We will not begin the history of the house of Blackwood with the “ell of genealogy” which, according to Lockhart, is appropriate to every Scotsman. Such preliminaries are unnecessary to a man who, in a better sense than that of any of the Norman invaders of whom others brag, was the father of his own fortunes. It may be almost taken for granted that every man in Scotland in the end of last century who came to any note could, if he took trouble enough, or if the Lyon Office and court of honour had been as active as it is now, have proved easily enough his own descent from, or attachment to, some rural house of great or small gentry, the vigorous and continually multiplying race which threw out offshoots in every generation, not only into the learned professions, chiefly law, and into the army, but also into the humbler medium of the trades, when the house was too full to hope for commissions and appointments enough to take them all in. The world was tolerably full then, though not so crowded as now; and though a boy's living did not in those days hang on the uncertain chance of an examination, yet there was a limit, very quickly reached, to a country laird's means of influence and patronage. It was the hackneyed thing to say, which every noble father says accordingly to every son, in fiction and the drama, that the only profession which could be adopted by a gentleman was that of arms.