guish the custom of applying to children the personal names of their relatives as surnames; but it has been compelled to recognise appellations created by that custom, and these it has settled and perpetuated.

To the causes of the increase of surnames which have been mentioned, others doubtless might be added; as the adoption by some families of new ways of rendering their patronymics in order to avoid unpleasant associations, the revival of old modes of spelling, &c. Enough, however, has been said to show that the multiplication has been, and in some degree still is, an easy and natural process, and to extinguish surprise at the number of family denominations existing. When it is remembered, too, how many have been the modifying forces, and how likely it is that several of them may in the course of years have operated one after another upon the same appellations, it will be expected that numerous surnames must not only have drifted far away from their originals, but must have been transformed into words having associations widely removed from those of family nomenclature, and therefore not a little ludicrous when connected with it. To a few of such transformations we have already referred, and by such there can be no doubt many of the drolleries of our surnames have been created. These drolleriestaking them as we find them, without eliminating those whose history is known-are indeed numerous and startling. It is difficult to offer a selection which may give a just notion of their variety, but an attempt to do so shall be made.

We may consider ourselves to be in the domain of registration, and will begin at home. Registers are people as well as documents; Births, Marriages, and Deaths exist not only as facts to be entered and statistically weighed under the Registrar-General's direction, but as born, marriageable, and mortal men and women. Sexes are by no means so restricted in number as is popularly supposed. Boys (as well as Boyses), Bachelors, and Swains abound, and are matched by plenteous Girls, Lasses, Virgins, and Damsels, to whom, however, the former would not always wish to make love. "The conditions of society," indeed, "are so jumbled that a Babe may be the mother of a Widow; a Child the father of a Man; a Matron the spouse of a Littleboy. In actual life many Sucklings have grayer heads than Seniors, many an Elder is the junior of a Younger, and a host of Majors are more infantile than many so-called Minors." But quitting such bewildering paradoxes, we have, in further seeming reference (more or less direct) to the chief conditions and events of human life, the surnames Born and

1

› English Surnames as seen in Groups, by C. L. Lordan. Houlston & Sons. Original edition, p. 7.

Baby; Bride, Mate, Hymen, and Wedlock; Corpse, Coffin, Graves, Mould, Worm, and Dust! And again, while, to recall the innocent interests of the nursery, we have Bunney, Dobbin, Pussey, Doll, and Dadd; Ache, Age, Pain, Weake, and Worry are also found, to commemorate "the last scene of all, that ends this strange eventful history."

We are thus led naturally to the woes of existence in general : these are fully represented in family nomenclature. Upon its lists appear many of "disease's shapes abhorred "-from Palsey to Hiccups. Grief and Anguish are not wanting. They are usually associated with the county of Norfolk, but unfortunately are not unknown beyond the limits of that shire. Want and Fever may be found in Kent. It is well that the same county produces Crusts and Shillings, and that Physick is also forthcoming-probably at no great distance. Fright, again, has a footing on Kentish ground, while Fears are frequent in Somersetshire. Luckily, Hope is generally distributed.

It is discouraging to learn how freely bad characters are scattered up and down the country. Bragg, Mock, and Gammon are found in Gower; Cant flourishes in many places, for example at Bath. This is bad enough, but at Crickhowell and elsewhere human Brutes and Furys may be met with. The black page, however, has its per contra. On the opposite side appear Worth and Virtue. There is Good to set against Evill; Reason to neutralise Rant; Kindly to balance Heartless; Pluck to pair with Coward. Justices, moreover, are ever at hand to redress all wrong, while Saws enough-wise ones, we may hope-and plenty of modern Instances exist for their equipment. The worst titles, again, may, so far as half the community is concerned, actually give place to the best. By the gentle agency of matrimony a Quarrell might any day be changed into a Peace; a Tippler be unhesitatingly acknowledged as Steady; a Cheater become permanently Upright.

The human body in its several parts and tissues-from Head to Foot, from Marrow to Skin-contributes to the name-list. That, too, which sustains "this mortal frame" is appropriately found there, as Curry and Rice, Chicken and Ham, Lamb and Pease. To complete the feast, Liquor is provided, Sherry, Champagne, Claret, and Port. Nor need the outer man's requirements be left unfurnished amidst the resources of this gigantic nominal store. Raiment does not lack there; Vest, Hose, and Jacket are seen upon its catalogue; and for those who seek more decorative objects of attire, Plume, Ruffle, and Lace.

The ranks, offices, and occupations of mankind are necessarily

represented in the denominational list-from Rex to Scullion and Tinker, from Pope and Cardinal to Beadle and Sexton. But it must not be supposed that everything that seems to fall into this class of surnames by right belongs to it, although its members are more frequently genuine than are those of most other classes here referred to.

Passing from man and man's downwards through life of lower phase, we find upon the name-roll beasts in abundance, from Lion to Mouse; birds, from Eagle to Wren; fishes, from Whale to Spratt. Insects also figure on the list-Moth, Wasp, and Spider. By the instrumentality already mentioned, a human Grubb may at any time become a Butterfly.

The vegetable world and the mineral do not fail to enlarge the expansive catalogue of titles which registration furnishes. From it we learn that all around us Oaks and Elms ramify; Daisys, Violets, and Snowdrops blossom and fade; Oranges, Plums, and Pears ripen and fall to mother earth. Onion and Garlick too spring up in the name-garden; Weed and Nettle intrude upon its boundaries. Stone and Mudd are found mingling in the cognominal soil with Gold, Silver, Pewter, Copper, and Zinc.

Land and Water, again, diversify the view which name-registration displays from Mountain to Hillock, from Sea even to Puddle; and if Storm and Mist arise upon the prospect to suggest the disturbance and obscurity which are wont to wait on mortal existence, the symbol and promise of something calmer and clearer appears there too, and many a Rainbow cheers the firmament of surnames.

These are a few of the oddities of family nomenclature. It need scarcely be said that interpretations, when they can be given, frequently demolish the strangeness and absurdity of the titles. Thus Death is a name of the local class, being D'Aeth—that is, from Aeth in Flanders; Babe is likely to be a metronymic, from Barbara ; Wedlock is probably Whitlock-a nick-name for a fairhaired person; the Cants "are but the descendants of the old 'Margaret le Coynte,' or Richard le Queynte,' from the early French 'coint,' neat, elegant; "1 Tippler is a respectable trade-name, which formerly denoted merely a seller of liquor; Rice is the old Keltic personal name Rhys (most familiar now in the form of Rees), which, with the patronymic prefix of Wales, has given us Price, Preece, Bryce, Breeze, &c.; Pear is neither more nor less than Pierre, the saint-name on which several family denominations-as Pearce, Spiers, and Pearson-have been founded; Water, again, is merely Walter; while Land is a surname Bardsley' English Surnames, p. 471.

of the local family, pointing to the launde, lawn, or open sward amidst surrounding forest, upon which the first transmitters of the denomination dwelt. These examples will suffice to show how remote often is the true from the seeming meaning of the name.

It would be a hazardous enterprise if a general attempt were made to restore family appellations to their pristine shape; but every member of the community might and should know at least the surname borne by his father, and be able, whatever corruption it may have undergone in the past, to hand it on to his children without further alteration. This, perhaps, may be expected to follow when the provisions for elementary education now in force have told upon the adult population. Out of 364,164 persons who were married in 1879, 58,641-viz. 25,037 men and 33,604 womensigned the registers by mark. It is undoubtedly among this defaulting 58,000, and those whom they represent, that most cognominal uncertainties arise. When they have been taught to write, a main source of denominational corruption and of unmeaning increase in surnames will have been dried up. Surnames will still in all probability continue to multiply; but they will multiply much less than at present, and from causes whose interest and significance will be in no wise lessened by the fact that ignorance of one of the first things that should be known is no longer among them.

EDWARD WHITAKER.

553

WHAT BECAME OF CROMWELL?

"Mizraim cures wounds, and Pharaoh is sold for balsams."

Sir Thomas Browne.

DEATH, like Life, has its history, and man often terminates his

strange vicissitudes on earth only to enter on other vicissitudes still stranger in the grave. We wonder no one has ever undertaken the posthumous memoirs of the great. What a lively volume it would be!-how startling its paradoxes, how fine its irony, how pointed its antitheses! Write it with a pen of lead on leaves of opium, and it would glow with eloquence; indite in the most mournful of styles, and it would blaze with wit. It would be a carnival of extremes-Addison and Joe Miller talking in the same breath, Rabelais and St. Paul bawling each other down. Fortune has cracked many a good joke in her time, but death's jokes are better. They are a little coarse, perhaps, occasionally-a little too broad for a nice taste; but they are meant, doubt it not, kindly. Wages are so high, that we cannot well afford, even when things are prospering with us, to keep, like the Roman consuls, a mementote mortalem esse in our triumphal chariots. At our feasts we omit the skeleton. But for all that we are mortal, and let us hear the Antic's philippics. We can hear them gratis.

When Hamlet let his wit run riot among the tombs, he could get no further than imagining that Alexander the Great might stop a beerbarrel, or imperial Cæsar patch a wall to keep out the wind. Bah! 'twas a foolish speculation. Hamlet was no antiquary; he ought to have known that they were both burnt to snuff. But why need we go to fiction? Let Death preach his sermon from fact, and moralists have their fling at pride fairly. What was the fate of great Talbot-Shakespeare's victorious Talbot-the scourge of France, the hero of Crotoi and Pontoise? A few years ago, some alterations were being made in the parish church at Whitchurch, in Shropshire; the tomb of Talbot was opened. On a careful examination of the skull-we borrow the narrative of one who was present at the exhumation— the cranium was found to be filled with a fibrous substance, which was supposed at first to be some preservative herb inserted when the