joined to a good heart and a good understanding. But I never suspected that it could pos sibly mean the shrivelled, tasteless fruit of an old genealogical tree. I communicated my doubts, and applied for information to my late worthy and curious friend, the celebrated Mrs. Kennon, whose valuable collection of fossils and minerals, lately sold, sufficiently proves her skill and researches in the most recondite parts of nature. She, with that frankness and humanity which were natural to her, assured me that it was all a vulgar error, in which, however, the nobility and gentry prided themselves, but that in truth she had never observed the children of the quality to be wholesomer and stronger than others, but rather the contrary; which difference she imputed to certain causes, which I shall not here specify. This natural, and I dare say, to the best of her, observation, true account, confirmed me in my former philosophical error. But still, not tho

roughly satisfied with it, and thinking that there must be something more in what was so universally valued, I determined to get some farther information, by addressing myself to a person of vast, immense, prodigious birth, and descended atavis regibus, with whom I have the honour of being acquainted. As he expa tiates willingly on that subject, it was very easy for me to set him a-going upon it, insomuch that, upon some few doubts which I humbly

1

suggested to him, he spoke to me in the following manner:

"I believe, Mr. Fitz-Adam, you are not, for nobody is, ignorant of the antiquity of my family, which by authentic records I can trace to king Alfred, some of whose blood runs at this moment in my veins, and I will not conceal from you that I find infinite inward comfort and satisfaction in that reflection. Let people of no birth laugh as much as they please at these notions; they are not imaginary; they are real; they are solid; and whoever is well born, is glad that he is so. A merchant, a tradesman, a yeoman, a farmer, and such sort of people, may perhaps have common honesty and vulgar virtues; but, take my word for it, the more refined and generous sentiments of honour, courage, and magnanimity, can only flow in ancient and noble blood. What shall animate a tradesman, or any mean-born man, to any great and heroic virtues? Shall it be the examples of his ancestors?

He has none.

Or shall it be that impure blood that rather stagnates than circulates in his veins? No; ancient birth and noble blood are the only true sources of great virtues. This truth appears even among brutes, who, we observe, never degenerate, except in cases of misalliances with their inferiors. Are not the pedigrees of horses, cocks, &c. carefully preserved, as the never-failing proofs of their swiftness and courage? I repeat it again, birth is an ines

timable advantage, not to be adequately understood but by those who have it."

the say

My friend was going on, and, to truth, growing dull, when I took the liberty of interrupting him, by acknowledging that the cogency of his arguments, and the self-evidence of his facts, had entirely removed all my doubts, and convinced me of the unspeakable advantages of illustrious birth, and unfortunately I added that my own vanity was greatly flattered by it, in consequence of my being lineally descended from the first man. Upon this my friend looked grave, and seemed rather dis pleased; whether from a suspicion that I was jesting, or upon an apprehension that I meant to out-descend him, I cannot determine; for he contented himself with saying, "That is not a necessary consequence, neither, Mr. Fitz-Adam, since I have read somewhere or other of preAdamites; which opinion did not seem to me an absurd one."

Here I took my leave of him, and went home full of reflections upon the astonishing power of self-love, that can extract comfort and pleasure from such groundless, absurd, and extravagant prejudices. In all other respects my friend is neither a fool nor a madman, and can talk very rationally upon any rational subject. But such is the inconsistency both of the human mind and the human heart, that one must not form a general judgment of either, from one glaring error, or one shining excellence.

CHARACTER OF LORD BOLINGBROKE.

Lord Bolingbroke has both a tongue and a pen to persuade; his manner of speaking in private conversation is full as elegant as his writings; whatever subject he either speaks or writes upon, he adorns it with the most splendid eloquence; not a studied or laboured eloquence, but such a flowing happiness of diction, which (from care perhaps at first) is become so habitual to him, that even his most familiar conversations, if taken down in writing, would bear the press, without the least correction either as to method or style. If his conduct, in the former part of his life, had been equal to all his natural and acquired talents, he would most justly have merited the epithet of all-accomplished. He is himself sensible of his past errors: those violent passions, which seduced him in youth, have now subsided by age; and, take him as he is now, the character of allaccomplished is more his due than any man's I ever knew in my life.

But he has been a most mortifying instance of the violence of the human passions, and of the weakness of the most exalted human rea son. His virtues and his vices, his reason and his passions, did not blend themselves by a gradation of tints, but formed a shining and sudden contrast. Here the darkest, there the most splendid colours; and both rendered more striking from their proximity. Im

petuosity, excess, and almost extravagancy, characterized not only his passions, but even his senses. His youth was distinguished by all the tumult and storms of pleasure, in which he most licentiously triumphed, disdaining all decorum. His fine imagination has often been heated and exhausted with his body, in celebrating and deifying the prostitute of the night; and his convivial joys were pushed to all the extravagancy of frantic Bacchanals. Those passions were interrupted but by a stronger, Ambition. The former impaired both his constitution and his character, but the latter destroyed both his fortune and his reputation.

He has noble and generous sentiments, rather than fixed reflected principles of good-nature and friendship; but they are more violent than lasting, and suddenly and often varied to their opposite extremes, with regard even to the same persons. He receives the common attentions of civility as obligations, which he returns with interest; and resents with passion the little inadvertencies of human nature, which he repays with interest too. Even a difference of opinion upon a philosophical subject would provoke, and prove him no practical philosopher at least. Notwithstanding the dissipation of his youth, and the tumultuous agitation of his middle age, he has an infinite fund of various and almost universal knowledge, which, from the clearest and quickest conception, and happiest memory, that ever man was blessed with, he always car