Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/275

 her fathers. The royal family had, in centuries before this time, settled chiefly in three great groups in the country, and had mostly become, in common with the multitudes around them, industrious and useful citizens. One of these groups occupied the Balmoral vicinities in North Britain, where, as Guelfs or Gaelfs, and finally Mac Gaels, they were gradually swallowed up into Highland nomenclature. Another took to the pleasant Isle of Wight, and developed into a family of Gulfs, after John Bull's slumping way of changing "Bolougne mouth" into "Bull and Mouth," and "God encompasseth us" into "Goat and Compasses." The third group remained in the Windsor neighbourhood, keeping to the pure original name; and now, on behalf of the family county of Berkshire, the youthful and accomplished descendant stood forth, in the spirit and equalities of those times, to contend with the world for the crown of labour.

Although but one amongst England's many counties, and also amongst the smaller of them, Berkshire, at this time, presented comparatively a really great field; for, within its very limited area, it now contained half as many people as had owned allegiance to its fair young candidate's illustrious ancestor, throughout her then wide and comparatively great empire of five centuries past.

The mode of procedure, in the awarding of the crown, was for the judges, as the first step, to make up a pile, fairly representative, upon the best evidence attainable, of each candidate's life labour. This pile would be swelled out meritoriously in some directions, contracted in others, and of an average bulge elsewhere and so on; and it was afterwards for the