TIME. "Devouring Time, with stealing pace, A song on masquerading, sings— "For when we mask our faces, We then unmask our hearts; دو A song by Mr. Arthur Bradley makes tears fall on a lady's bosom "Like summer dew on lilies." Vol. iii contains Cowley's 'Grasshopper,' from Anacreon's Ode to the "Tettix," set to music by J. Sheeles. An Epithalamium on the marriage of a young gentleman with an old lady, praises his wisdom “Then wisely you resign, For sixty, charms so transient, HAPPINESS. "My days have been so wondrous free, With careless ease from tree to tree Ask gliding waters if a tear Of mine increas'd their flowing stream, Or ask the flying gales if e'er I lent one sigh to them!" A STORM LULLED. "But when the tempest's rage is o'er, The billows cease to lash the shore, The 'Genius,' written in 1717, on occasion of the Duke of Marlborough's apoplexy, gives him no niggardly praise. It says— and it calls him "Poets, Prophets, Heroes, Kings, Pleas'd thy ripe approach foresee; "Half an angel, man no more." Another song, written by Mr. Richard Estcourt, is called "The Tryal and Condemnation of John Duke of Marlborough.' "To tell you the deposition of the Christians, and not of the Jews, against John Duke of Marlborough." It seems to have been written in his behalf when he was under the charge of having taken a bribe from a Jew for the supply of the army with bread, and in strains of irony heap upon him charges of having done great services for the land. It says, at Oudenard, "He took a delight to beat even those That never beat him in their lives." "Twelve years, it sadly true is, By taking of towns and lines, He has spoil'd the Pretender's designs. And by the monsieur's fall, He has pass'd on this isle for a soldier, But, it seems, he knows nothing at all: Among the many other songs of the collection we find Prior's 'Cupid Mistaken,' Gay's 'Black-eyed Susan,' with a tune by Leveridge, and 'The Charms of Nonsense,' by Richard Savage. A song, called the "Cremona Fiddle," was written on the demolition of one at Longleat House, where it was put in a soft easy chair, and crushed by a fat man, who sat down on it unawares. ART. V.-Family History. Memoirs of the Ancient Earls of Warren and Surrey, and their Descendants to the present time. By the Rev. JOHN WATSON, M.A., F.A.S., late Fellow of Brazen-Nose College, in Oxford, and Rector of Stockport, in Cheshire. Warrington: Printed by William Eyres, M.DCC.LXXXII. 2 vols. 4to. "The glories of our birth and state Are shadows, not substantial things; Must tumble down, And in the dust be equal made With the poor crooked scythe and spade." SO sang in the sixteenth century a member of a "worshipful family" of the chivalrous name of Shirley, which flourished in Sussex in the reigns of the Tudors and the Stuarts, and whose substantial manorial residence stands in rural seclusion on the banks of the Ouse, near Lewes; and on whose portals is yet to be observed the moralising spirit of the race, in the admonitory family motto, Abstinete, Sustinete. But, alas! for the vanities which poetry affects to despise, and mankind in a cynical mood sometimes recoils from;-how universal is the appetite for "titles, honours, dignities!" Here are two portly quarto volumes, profusely illustrated, got up at great expense, to prove the right of a Knight of the Bath to the dignity of an ancient Earldom. The work, the title of which is given at the head of this article, was executed by order of Sir George Warren, at the end of the last century, to show his claim to the title of Earl of Warren and Surrey. But the author did not succeed in his endeavour.* As this work is a genealogical dissertation, full of names and dates, and interspersed with extracts from records and copies of Latin charters, there are no passages which would be of sufficient interest in themselves to be worth extracting. It is not a readable narrative of family history, and therefore has no stories or incidents which could be detached and presented to the reader. We propose, therefore, to avail ourselves of the materials supplied by these volumes, to make a rapid sketch of the history of a fine old baronial family; and to offer some remarks, and suggestions in general, on the hitherto neglected subject of family history. Among the many families of rank and wealth who flourished in this country during the first three centuries after the Norman conquest, the Earls of Warren and Surrey occupied a high position. The splendid actions of their lives were commensurate with the duration of their honours, for in the active times in which they lived supineness and imbecility would soon have caused their transfer to men of energy and capacity. Their greatness began by an alliance with royalty, was sustained by splendid matches, and, when the male line had become extinct by the death of the third earl, his daughter, by marrying successively two scions of a royal race, made more brilliant the reputation of titles which were now borne by princes of the blood; and it was not till the death of John, eighth and last earl, in the reign of Edward III, without lawful issue, that these eminent dignities ceased to be recorded in the illustrious roll of the nobles of England. * The defect in his argument is explained at length in Cartwright's Hist. of Western Sussex (vol. ii, p. 128.) The first of the family on record would appear to be Walter de St. Martin, whose son was created Earl of Warren in Normandy. This title was furnished by a town and river so called, where the Castle of Bellencombre (thus named from its standing on a graceful mound) exists to this day, a melancholy wreck of its past grandeur and importance. In this country, such an historical ruin would doubtless be in the hands of a patrician, and be preserved from further desecration; but in France it is otherwise. This venerable relic of the past has been purchased by its mercenary proprietor, for the sake of the materials; and he boasts of the profitable speculation he has made! The next Earl of Warren married a daughter of the Conqueror, and distinguished himself at the battle of Hastings. The reward of his valour was nearly 300 lordships in different parts of England, with the Castles of Conisborough and Lewes. His life seems to have been both eventful and useful. From his biographer we learn that he was made a Chief Justiciary of England-that he put down a revolt by the Earls of Norfolk and Hereford—that he built a Castle at Reigate, and another at Castle-Acre, and rebuilt his own chief residence, and the head of his Barony, at Lewes-that he was made Earl and Governor of Surrey—that he founded Lewes Priory, which he gave to the Cluniac Monks, whom, in company with his wife, he visited in Burgundy-that he laid the foundation of another at Castle-Acre-and that he died still in the prime of life, after twenty years enjoyment of the fruits of his successful efforts on the field of Hastings. The second Earl forfeits his estate by conspiring against his sovereign, and joining his rebellious son, Robert Duke of Normandy. But he is subsequently restored, becomes one of the king's best friends, and behaves with great valour in the warlike service of King Henry. The third Earl's life partakes of the usual vicissitudes of the period. He attends King Stephen into Normandy, and is concerned in a meeting there. He is with the king at the battle of Lincoln, where he appears to have acted with treachery and fled from the scene of warfare, and is afterwards made prisoner. When set at liberty, he engages in a new adventure, joins other Barons in the first Crusade, and is slain by the Turks. His heart is brought to England, and buried at Lewes. Besides benefactions to the religious establishments of his forefathers, he founds a priory at Thetford, and endows it. With him ended the male line of the Earls of Warren and Surrey. The lives of the succeeding earls are marked with more varied incidents than even those of their ancestors, These we must pass over. Most of them are scattered over the general histories of the time, and in a collected form, pourtrayed by a graphic pen, would make an interesting chapter of family history. A remarkable circumstance related by Hume is not noticed by Mr. Watson. When the Commissioner of Edward I asked the Earl of Warren to show his titles to his estates, the earl drew his sword, and said, "By this instrument do I hold my lands, and by the same I intend to defend them! Our ancestors coming into the realm with William the Bastard, acquired their possessions by their good swords. William did not make a conquest alone, or for himself solely; our ancestors were helpers and participants with him." Such title deeds were indisputable ! After devoting the whole of the first and nearly half of the second volume to the Earls, Mr. Watson fills the rest of his space with a genealogical account of the Warrens of Poynton in Cheshire (represented by Sir Geo. Warren, Knt. claimant of the title) and other collateral branches of which one received the title of Baronet, in the person of Sir John Borlase Warren, in 1775. None of them appear to have held a higher rank than that of private gentry. The work is sumptuously embellished. Mansions, castles, ruined abbeys, and priories, monumental effigies, family portraits, facsimiles of charters and seals, and coats of arms innumerable adorn the work. In this respect it is hardly to be surpassed. But, in the arrangement of the materials, and the treatment of the subject, we confess we cannot hold up Watson's Memoirs of the Warrens, as a pattern of Family History. Of Family Histories we have but few, perhaps some twenty or thirty at most-the greater part very dry, nearly all very laborious, and, one or two excepted, without any pretension to the style of a readable narrative. They are not what they should be. Lord Lindsay's Lives of the Lindsays, one of the most recent, and one of the few not privately printed, is too diffuse—at least too voluminous : it gives too much prominence to one family, and to modern personages; it says too little about other branches than the chief, and too little about the Lindsays and the Lindseys who lived in the days of the Plantagenets and the Tudors. It contains no tabular pedigrees and is devoid of illustrations. Perhaps the best model for this kind of work in the case of an ancient and honourable family, not historical, at least not of conspicuous figure in English history, is the |