was a learned man and an antiquary,--A GREAT ANTIQUARY! You may have
read his works. I know there is one copy of them in the British Museum,
and there is another here, but that copy Mr. Darrell keeps under lock and
key."

"I am ashamed to say I don't even know the titles of those works."

"There were 'Popular Ballads on the Wars of the Roses;' 'Darrelliana,'
consisting of traditional and other memorials of the Darrell family;
'Inquiry into the Origin of Legends Connected with Dragons;' 'Hours
amongst Monumental Brasses,' and other ingenious lucubrations above the
taste of the vulgar; some of them were even read at the Royal Society of
Antiquaries. They cost much to print and publish. But I have heard my
father, who was his bailiff, say that he was a pleasant man, and was fond
of reciting old scraps of poetry, which he did with great energy; indeed,
Mr. Darrell declares that it was the noticing, in his father's animated
and felicitous elocution, the effects that voice, look, and delivery can
give to words, which made Mr. Darrell himself the fine speaker he is.
But I can only recollect the antiquary as a very majestic gentleman, with
a long pigtail--awful, rather, not so much so as his son, but still awful
--and so sad-looking; you would not have recovered your spirits for a
week if you had seen him, especially when the old house wanted repairs,
and he was thinking how he could pay for them!"

"Was Mr. Darrell, the present one, an only child?"

"Yes, and much with his father, whom he loved most dearly, and to this
day he sighs if he has to mention his father's name! He has old Mr.
Darrell's portrait over the chimney-piece in his own reading-room; and he
had it in his own library in Carlton Gardens. Our Mr. Darrell's mother