of the butlers (in England), with little knobs on the covers. In other words, they were wine-bags with shanks, before they became gold cups.

From this Shank came the verb "to skink," or, " pour out wine,” which was unquestionably received into horns; hence the verb is common in European languages.

In Iceland, skenka; Danish, skencke; Dutch and German, schencken; French, eschansonner, etc.

That skänk (pronounced shenk only in German) was the name of a cup also might be; because sanhha (Sanskrit) was a shell, or because a shank-bone was used as a cup.

The erz-schenck, or chief skinker, was an hereditary dignity, a perfect of the household, next to the king or lord. After this office became an hereditary one in Europe, many noble families bearing the name of Schenck became established. Especially in Germany and Holland these families were numerous, possessing various escutcheons. No less than sixty-eight of the name are mentioned in Kueschke Dutsches Adels-Lexicon.

HOLLAND ANCESTRY.

THE FAMILY OF

SCHENCKS, BARONS VAN TOUTENBURG.

The direct ancestry of the Reverend William Schenck begins with that of the Schenck, Barons van Toutenburg, and it may be of interest to know of what manner of race of people among whom this ancient family found its origin in the ninth century, and now forming the population of the Netherlands.

In the dim ages of the past the races of the Teutonic Aryans, following down the course of the Rhine, some of them found themselves at its mouth, and for a time barred further progress by the stormy ocean. They had swept away the weaker nations in their course, or vivifying them with their fresh and vigorous blood.

When the Cimbri and their associates, about a century before our era, made their memorable onslaught upon Rome, the early inhabitants of the Rhine island of Batavia, who were probably Celts, joined in the expedition. A recent and tremendous inundation had swept away their miserable homes and even the trees of the forest, and thus rendered them still more dissatisfied with their gloomy abodes. The island was deserted of its population. At about the same period a civil dissension among the Chatti-a powerful German race within the Hercynian forest-resulted in the expatriation of a portion of the people. The exiles sought a new home in the empty Rhine island, called it "Bet-Auw," or "good meadow," and were themselves called thenceforward Batavi, or Batavians, and from these exiles, of Teutonic Aryan ancestry, were the Hollanders descended.

These Batavians, according to Tacitus, were the bravest

race.

of all the brave Germans or warmen." The Chatti, of whom they formed a portion, were pre-eminently a warlike "Others go to battle," says the historian, "these go to war. Their bodies were more hardy, their minds more vigorous than those of other tribes. Their young men cut neither hair nor beard till they had slain an enemy. On the field of battle, in the midst of carnage and plunder, they, for the first time, bared the face. They wore an iron ring too or shackle upon their neck until they had performed the same achievement, a symbol which they then threw away as the emblem of sloth.

The Batavians were ever spoken of by the Romans with entire respect. They conquered the Belgians, they forced the Frisians to pay tribute, but they called the Batavians their friends. The tax-gatherer never invaded their island. Honorable alliance united them with the Romans. It was, however, the alliance of the giant and the dwarf. The Romans gained glory and empire, the Batavians gained nothing but the hardest blows. The Batavian cavalry became famous throughout the Republic and the Empire. They were the favorite troops of Cæsar, and with reason, for it was their valor which turned the tide of the battle at Pharsalia. From the death of Julius down to the time of Vespasian, the Batavian legion was the imperial body guard, the Batavian island the basis of operations in the Roman wars with Gaul, Germany, and Britain.

Physically, the Batavians were of vast, stature, and these gigantic Teutons derided the Roman soldiers as a band of pigmies, and excited astonishment by their huge body and muscular limbs, with long yellow hair floating over their shoulders, and fierce bright-blue eyes, and clear blonde complexion. Their hands and feet were small. The especial mark of high rank was the brightness of the eye, and long hair was considered a beauty.

They were a race remarkable for personal dignity, which became easily corrupted into excessive pride, and for a boundless spirit of individual enterprise. With these traits, they united a simplicity and truthfulness, which was always observed by strangers. They were notoriously reckless of their own lives, and cruel to enemies; fond of the chase; of adventure, especially on the sea, preferring whatever involved peril and hardships; greedy for booty, and given to the pleasures of the table and to gaming.

In regard to sexual virtue, and the respect paid to women, they stand forth above all other races of the past. It is an evidence of Teutonic virtue in this direction, that the ancient dialects have no word to express the idea of prostitute, Slavic and Celtic words being applied for this purpose. To the old Teutonic influence, even before the introduction of Christianity, and still more to that influence refined by it, woman, in all modern society, owes much of her high position.

The Teutonic character was arbitrary, and therefore delighted in slavery and difference of classes, but it always supported self-government in the ruling race. In distinction of the Celtic love of cities, the Teuton preferred the life on "farms," each landlord calling his farm his "Count," and even carrying his independence so far as often to fortify his property; yet, with all this, he is seldom found with any very deep attachment for his native soil, changing it readily when ambition or profit would tempt.

The truculent Teutonic races considered war and carnage the only useful occupation, and despised agriculture as enervating and ignoble. It was base, in his opinion, to gain by sweat what was more easily acquired by blood. The land was indeed divided, and certain farms assigned to certain families. This was at first done annually, but soon resulted in the most powerful retaining permanent possession, and the acquisition of the lands of his weaker neighbors. They at first cultivated as common property the lands allotted by the magistrates, but it was much easier to summon them to the battle-field than to the plough. Thus they were more fitted for the roaming and conquering life, which Providence was to assign to them for ages, than if they had become more prone to root themselves in the soil.

In early ages their leaders were of their own selection, and when elevated upon a shield, in the presence of the assembled band, his authority was established for the time. But, in time, men thus selected, refused afterwards to surrender their office and functions, and, when the sword was the law, many were found who made such good use of this law, that none could find a flaw in it, and they succeeded in making their dignities hereditary, and collected followers around them who were ever ready to support their leader's authority.

Mail-clad knights and their followers encamped permanently upon the soil, affecting supernatural sanction for the

authority and property which their good swords had won and were ever ready to maintain. Thus was organized the force of iron. Duke, count, seignor and vassal, knight and squire, master and man, swarm and struggle amain. A wild, chaotic scene. Here bishop and baron contended centuries long, killing human creatures by ten thousands for an acre or two of swampy pasture; there doughty families, hugging old musty quarrels to the heart, buffet each other from generation to generation. Thus they go on, raging and wrestling among themselves, with all the world looking on in amazement. Shrieking insane war-cries, which no human soul ever understood, red caps and black, white hoods and grey, hooks and kabbiljaws, dealing destruction, building castles and burning them, tilting at tourneys, stealing bullocks, roasting Jews, robbing the highways, crusading-now upon Syrian sands against Paynim dogs, now in Frisian quagmires against Albigenses, Stedingers, and other heretics-plunging about in blood and fire, repenting at idle times, and paying their passports through purgatory with large slices of ill-gotten gains placed in the ever-extended dead-hand of the Church, acting on the whole, according to their kind, and so getting themselves civilized or exterminated, it mattered little which.

Thus they played their part, these energetic men-at-arms, and thus one great force, the force of iron, spins and expands itself, century after century, helping on, as it whirls, the great progress of society toward its goal, wherever that may be.

Of such was this race of men composed, and such their training. Nothing less could have developed a people who could first win a country from the very grasp of the stormy German ocean and defend it for eighty years against the most potent empire upon earth, at the same time developing into a mighty state, holding rich possessions on every part of the globe, and finally dictating decrees to the very empire that had been its oppressor.

As the centuries rolled on these savages became more and more civilized, and some degree of law and order became established in the mighty system of feudal government, which fills their history with its most romantic and thrilling pages, and in the very noonday of that history, during the middle ages, appears the mail-clad knight, whose good sword had won and maintained for him his estates, and from whom sprang the ancient and noble family of the Schencks, Barons van Toutenburg, in the person of Colve de Witte, Baron van