"F. W. Newman,
"7 P.V.E."
"_20th December_, 1857.


This remark of Newman's that he saw a strong likeness in "the face of the
late lamented Brigadier Nicholson of the Punjaub" to his friend Dr.
Nicholson is one of those arresting suggestions which seem to strike
sudden light out of the flints of ancestry which whiten the road of life
along which we have come.

That there _is_ a distinct likeness in the two faces no one who had seen
the portraits in Captain Lionel Trotter's _Life of John Nicholson_, and
then looked at that of Dr. John Nicholson in this book, could have had a
doubt. But, as it seems to me, there is even more ground for the
likelihood of Newman's suggestion, if one tries to trace the lineage and
land of the families of Nicholson in years gone by. I quote the following
from Captain Trotter's _Life of John Nicholson_:--

"In the days of our Tudor sovereigns the family of which John Nicholson
was to be the bright particular star had made their home in the border
county of Cumberland." He goes on to say that the first to come over to
Ireland was Rev. William Nicholson (in 1589), and he married the Lady
Elizabeth Percy. Captain Trotter says there is a tradition that his two
brothers went over to Ireland with William Nicholson. One settled in
Derry, the other in Dublin. During McGuire's rebellion in 1641, his son's
wife and her baby boy "were the only two in Cran-na-gael" [now known as
Cranagill] "who escaped the common massacre by hiding behind some
brushwood. In their wanderings thence they fell in with a party of