trace out some of the secrets of descent and destiny; and as we
study, we think less of Sir Bernard Burke and more of Mr. Galton.
Not only do our character and talents lie upon the anvil and
receive their temper during generations; but the very plot of our
life's story unfolds itself on a scale of centuries, and the
biography of the man is only an episode in the epic of the family.
From this point of view I ask the reader's leave to begin this
notice of a remarkable man who was my friend, with the accession of
his great-grandfather, John Jenkin.

This John Jenkin, a grandson of Damaris Kingsley, of the family of
'Westward Ho!' was born in 1727, and married Elizabeth, daughter of
Thomas Frewen, of Church House, Northiam. The Jenkins had now been
long enough intermarrying with their Kentish neighbours to be
Kentish folk themselves in all but name; and with the Frewens in
particular their connection is singularly involved. John and his
wife were each descended in the third degree from another Thomas
Frewen, Vicar of Northiam, and brother to Accepted Frewen,
Archbishop of York. John's mother had married a Frewen for a
second husband. And the last complication was to be added by the
Bishop of Chichester's brother, Charles Buckner, Vice-Admiral of
the White, who was twice married, first to a paternal cousin of
Squire John, and second to Anne, only sister of the Squire's wife,
and already the widow of another Frewen. The reader must bear Mrs.
Buckner in mind; it was by means of that lady that Fleeming Jenkin
began life as a poor man. Meanwhile, the relationship of any
Frewen to any Jenkin at the end of these evolutions presents a
problem almost insoluble; and we need not wonder if Mrs. John, thus
exercised in her immediate circle, was in her old age 'a great
genealogist of all Sussex families, and much consulted.' The names