BIOGRAPHY.

BY THE REV. J. G. WOOD. CHAPTER I.

N the introductory preface to Waterton's Wanderhimself, but in the volumes of his Essays, and some of his Letters, he has fortunately given a sufficiency of information to furnish a tolerably unbroken biography from his birth to his death. His was a very long life, and as he considered that life as a sacred trust, he never wasted an hour of it.

IN ings, the author has afforded but little account of

WATERTON was the representative of one of the most ancient English families, and was justly proud of his descent from Sir Thomas More. A clock which had belonged to that great ancestor is still in existence, and occupied a place of honour on the upper landing of the central staircase of Walton Hall. It is but a little clock, and has only a single hand, but it keeps time as well as ever, and the sound of its bell is so clear, that it can be heard at a considerable distance from the house. He mentions in his own quaint way, that if his ancestors had been as careful of their family records as Arabs are of the pedigrees of their horses, he might have been able to trace his descent up to

Adam and Eve.

The following account of the Waterton family is taken from the Illustrated London News of June 17, 1865, and has been revised by a member of the house. "The good and amiable old Lord of Walton, Charles Waterton, better known for miles around his ancestral domain as 'the squire,' was the representative of one of our most ancient untitled aristocratic families, and, what is more deserving of record in these days, in the male line.

"His ancestor, Reiner, the son of Norman of Normandy, who became Lord of Waterton in 1159, was of Saxon origin. The Watertons of Waterton became extinct in the male line in the fifteenth century, when their vast possessions passed away, through Cecilia, wife of Lord Welles and heiress of her brother, Sir Robert Waterton, to her four daughters and coheiresses, who married, respectively, Robert, Lord Willoughby de Eresby, Sir Thomas Dymoke, Thomas Laurence, Esq., and Sir Thomas Delaware,

"Sir John Waterton was high sheriff of Lincoln in 1401, and master of the horse to Henry V. at Agincourt. Sir Robert, his brother, whose wife was a lady of the garter, was governor of Pontefract Castle while Richard II. was confined there he had been master of the horse to Henry IV. Sir Hugh, another brother, held high offices of state. Charles Waterton, in whom the representation of his ancient house was vested, was descended from Richard, second son of William Waterton, Lord of Waterton, who died in 1255. In 1435 John Waterton married the heiress of Sir William Ashenhull, and became Lord of Walton and Cawthorne, jure uxoris.

"Walton formed part of the Honour of Pontefract, of which Ashenhold, a Saxon thane, was the Lord, and which was held by his son Ailric, in the reign of S. Edward the Confessor. At the Conquest it was given by William the Norman to one of his followers, Ilbert de Lacy, who granted it back again to Ailric, father of Suein. Adam, the son of Suein, Lord of Brierley, Cawthorne, and Walton, was the founder of the priory of Monk Bretton, and left two daughters and co-heiresses, Amabil and Matilda. The former had Walton and Cawthorne, and became the wife of William de Nevile. They had one daughter and heiress, who married Thomas, the son of Philip de Burgh. Walton and Cawthorne remained in the possession of the De Burghs for seven generations, and then passed with the co-heiress of Sir John de Burgh to Sir William Ashenhull, whose heiress conveyed it to John Waterton in 1435.

"Thus Mr. Waterton was twenty-seventh Lord of Walton, and sixteenth from John Waterton, who acquired that lordship. There was a grant of free warren at Walton in the reign of Edward I., and a | license to crenellate in 1333. Without reference to the numerous distinguished alliances of his ancestors, it may be interesting to state that Mr. Waterton, through distinct sources, traced his descent several times over from S. Matilda, Queen of Germany; S. Margaret of Scotland, S. Humbert of Savoy, S. Louis of France, S. Ferdinand of Castile, and Wladimir the Great, called S. Wladimir of Russia, and Anne, called S. Anne of Russia. Through his grandmother he was ninth in descent from Sir Thomas More."

The Watertons fared but badly in the stormy times of the Reformation, and, preferring conscience to property, they retained their ancient faith, but lost heavily in this world's goods. The many coercive acts against the Roman Catholics naturally had their effect, not only on those who actually lived in the time of the Reformation, but upon their successors. A Roman Catholic could not sit in parliament, he could not hold a commission in the army, he could not be a justice of the peace, he had to pay double land-tax, and to think himself fortunate if he had any land left on which taxes could be demanded. He was not allowed to keep a horse worth more than five pounds, and, more irritating than all, he had either to attend the parish church or to pay twenty pounds for every month of absence. In fact, a Roman Catholic was looked upon and treated as a wholly inferior being, and held much the same relative position to his persecutors as Jews held towards the Normans and Saxons in the times of the Crusades.

Within the memory of many now living, the worst of the oppressive acts have been repealed, and Roman Catholics are now as free to follow their own form of worship as before the days of Henry VIII. They have seats in parliament and on the bench, they hold commissions both in the army and navy, and all the petty but galling interferences with the details of their private life have been abolished.

Still, Waterton was, during some of his best years, a personal sufferer from these acts, and they rankled too deeply in his mind to be forgotten. Hence, the repeated and mostly irrelevant allusions in his writings to Martin Luther. Henry VIII., Queen Bess, Archbishop Cranmer, Oliver Cromwell, Charles Stuart, "Dutch William" (mostly associated with the "Hanoverian" rat and the national debt), and other personages celebrated in history.

Deeply as he felt the indignities to which he and his family and co-religionists had been subjected, and frequently as he referred to them, both in writing and conversation, he never used a worse weapon than irony, and even that was tempered by an underlying current of humour. He had felt the wounds, but he could jest at the scars.

the anxious glances which he cast in the morning to judge by the master's wig of the state of his temper; and of being captured in the very act of getting through a barred window, is exceedingly humorous. He also relates two anecdotes, both telling against himself, and both prospective, as it were, of the celebrated fact of riding on the back of a cayman and of his shipwreck. He was "dared" by his comrades to get on the back of a cow, which he did, but less fortunate than in his cayman adventure, was ignominiously thrown over her horns. He also took it into his head to get into a washing-tub, and take a cruise in the horse-pond; but lost his balance at the sudden appearance of the master, and was overturned into the muddy water.

The whole of the account of his Tudhoe school experiences is given in a collected volume of his Essays and Letters (F. Warne & Co.), edited by Mr. N. Moore, who had the sad privilege of being with him when he met with his fatal accident, and by his sofa when he died, about thirty-eight hours afterwards.

Tudhoe then being only a preliminary school, though it has since developed into Ushaw College, Waterton was removed at fourteen years of age to Stonyhurst, where he was one of the first pupils. This establishment, then a comparatively small one, was conducted by the English Jesuits who had been driven from their home at Liége. Of them Waterton always spoke with reverence and affection, and his life at Stonyhurst was a singularly happy one.

At first, his ingrained propensity for enterprise led him into trouble, and one adventure is too good not to be narrated in his own words. His account of it is another example of the way in which he enjoyed telling an anecdote against himself.

At Stonyhurst there are boundaries marked out to the students, which they are not allowed to pass ; and there are prefects always pacing to and fro within the lines to prevent any unlucky boy from straying on the other side of them.

"Notwithstanding the vigilance of the lynx-eyed guardians, I would now and then manage to escape, and would bolt into a very extensive labyrinth of yew and holly trees close at hand. It was the chosen place for animated nature. Birds, in particular, used to frequent the spacious enclosure, both to obtain food and enjoy security. Many a time have I hunted the foumart and the squirrel. I once took a cut through it to a neighbouring wood, where I knew of a carrion-crow's nest. The prefect missed me; and judging that I had gone into the labyrinth, he gave chase without loss of time. After eluding him in cover for nearly half an hour, being hard pressed, I took away down a hedgerow,

At ten years of age he was placed under the Rev. A. Strong's care, in a school just founded at Tudhoe, a village near Durham. From Waterton's reminiscences, his instructor seems to have inclined to the severe order of discipline, and to have been rather liberal of the birch, of which instrument Waterton had his full share. His account of storming the larder for the support of hungry inmates; of

He was

"I've just saved myself, Joe,' said I; 'cover me up with litter.'

"He had hardly complied with my request, when in bounced the prefect by the same gate through which I had entered.

"Have you seen Charles Waterton?' said he, quite out of breath.

My trusty guardian answered, in a tone of voice which would have deceived anybody, 'Sir, I have

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