She was a Percy, not by name, for that had been lost in the female line
some generations before, but the pedigree in my possession shows how
just was her vaunt in that respect. For vaunt it she did, to us at
least, often bringing it forward to check any tendency to behavior
unbefitting those who claimed descent from

"The stout earl of Northumberland,"

with whom I ought to be well acquainted, for the singing of Chevy Chace
in proper time and tune with her, was the only secular accomplishment in
which my dear grandmother personally labored to perfect me, except
knitting and curious old-fashioned needlework. The pride of ancestry
took strong hold of my mind, and such an ancestry accorded but too well
with my romance, innate and acquired. It stood me, many a time, in the
stead of better things, when nerving myself to endure affliction and
wrong; and therefore I notice it, to warn you against exposing your own
children to the same snare.

Next to the fashion, if not in an equal or superior degree, I think my
grandmother most abhorred the French. Indeed her strongest denunciations
against the reigning modes were usually clinched with the triumphant
assertion that they were "French fashions." No marvel if her spirit was
stirred within her by the horrors of revolutionary France, and her
Protestantism strengthened by the butcheries of "Ninety-eight." I knew
that she was a protester and a tory of no common stamp; and I knew that
she brought her Bible forward in support of every opinion that she
uttered. Rarely did I visit her without finding her buried in the study
of that blessed book; and I know that she strove to teach me much of its
meaning; but our change of residence proved a great bar to personal