A MAN INTRODUCED TO HIS ANCESTORS.

Astonishing amount of a man's ancestors at the twentieth remove. -The variety of ranks as great as the multitude.-Bodily and mental characteristics inherited.—What it becomes a man to consider as the result.

HAPPENING to read the other evening some observations respecting the geometrical ratio of descent, by which it appears that a man has, at the twentieth remove, one million forty-eight thousand five hundred and seventy-six ancestors in the lineal degree-grandfathers and grandmothers,-I dropped into a reverie, during which I thought I stood by myself at one end of an immense public place, the other being occupied with a huge motley assembly, whose faces were all turned towards me. I had lost my ordinary sense of individuality, and fancied that my name was Manson.

At this multitudinous gaze, I felt the sort of confusion which is natural to a modest man, and which almost makes us believe that we have been guilty of some crime without knowing it. But what

was my astonishment, when a Master of the Ceremonies issued forth, and saluting me by the title of his great-grandson, introduced me to the assembly in the manner and form following:

:

May it please your Majesties and his Holiness the Pope;

My Lord Cardinals, may it please your most reverend and illustrious Eminences;

May it please your graces, my lord Dukes ;

My Lords, and Ladies, and Lady Abbesses;

Sir Charles, give me leave; Sir Thomas also, Sir John, Sir Nicholas, Sir William, Sir Owen, Sir Hugh, &c.

Right worshipful the several courts of Aldermen ; Mesdames, the Married Ladies;

Mesdames, the Nuns and other Maiden Ladies ;Messieurs Manson, Womanson, Jones, Hervey, Smith, Merryweather, Hipkins, Jackson, Johnson, Jephson, Damant, Delavigne, De la Bleterie, Macpherson, Scott, O'Bryan, O'Shaughnessy, O'Halloran, Clutterbuck, Brown, White, Black, Lindygreen, Southey, Pip, Trip, Chedorlaomer (who the devil, thought I, is he?), Morandi, Moroni, Ventura, Mazarin, D'Orsay, Puckering, Pickering, Haddon, Somerset, Kent, Franklin, Hunter, Le Fevre, Le Roi (more French!) Du Val (a highwayman, by all that's gentlemanly !) Howard, Cavendish, Russell, Argentine, Gustafson, Olafson, Bras-de-feu, Sweyn, Hacho and Tycho, Price, Lloyd, Llewellyn, Hanno, Hiram, &c. and all you intermediate gentlemen, reverend and otherwise,

with your infinite sons, nephews, uncles, grandfathers, and all kinds of relations ;

Then, you, sergeants and corporals, and other pretty fellows ;

You footmen there, and coachmen younger than your wigs,—

You gypsies, pedlars, criminals, Botany-Bay men, old Romans, informers, and other vagabonds,Gentlemen and ladies, one and all,

Allow me to introduce to you, your descendant, Mr. Manson.

Mr. Manson, your ANCESTORS.

What a sensation!

I made the most innumerable kind of bow I could think of, and was saluted with a noise like that of a hundred oceans. Presently I was in the midst of the uproar, which became like a fair of the human

race.

Dreams pay as little attention to ceremony, as the world of which they are supposed to form a part. The gentleman usher was the only person who retained a regard for it. Pope Innocent himself was but one of the crowd. I saw him elbowed and

laughing among a parcel of lawyers. same with the dukes and the princes.

It was the

One of the

kings was familiarly addressed by a lord of the bedchamber, as Tom Wildman; and a little French page had a queen much older than himself by the arm, whom he introduced to me as his daughter. I discerned very plainly my immediate ancestors the

Mansons, but could not get near enough to speak to them, by reason of a motley crowd, who, with all imaginable kindness, seemed as if they would have torn me to pieces. "This is my arm," said one, "as sure as fate;" at the same time seizing me by the wrist. "The Franklin shoulder," cried another. A gay fellow pushing up to me, and giving me a lively shake, exclaimed, "The family mouth, by the Lord Harry and the eye-there's a bit of my father in the eye."-" A very little bit, please your honour,” said a gipsy, a real gipsy, thrusting in her brown face: "all the rest's mine, Kitty Lee's, and the eyebrows are Johnny Faw's to a hair.”—“ The right leg is my property, however," returned the beau: I'll swear to the calf."-" Mais-but-notta to de autre calf," added a ludicrous voice, half gruff and half polite, belonging to a fantastic-looking person, whom I found to be a dancing-master. I did not care for the gipsy; but to owe my left leg to a dancing-master was not quite so pleasant, especially as, like Mr. Brummel's, it happens to be my favourite leg. Besides, I cannot dance. However, the truth must out. My left leg is more of a man's than my right, and yet it certainly originated with Mons. Fauxpas. He came over from France in the train of the Duke of Buckingham. The rest of me went in the same manner. A Catholic priest was rejoiced at the sight of my head of hair, though by no means remarkable but for quantity; but it seems he never expected to see it again since he received the tonsure.

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A little coquette of quality laid claim to my nose, and a more romantic young lady to my chin. I could not say my soul was my own. I was claimed not only by the Mansons, but by a little timid boy, a bold patriot, a moper, a merry-andrew, a coxcomb, hermit, a voluptuary, a water-drinker, a Greek of the name of Pythias, a freethinker, a religionist, a bookworm, a simpleton, a beggar, a philosopher, a triumphant cosmopolite, a trembling father, a hack-author, an old soldier dying with harness on his back.

"Well," said I, looking at this agreeable mixture of claimants, "at any rate my vices are not my own."

"And how many virtues?" cried they in a stern.

voice.

"Gentlemen," said I, "if you had waited, you would have seen that I could give up one as well as the other; that is to say, as far as either can be given up by a nature that partakes of ye all. I see very plainly, that all which a descendant no better than myself has to do, is neither to boast of his virtues, nor pretend exemption from his vices, nor be overcome with his misfortunes; but solely to regard the great mixture of all as gathered together in his person, and to try what he can do with it for the honour of those who preceded him, and the good of those that come after.

At this I thought the whole enormous assembly put on a very earnest but affectionate face; which was a fine sight. A noble humility was in the looks