he, after a pause; "for you are either very patient or completely exhausted-which is it ?"

"But why have you taken the name of Pracontal, and not your real name, Bramleigh?" asked she, eagerly.

'By Bolton's advice, in the first instance, he wisely taking into account how rich the family were whose right I was about to question, and how poor I was. Bolton inclined to a compromise, and, indeed, he never ceased to press upon me that it would be the fairest and most generous of all arrangements; but that to effect this, I must not shock the sensibilities of the Bramleighs by assuming their name-that to do so was to declare war at once."

"And yet, had you called yourself Bramleigh, you would have warned others that the right of the Bramleighs to this estate was at least disputed."

Pracontal could scarcely repress a smile at a declaration so manifestly prompted by selfish considerations; but he made no reply.

"Well, and this compromise, do they agree to it?" asked she, hastily.

"Some weeks ago, I believed it was all concluded; but this very morning my lawyer's letter tells me that Augustus Bramleigh will not hear of it, that he is indignant at the very idea, and that the law alone must decide between us."

"What a scandal!"

"So I thought. Worse, of course, for them, who are in the world and well known. I am a nobody."

"A nobody, who might be somebody to-morrow," said she, slowly and deliberately.

"After all, the stage of pretension is anything but pleasant, and I cannot but regret that we have not come to some arrangement."

"Can I be of use? Could my services be employed to any advantage?"

"At a moment, I cannot answer; but I am very grateful for even the thought."

"I cannot pretend to any influence with the family. them ever liked me; but they might listen to me, and

Indeed, none of they might also believe that my interests went with their own. Would you like to meet Augustus Bramleigh ?"

"There is nothing I desire so much."

"I'll not promise he'll come; but if he should consent, will you come here on Tuesday morning-say, at eleven o'clock-and meet him? know he's expected at Albano by Sunday, and I'll have a letter to propose the meeting, in his hands, on his arrival."

"I have no words to speak my gratitude to you."

Surnames in England and Wales.

Ir is now thirty years ago that the Act of Parliament which provided for a general registration of births, deaths, and marriages in England and Wales first came into operation. During the period which has elapsed since then, about thirty-nine millions of names have been recorded, in pursuance of the enactment, and indexes of these names have been regularly framed, and carefully preserved, at the central Register Office in London.

In this manner evidence has been amassed relative to the family nomenclature of the country, such as has never been collected by any other process. It is highly improbable that there is a single surname amongst us at the present time which has not, in one place or another, appeared on the lists to which we refer. And the number and variety of the titles thus assembled together are equally astonishing. With regard to the former, it was shown by the Registrar-General, in a calculation based upon these indexes, which appeared in his annual report for 1853, that there are in England and Wales between thirty-five and forty thousand family surnames. In this computation, however, those appellations which varied in spelling in any degree whatever were dealt with as separate names, notwithstanding an undoubted or probable community of derivation. A considerable deduction from the above figures should therefore, as the Registrar-General justly observed, be made, if such denominations as Smith and Smythe, Davis and Davies, Clark and Clarke are to be regarded as identical; and the necessity for such a deduction will become additionally apparent when we show, as we shall presently have occasion to do, that in some instances the varieties of spelling applied to a single appellation are extremely numerous. But after due allowance is made for this fictitious multiplication of surnames, the remaining total of distinct varieties will undoubtedly be very large. Thirty thousand has been mentioned as a safe approximation to the number. With respect to the wide range of objects and notions from which these family names have been drawn, a single glance at the indexes is sufficient to convince us. We soon discover, indeed, that a few leading sources have furnished far larger numbers of individuals with titles than the various other sources have done. But strangely diverse and extensive are those facts and circumstances from which the remaining and less common surnames have been supplied. The entire animated creation; the vegetable and mineral worlds; the different relationships of social and domestic life; offices and virtues; habits, actions, and emotions-all have lent their numerous terms to meet the

exigencies of family distinction. Nor have we been content to borrow such names only as relate to the conditions and surroundings of our earthly existence. The supernatural has been drawn upon as well as the natural. There are Angels, Souls, Spirits, Ghosts, and Fairies in our midst; and we have ventured to appropriate to the purposes of our nomenclature even such titles as those of Death and Hell, Eden and Paradise. It is true, as we shall hereafter sce, that in many cases the etymologists require us to withdraw from the various categories above indicated not a few names which, from the manner of their spelling at the present time, would seem properly to take their places in these different lists. But, after all, such withdrawals involve nothing more than a transference of certain appellations from one class to another; and probably the corrections of etymology do not on the whole materially narrow the wide area over which, on a first view of the registration indexes, our family nomenclature appears to extend.

We may perhaps be enabled the more satisfactorily to notice some of those facts relative to our surnames on which the registration system has thrown light, if, in the first place, we briefly consider the purely historical portion of our subject.

It will be remembered then, that in primitive and scanty communities men neither received nor required more than a single name a piece. There is no reason to suppose that this name ever, consisted of a word arbitrarily chosen, and conferred without object as a mere appellative. It expressed either some fact relative to the birth or personal appearance of the newlyborn child, or-perhaps more commonly-some aspiration as to the infant's future character or career on the part of the parents. Such names as were originated in the latter manner would naturally enough be closely associated with the religious belief of those who chose them.

The mythology of the ancient Teutons and their nomenclature were intimately connected. The deities whom they dreaded and worshipped, and the heroic qualities which they attributed to those deities, supplied a large proportion of their personal titles. Their simple root names, however, were soon to a great extent merged in combinations; although amongst our monosyllabic surnames at the present time some are to be found which are held to have come down to us unaltered from the highest Teutonic antiquity. The combinations adopted were frequently suitable and suggestive. But this cannot be said of all, or even of most of them. In the course of time names were conjoined with but little regard to appropriateness, being evidently the titles of different heroes, who had been invested with appellations denoting various and sometimes incongruous qualities. So that at an early period the influence of actual persons upon the nomenclature of our progenitors began to assert its superiority over that of regard for titular propriety; in other words, the power of human association soon superseded the love of verbal consistency. It is interesting to note in the Teutonic names the prominent homage paid to work and will, to the virtues of firmness and determination; and while we contrast

these titles with the more highly romantic and poetical denominations of the Kelt, we cannot fail to recognize in the two classes of names the early manifestation of those diverse qualities which have appropriated to the races their widely different roles in the drama of history.

But the single personal name was sufficient only under the most primitive conditions of human life. Growing numbers rendered the frequent repetition of similar titles unavoidable, and further methods of distinction became necessary. In common with most other races, the Anglo-Saxons resorted to two or three simple means for meeting the necessity. Men came to be called the sons of their fathers, while personal *peculiarities originated nicknames which also sometimes served to distinguish individuals. The situation of a man's residence, or his occupation, moreover, frequently supplied a description of him which answered, to a certain extent, as an additional name. There must have been, however, in the generality of cases, a great deal of uncertainty attendant upon the use of these modes of distinction. And even in those instances in which the second title, from being constantly applied, answered most of the ends of a modern surname, it related to the individual only, and involved nothing like a system of family nomenclature. "Although it is certain," says Mr. Sharon Turner,* "that such additional appellations were occasionally used by the Anglo-Saxons, yet they appear to have been but personal distinctions, and not to have been appropriated by them as family names in the manner of surnames with us."

The first movement towards distinctive family titles seems, indeed, to have been made in a different direction, and to have consisted, not in the adoption of a second name at all, but in the modification of the personal or fore-name. A prefix was selected, which was made common to the appellations of all the members of a family; and with this prefix the different and distinguishing terminations were compounded. Ethel-, Æd-, and Ælf-, were prefixes of this description; and these, with many other similar ones, were employed in a great variety of combinations. This system, however, was but rarely employed, and was not even perfectly carried out by those who in a measure adopted it.

The year 1000 has been mentioned as the probable period at which surnames in the present acceptation of the word-were first regularly employed. To the Normans belongs the credit of having instituted them;. and they may be said to have been formally introduced into this country at the Conquest. It appears, however, on good evidence that they were not wholly unknown here prior to that event.

The feudal system naturally tended to create surnames out of landed possessions, and at the same time to limit their use to the upper classes. For a long time, therefore, they were the privileged titles of the few, and not the means of family distinction employed by the people in general It may be said that five centuries elapsed from the date of their importa

History of the Anglo-Saxons, vol. iii. p. 10.

tion to that of their general adoption throughout the country-during which interval they were but slowly spreading downwards through society. It is difficult now to follow closely the gradual process by which the ancient forms of designation became as it were crystallized into the consistency of permanent and hereditary surnames; but it is certain that a large proportion of our family titles of to-day are substantially identical with the mere descriptive terms used to distinguish individuals, from the early years of Anglo-Saxon history downwards. Thus it has happened that names representing mere personal caprice and popular fancy have taken their places amongst those originated in more regular ways, and that the patronymics, the titles derived from lands, from situation of residences, from trades and qualities, have been handed down to us amidst a heterogeneous multitude of other appellations, which, as we have seen, are surprising from their variety, and often perplexing from their extreme oddness. The process by which the ancient personal names of preNorman times have been perpetuated in the form of surnames demands a moment's separate consideration. It was probably a not uncommon practice, among such of the Anglo-Saxon race as were enabled by their energy of character to obtain their deliverance from serfdom under Norman rule, and to regain something of the social position which they had lost at the Conquest, to recur, in choosing their family name, to the honoured title of some ancestor of their own. Had it not been for this loving adoption of ancestral names, we should probably find amongst those of our family denominations which follow the patronymic form scarcely anything of a Saxon character; for by the time that surnames were beginning to come into general use the old Saxon baptismal appellations had mostly given way to the Johns, Jameses, Thomases, Williams, and Roberts of Norman introduction."

The period of five hundred years which we have mentioned above brings us down to the time of the Reformation; and this is the era at which family nomenclature in England appears to have arrived at something like definiteness. The institution of parish registers-which were ordered to be kept in lieu of the monkish records, on the suppression of the monasteries by Henry VIII.-is considered to have been mainly instrumental in producing this result. Although, however, the time we allude to may justly be mentioned as associated with a general uniformity of method as to surnames, it should not be forgotten that in some parts of the country uncertainty continued to prevail to a much later date.

It may perhaps be not uninteresting to the reader if we now consider some of the most common English surnames, with the view of understanding the causes to which their frequent occurrence amongst us is attributable.

In the annual report of the Registrar-General above referred to—that for 1853-an interesting table on this subject, based upon the information

*See LOWER's Patronymica Britannica. Preliminary Dissertation, p. 16.