VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. Landless Lords and Baronets. "The land left by thy father ? that rich land Twenty descents; which, like a riotous fool, MASSINGER. It is incumbent on the high and generous spirit of an ancient nation to cherish those sacred groves that surround their ancestral mansions, and to perpetuate them to their descendants." WASHINGTON IRVING. THE separation of TITLE and Estate has been, most assuredly, the main cause of the destruction of noble families. For this evil, I venture still to prescribe my favourite remedy-the ENDOWMENT of every hereditary honour with a certain landed property. Even though the law of England may now prevent such an interference with the descent of land, a special enactment of the Legislature would easily meet the case-an Act to declare that an adequate portion of the estate of the grantee of each hereditary dignity con B ferred by the Crown, should follow the title, and be inseparable from it. Every title might have affixed to it a territorial designation, (as, for instance, "Egerton of Tatton,") and the land, thus named, might be declared inalienable from the dignity for all time to come. It is marvellous how the possession of ever so small a landed interest keeps a family together for century after century. A statement made by Lord Palmerston, who is always so happy and apposite in his illustrations, gives great force to this assertion. In a speech to a Hampshire audience, at the opening of a local railway, his lordship observed, that there was a small estate in the New Forest, which had belonged to the lime-burner PURKIS, who picked up the body of Rufus, and carried the royal corpse in his humble cart to Winchester, and which had come down, through an uninterrupted male line of ancestry, to a worthy yeoman of the same name, now resident on the exact same Farm, near Stoney Cross, on the Ringwood Road, eight miles from Romsey. But a case of still longer descent in persons not allied to rank and fortune, may be quoted. At Ambrose's Barn, on the borders of Thorp, near Chertsey, resides a farmer, Mr. Wapshot, whose ancestors have dwelt on the same spot ever since the time of ALFRED the Great, by whom the Farm was granted to Reginald Wapshot. "How much more safe the Vassal than the Lord : If some such system as this endowment of Titles of Honour had been acted on in days gone by, the Earl of Perth and Melfort would now enjoy a portion, at least, of the historic inheritance of the Drummonds; the late Earl of Huntingdon, the representative of the famous house of Hastings, would not have been restored to a jandless title; the Earl of Buckinghamshire might still be seated at the old Manor-House of Blickling; Viscount Mountmorres would yet have his home at Castle Morres, and Viscount Gort at his princely castle of Loughcooter ; Lord Audley would have a share of the broad acres won by his chivalrous ancestors; Lord Kingsland, the waiter at the Dawson Street Hotel, would not have been a pauper, wholly dependent on the Crown's bounty, and Lord Aylmer, of Balrath, would not be driven to fight the battle of life in the distant colony of Canada. A fragment, at all events, of the great Tristernagh estate would yet give local position to the old Baronetical family of Piers, and a remnant of the extensive Carbery possessions of the Moores would have saved their representative, the present Sir Richard Emanuel Moore, Bart., from the necessity of holding the situation of jailor at Spike Island. The ancient Baronetcy of Hay would not have come, despoiled of its fine estate of Park, to be the empty inheritance of a Clerk in a branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland, nor that of Wishart, to be represented by a wanderer in Australia and New Zealand. The story of the poor Baronets, Echlin and Norwich, would not have to be related; Lord Kirkcudbright need not have stood behind the counter of his glove shop in Edinburgh; and that noblehearted gentleman, Mr. Surtees, the historian of Durham, would have lost the opportunity of taking from the workhouse of Chester-le Street old Sir Thomas Conyers, the last baronet of Horden. I will instance a few cases in illustration of my subject: I. THE LORD KIRKCUDBRIGHT. “This is the state of man; to-day he puts forth THE Maclellans were of great antiquity in the South of Scotland, and held the office of sheriff of Galloway in ancient times. Duncan Maclellan is mentioned in a charter of Alexander II., 1217, and Gilbert Maclellan in one of King David II. There were, according to Crawford, no fewer than twelve knights of the name, and there were many other Maclellans distinguished in history. Sir Robert Maclellan, one of the gentlemen of the bedchamber to James VI. and Charles I., was created a peer by the title of LORD KIRKCUDBRIGHT, 25th May, 1633, to him and his heirs male, bearing his name and arms. The fourth possessor of the title, WILLIAM, Lord Kirkcudbright, died under age, and without issue, in 1669, when the whole estate was carried off by his father's creditors; so that when the succession opened to his cousin-german, John Maclellan, there being nothing left to support the |