 Gunpowder Plot, if indeed the
arch-traitor, Fawkes himself, were not a scion of this remarkable stock; as he
might easily have been, supposing another Chuzzlewit to have emigrated to Spain
in the previous generation, and there intermarried with a Spanish lady, by whom
he had issue, one olive-complexioned son. This probable conjecture is
strengthened, if not absolutely confirmed, by a fact which cannot fail to be
interesting to those who are curious in tracing the progress of hereditary
tastes through the lives of their unconscious inheritors. It is a notable
circumstance that in these later times, many Chuzzlewits, being unsuccessful in
other pursuits, have, without the smallest rational hope of enriching
themselves, or any conceivable reason, set up as coal-merchants; and have, month
after month, continued gloomily to watch a small stock of coals, without in any
one instance, negotiating with a purchaser. The remarkable similarity between
this course of proceeding and that adopted by their Great Ancestor beneath the
vaults of the Parliament House at Westminster, is too obvious and too full of
interest, to stand in need of comment.
    It is also clearly proved by the oral traditions of the Family, that there
existed, at some one period of its history which is not distinctly stated, a
matron of such destructive principles, and so familiarised to the use and
composition of inflammatory and combustible engines, that she was called The
Match Maker: by which nickname and byword she is recognised in the Family
legends to this day. Surely there can be no reasonable doubt that this was the
Spanish lady, the mother of Chuzzlewit Fawkes.
    But there is one other piece of evidence, bearing immediate reference to
their close connexion with this memorable event in English History, which must
carry conviction, even to a mind (if such a mind there be) remaining unconvinced
by these presumptive proofs.
    There was, within a few years, in the possession of a highly respectable and
in every way credible and unimpeachable member of the Chuzzlewit Family (for his
bitterest enemy never dared to hint at his being otherwise than a wealthy man),
a dark lantern of undoubted antiquity; rendered still more interesting by being,
in shape and pattern, extremely like such as are in use at the present day. Now
this gentleman, since deceased, was at all times ready to make oath, and did
again and again set forth upon his solemn asseveration, that he had frequently
heard his grandmother say, when contemplating this venerable relic, »Aye, aye!
This was carried by my fourth son on the fifth of November, when he was a Guy
