A delicate beauty hangs between, a face fair, and loved, and lost,
centuries ago--a song to the eye--a poem to the heart--the Aurelia of
that old society.

"Lady Dorothea Sculpin, who married young Lord Pop and Cock, and died
prematurely in Italy."

Poor Lady Dorothea! whose great grandchild, in the tenth remove, died
last week, an old man of eighty!

Next the gentle lady hangs a fierce figure, flourishing a sword, with
an anchor embroidered on his coat-collar, and thunder and lightning,
sinking ships flames and tornadoes in the background.

"Rear Admiral Sir Shark Sculpin, who fell in the great action off
Madagascar."

So Minim goes on through the series, brandishing his ancestors about
my head, and incontinently knocking me into admiration.

And when we reach the last portrait and our own times, what is the
natural emotion? Is it not to put Minim against the wall, draw off at
him with my eyes and mind, scan him, and consider his life, and
determine how much of the Eight Honorable Haddock's integrity, and the
Lady Dorothy's loveliness, and the Admiral Shark's valor, reappears in
the modern man? After all this proving and refining, ought not the
last child of a famous race to be its flower and epitome? Or, in the
case that he does not chance to be so, is it not better to conceal the
family name?