feudal system, landed possessions naturally gave names to their owners, while at markets and other public meeting-places persons bearing the same baptismal names were often distinguished by the names of the parishes or hamlets in which they lived; or, again, migrants from country to town, or from city to city, associated by new neighbours with the places they had travelled from, came to be called by the names of those places. It must be remembered that, when surnames were taking permanent shape, any personal appellation was liable to become hereditary.

It was long ago noticed that every town, village, and hamlet in England has afforded a family name. It may be observed that persons have often paid back to place-nomenclature the appellations borrowed from it, and may indeed sometimes in the first instance