 in any period of the
family history, displayed an overweening amount of family pride, surely the
weakness will be considered not only pardonable but laudable, when the immense
superiority of the house to the rest of mankind, in respect of this its ancient
origin, is taken into account.
    It is remarkable that as there was, in the oldest family of which we have
any record, a murderer and a vagabond, so we never fail to meet, in the records
of all old families, with innumerable repetitions of the same phase of
character. Indeed, it may be laid down as a general principle, that the more
extended the ancestry, the greater the amount of violence and vagabondism; for
in ancient days, those two amusements, combining a wholesome excitement with a
promising means of repairing shattered fortunes, were at once the ennobling
pursuit and the healthful recreation of the Quality of this land.
    Consequently, it is a source of inexpressible comfort and happiness to find,
that in various periods of our history, the Chuzzlewits were actively connected
with divers slaughterous conspiracies and bloody frays. It is further recorded
of them, that being clad from head to heel in steel of proof, they did on many
occasions lead their leather-jerkined soldiers to the death, with invincible
courage, and afterwards return home gracefully to their relations and friends.
    There can be no doubt that at least one Chuzzlewit came over with William
the Conqueror. It does not appear that this illustrious ancestor came over that
monarch, to employ the vulgar phrase, at any subsequent period: inasmuch as the
Family do not seem to have been ever greatly distinguished by the possession of
landed estate. And it is well known that for the bestowal of that kind of
property upon his favourites, the liberality and gratitude of the Norman were as
remarkable, as those virtues are usually found to be in great men when they give
away what belongs to other people.
    Perhaps in this place the history may pause to congratulate itself upon the
enormous amount of bravery, wisdom, eloquence, virtue, gentle birth, and true
nobility, that appears to have come into England with the Norman Invasion: an
amount which the genealogy of every ancient family lends its aid to swell, and
which would beyond all question have been found to be just as great, and to the
full as prolific in giving birth to long lines of chivalrous descendants,
boastful of their origin, even though William the Conqueror had been William the
Conquered: a change of circumstances which, it is quite certain, would have made
no manner of difference in this respect.
    There was unquestionably a Chuzzlewit in the
