I am descended from an ancient family by my mother's side, who, besides being an heiress, was a woman of great virtue and understanding. It so happened, that she was forbidden, by the conditions of the estate, to lay aside her name; a circumstance which might have brought her into difficulties, if she had not found in my father, a man who, having no particular obligations to his own name, was not unwilling to adopt hers for the sake of her good qualities. As I was the only child, I came in for a very large share of my good mother's attention; and the first piece of instruction she impressed on my mind, and which has certainly had a ruling influence on my subsequent conduct and behaviour, was drawn from a circumstance relating to her family which can never be sufficiently admired. As far back as she could trace, and she could trace very far back by the help of a variety of old records anxiously preserved, there was not one of her ancestors who had not been distinguished for a singular mildness of character, and serenity of deportment: none of them had figured at a tilt or tournament, or borne arms by profession; but in peaceful and domestic occupations, they had followed each other in quiet order to the grave, like the soft undulations of a silvery lake, where each wave that dies is renewed in its successor, which makes way for another, and another, and another, just to fill its place and depart. From this peaceful line I inherit the name of Olive-branch, to which that of Simon was added, in memory of my mother's grandfather, who was the most of a philosopher of the whole race.

Together with the name, I believe I may say I inherit some of the qualities also of the good family of the Olive-branches. What makes me think I am not degenerate, is, that I can conscientiously declare hat I was never much ruffled or provoked but once,

about thirty years ago, when a careless servant threw by mistake into the fire a curious antique tobacco-stopper of my great-grandfather's, which my mother assured me it was his custom to play with between his fingers, when the buz of any debate grew high around him, with his eyes fixed on a little figure of Harpocrates, not badly expressed upon it, to prevent the danger of an appeal from either party. My mother had a pious regard for this relic, which was always one of her little penates, or pocket-gods; and as it had been my plaything when an infant, and constantly cured me of crying, she had almost brought herself to consider it as endued with certain sedative properties, and capable of calming the spirits under any provocation or disappointment.

My father died while I was young, and left to my mother the sole care of my education. To acquit herself of this trust, she sent me to Oxford in the year 1740. The succeeding ten years of my life passed so evenly and quietly, that they furnish me with no incident, except the considerable diminution of my mother's fortune, which arose from her own inattention to these matters, added to the mismanagement of her steward. This was somewhat made up to us, however, by my election to a fellowship of the college, in the year 1751, to which my quiet inoffensive character principally recommended me. From this time I spent a great many years in the pursuits of literature and philosophy, but chiefly in the observation of what passed around me; without ever forgetting the rule of my forefathers, to maintain a rigid neutrality among my friends and neighbours, and a catholic charity towards all mankind.

In this manner did forty years of my life steal on ingloriously, without occupation, without noise, with

out notoriety, and with little variation of pulse or principle. My ease, however, was not of a slumbering or torpid kind: it was always a pleasure to me to speculate on the good of my species, to study the dispositions and characters of men, and to treasure up rules of life and conduct, in order to add to that store of observations and maxims, which it had been the ancient custom of our family to collect. Circumstances have since persuaded me to make a free offer to my contemporaries of this whole patrimony of common sense, accumulated and approved through many generations of the Olive-branch family. The public will as easily distinguish between what I have added myself, and what I have borrowed from my mother's manuscripts, as between old Hock or Canary, and the flavour of English port; or, to carry the allusion more home to the Olive-branches, they will find in my own produce none of that essential balsamic oil, which my ancestors had the art of expressing and bottling for preservation; and where I make an attempt to mix them together, they will think of those lines of Dryden's on the poor poet laureate:

But so transfus'd as oil and water flow,
Theirs always floats above---thine sinks below.

But to go on with my history-When I had attained to the age of forty-five, my mother, who loved tranquillity, but not inoccupation, persuaded me to enter into holy orders; and in ten years afterwards she was able to purchase the living I at present enjoy in Northamptonshire, where I have now spent six years of my life with my usual serenity, and in perfect good understanding with all my parishioners, young and old. It is a great happiness to me, to have my mother still with me, and in good general health,

abating some necessary infirmities; a circumstance I attribute to her even economy and hereditary composure of spirits, which have kept the stream of life from exhausting itself in floods and torrents. To this smooth turn of character I do also attribute the great age to which most of my ancestors have arrived. I never shall forget one of my great-grandfather's letters on the death of his youngest brother, who was cut off at the age of seventy-one, wherein, after calling him a giddy young fellow, he tells us that he met his death in the act of pulling on a tight pair of boots after eating a bason of broth with Cayenne pepper. It has ever since been looked upon in our family as an unpardonable debauch, to swallow any thing that can raise the smallest combustion within us.

N° 2. TUESDAY, MARCH 13.

"Olet lucernam."

"It smells of OIL."

BEFORE I proceed in this my undertaking, I think it necessary to give a hint respecting it to my worthy contemporaries. As my mother and myself are the last of the Olive-branch family, and as it is one of our hereditary statutes (to which we always pay implicit obedience) to let none of our manuscripts stray into other hands, I hope to be encouraged to prosecute a plan, which, if pursued for any length of time, will put my countrymen in possession of this

valuable stock of ancestorial wisdom before we take our leave of them, without any breach of our family institutes, which are as solemn as those of the Medes and Persians. The fruits also of the quiet and impartial observation of what hath passed around me these five-and-forty years, may be of some importance to them; and as the complacent turn of thought and morality, peculiar to our race, will perish with me, I wish to persuade the public to make the most of me while they have me, and to follow the example of the philosopher Thales, who, foreseeing a future dearth of olives, bought up all he could find, on a prudent speculation, to convince the world that he knew how to be rich if he chose it. Should I meet with this good disposition in the public towards me, I engage, on my part, to render these my lucubrations as various and amusing as possible; and as an Englishman is a fickle being, and in the space of one week will be full of whim, wit, wine, satire, sentiment, and sorrow, which succeed each other like the farming courses of turnips, barley, clover, wheat, the one making preparation for the other, I shall take pains to suit this diversity of character as much as may consist with the discretion and decency which are to run uniformly through the whole. I shall procure also, on the same account, the very best barometer that can be made, in order to consult the state and influence of the weather in this precarious climate; having enough to contend with, without entering into a contest with the elements. For I could wish that such of my papers as are of a gay and sprightly turn, should not have to combat with chronic pains and a cloudy atmosphere, and that my recommendation of rural pleasures should not fall on the rainiest day of the year. I would be cautious, too, of dwelling too much on domes