CHAPTER I. Sir Walter Elliot at Kellynitch Hall in Somerset Shire was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the barren hedge. There he found occupation for an idle hour and consolation in a distressed one. There his faculties were roused into admiration and respect by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents. There any unwelcome sensations arising from domestic affairs changed naturally into pity and contempt as he turned over the almost endless creations of the last century. And there, if every other leaf were powerless, he could read his own history with an interest which never failed. This was the page at which the favorite volume always opened. Elliot of Kellynitch Hall Walter Elliot, born March 1, 1760, married July 15, 1784, Elizabeth, daughter of James Stevenson Esquire of South Park, in the county of Gloucester, by which lady who died 1800. He has issue Elizabeth, born June 1, 1785, and born August 9, 1787. A stillborn son, November 5, 1789. Mary born November 20, 1791. Precisely such had the paragraph originally stood from the printer's hands, but Sir Walter had improved it by adding for the information of himself and his family these words. After the date of Mary's birth, married December 16, 1810, Charles, son and heir of Charles Musgrove Esquire of Upper Cross, in the county of Somerset, and by inserting most accurately the day of the month on which he had lost his wife. Then followed the history and rise of the ancient and respectable family in the usual terms. How it had been first settled in Cheshire. How, mentioned in Dugdale, serving the office of High Sheriff, representing a borough and three successive parliaments, exertions of loyalty and dignity of baronet. In the first year of Charles II, with all the Marys and Elizabeths they had married, forming altogether two handsome duodecimal pages, and concluding with the arms and motto, Principal Seat, Gellinich Hall, in the county of Somerset, and Sir Walter's handwriting again in this finale. Heir presumptive William Walter Elliot Esquire, great-grandson of the second Sir Walter. Vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Walter Elliot's character. He had been remarkably handsome in his youth, and at fifty-four was still a very fine man. Few women could think more of their personal appearance than he did. Nor could the valet of any new-made lord be more delighted with the place he held in society. He considered the blessing of beauty as inferior only to the blessing of aberrantacy. And the Sir Walter Elliot, who united these gifts, was the constant object of his warmest respect and devotion. His good looks and his rank had one fair claim on his attachment, since to them he must have owed a wife a very superior character to anything deserved by his own. Lady Elliot had been an excellent woman, sensible and amiable, whose judgment and conduct, if they might be pardoned, the youthful infatuation which