up on purpose to illustrate, after my manner, the perishing memorials of by-gone men and things in London. The chief difference between us seems to be, that he is often supported by the written contributions of others, from all parts of England, and of course producing the pleasing varieties of many minds, whereas I never could enlist the help of any competent mind to furnish me with any personal reminiscences. Hone manifests much tact and good feeling and good taste for his subject-giving us many interesting actions of men and things-several of them disused and obsolete—which in that cause enhances their value and character to us as moderns. His "Every Day Book" abounds with sentences commendatory of olden time affections, and shows that, in the estimation of men of sense, they are decidedly worthy of all praise. It may also be remarked, that in many cases, much smaller matters than I have preserved, and which some might deem trifles, are deemed of sufficient value to be embellished with drawings, or gravely supported with proofs. The whole is calculated to prove that the memorial of times by-gone is certainly valued, because of the insight it affords into the character and action of a departed age; and for that very reason is most valued by those who are most intellectual. Those whose imaginations are most occupied about their readings of any given people or place, are those who most like to have the pictures and images, which their fancies may instinctively draw, satisfied and settled by facts; and hence the love for those portraits and delineations of olden time, which bring up the "very age and picture of the past." Chambers' "Traditions of Edinburgh," which I only saw in 1834 -after the publication of my Annals, has much the spirit and purpose of my own book; it is even more minute in sundry articles than I ventured to be: such as characteristics of crazy or silly persons and beggars, under the chapter "objects;" also "the hangman ;" some memorable "old maids," &c. His leading topics are "characters" of sundry peculiar or remarkable men and women; sundry "closes and places;" taverns, clubs, and convivial places and parties; sundry remarkable "old houses" and their inmates; and many miscellaneous facts of men and manners, in the former age. The whole in two volumes, 12mo.: 2d edition, Edinburgh, 1825. The author speaks of his performance, as a subject which had engrossed his leisure for many years, and that the praise which it has received is to be ascribed to the accidental excellence of his subject, rather than to any personal merit of his own. He gives several pages on ladies' dresses, such as "calashes, bongraces, (a bonnet of silk and cane,) negligees, stomachers, stays, hoops, lappets, pinners, plaids, fans, busks, rumple, knots, &c., then worn and now forgotten." Gentlemen's dresses he appears to have overlooked, save that he incidentally says that they wore a small black muff, hung by a cord from the shoulder, and seen dangling at the side, when not in use, like a child's drum! A life or a book of observation may always be useful; and this idea is supported by Mr. Walpole, from the opinion of a poet, saying, that "if any man were to form a book, of what he had seen or heard himself, it must, in whatever hands, prove a most useful and interesting one." I am fully of the same opinion, from numerous facts known to me in my researches among the aged for reminiscences and traditions; and with such sentiments, I would make the above sentence my motto, to such future observations or passing events as I may record. Our eloquent countryman, Everett, has touchingly commended to our notice a just regard for our national recollections,--saying of them, "it is thus a free people is to be formed, animated and perpetuated. With such fine examples and studies at home, we need not to be eternally ringing the changes upon Marathon and Thermopylæ. From the lessons of our forefathers, let us glean our instructions. Let us consult with profit their prudent councils in perplexed times; their exploits and sacrifices, either as settlers, or as citizen soldiers, contending for themselves and posterity. The traditionary lore still dwelling in the memories of the few revered survivors among us is worth our preservation. Let us seize it all as the rich inheritance of our children; as a legacy from our progenitors, virtually saying,— "My sons, forget not your fathers." Some have taken it for granted that I must have a decided preference for every thing olden, as if age alone made things valuable; but they mistake my bias and feelings; mine is a poetical attachment. I go into it as into the region of imagination. The Edinburgh Review, in noticing the works of Sir Walter Scott, has ascribed principles of action to him, the force of which, in its degree, I also felt and can appreciate, viz.: "his attachment to the manners of antiquity is to be considered merely as a poetical attachment. He is won by their picturesqueness, and by their peculiar applicability to purposes of romance." I write of olden time, because I think the facts, if so preserved, will eventually furnish the material of future legendary story and romance. I also, as I think, am thus preserving useful facts for national recollections and reflection. The public in general have very little conception of the really pleasing character of olden time inquiries. They view the volume as so much accumulated facts, attained, as they suppose, by laborious delving, and exploration, and inquiry. They wholly overlook the real poetry of the subject; the stimulus and gratification which a mind duly constituted for the pursuit acquires, by opening to itself the contemplation and the secrets of a buried age. Such an inquirer examines a world of beings known only to himself; and while he walks and talks with them, he learns facts and incidents known only to themselves. By comparing in his mind the things which may have been so unlike the present, he learns how to estimate the measure of changes which may probably occur in the future, and thus opens to himself additional subjects of gratification and consideration. Thus his mind is busied in the contemplation of things-calm and soothing in their nature, which others do not consider and cannot enjoy. The present race are mostly engrossed in themselves, and their various bounds of action and concern. Their ideal images are limited; but the lover of olden time, revels in the regions of past events, and peoples his intellectual reveries with persons and society all his own; not of fairy creatures like Shakspeare's, but of sober reality, and of such choice selection as may best minister to his entertainment and edification. He sees the forefathers of our land, fresh and ardent as they were, when first set upon the enterprise of cultivating a new Eden for us; he enters into their spirit, and feels their sympathies at home and abroad; he hears their deliberations in the domestic circle, and in the public councils; he is present at every new inland settlement; sees how new plantations are effected, and how towns are created; sees original lands, now dense with population, just as they were in their state of wild nature, then savage with beasts of prey and tawny aborigines. He sees aged oaks and hemlocks, and visits uncultivated spots, like the many still undisturbed scenes on the banks of the Wissahiccon, and cheers his imagination with the fact that he sees the same unaltered objects, which they had once seen and considered: "It soothes to have seen what they have seen, The poet who expressed that sentiment, had a soul which anticipated and felt all which is meant to be here embodied by these few remarks. To an imaginative mind rightly cultivated, the very few hints here suggested will present an unlimited field of amplification. To such, every thing of the past is filled with imagery: and the possessor of the faculty is always enabled to evoke from the store-house of his memory the ideal presence, and is at all times ready "to walk and talk with men of other days." Surely there is positive gratification in faculties like these. "A fool and an antiquary (says Hutton) is a contradiction-they are, to a man, people of letters and penetration." Superficial observers and thinkers may think lightly of the contemplation of facts and things that are past, or grown gray and neglected with years, only because they do not think with the same class of thoughts and associations, or the same character of emotions, which actuate the minds of the real lovers of the times and things by-gone. The affection for such pursuits and studies is wholly intellectual. There are occasions when the soul feels irrepressible reverence, and a hushed silence, in the contemplation of a known relic, or the remains of what was once memorable and peculiar. The soul has a ready facility in investing the perishing, or rescued remains, with an impersonation and ideal presence which enables it, as it were, to speak out to our arrested and excited senses, and recites to us, mentally, the long tale of its notices and observations on men and things, which, through days of by-gone time, it may have witnessed or considered. From such a cause of operation, who can behold an ancient mummy, for instance, and not instinctively revert in reflection to Campbell's touching apostrophe to such an impressive relic!-saying within ourselves: "Statue of flesh-immortal of the dead! Come, prithee tell us something of thyself; Reveal the secrets of thy prison house: Since in the world of spirits thou hast slumber'd, What hast thou seen-what strange adventures numbered ?" 1 cannot but observe it as a fact in our history, which may perhaps be applied in general to most other early history, that the chances for a true account of the origin of things, are but few and difficult because I cannot but perceive that such is the little of investigation employed thereon by competent minds, and so little are the topics within the cognizance of the mass of the people, that there remains scarcely any to detect a fraud or misconception; but almost all tacitly concede to the first writer or compiler, the complaisance to believe all that he asserts of times by-gone. I have, in after time, detected some such lapses, especially in typographical errors of dates, &c., in my own pages; but which none of the vigilant reviewers— so fond of faults, had the sagacity or skill to expose! Sometimes very old people assert things as facts, which they verily believe and have often told, only because their extreme age has destroyed the power of accurate discrimination,-they confound things-and yet they seem so sure and so plausible, that we are constrained to believe them, until subsequent official or written data of the true time and circumstances, disclose the truth. A remarkable instance of what I mean, is verified in the incident related by old Butler, aged 104, respecting General Braddock's marching from Philadelphia, when he landed at Virginia and travelled westward, via the Potomac! If these never come to light to contradict the former assertion, the oft repeated tale goes down to posterity unmolested for ever. In this manner the oldest persons in Philadelphia had all a false cause assigned for the name of "Arch street," and it was only the records of the courts which set me right. The historian of North Carolina gave a wrong case as the cause of the origin of "Yankee Doodle ;" and if I had not discovered another cause, it would have stood as confirmed history for ever. Mr. Heckewelder has given us much detailed history of our Pennsylvanian Indians, and of the Delawares, and has said these last were an original people, and more powerful than all the other Indians; but a late writer, in Mr. Vetake's New Review, endeavours to prove that it was an illusion of the good missionary. He had said too, that the name of "Manhattan" was given to New York by the Indians, as meaning "the place where they all got drunk." This is in opposition to the facts told one hundred and fifty years before, by De Laet, a cotemporary, who twice asserts that the Manhattes was the name of a tribe there. We do not pretend to decide in this last matter, but we can discern hereby, how it is, that given facts take a "local habitation and a name." Truth, therefore, requires much wariness, in seeking. My notices of olden time were wholly of my own conception and suggestion. I had never read any similar works,-and even to this day, (1842,) although I have named them in my "Annals." I have not read Lewis' Lynn, Gibbs' Salem, Notices of Plymouth, &c., none of which have been made a part of the Philadelphia Library. We had thought to have here concluded this chapter, already longer than we had purposed, when we began it--but we think that a few beautiful remarks which we shall here give from Alison's Notices of the Beautiful and Sublime, will be willingly read by every intellectual reader. He says: "The delight which most men of education receive from the consideration of antiquity, and the beauty that they discover in every object which is connected with ancient times, is in a great measure to be ascribed to their perceptions of beauty. Surrounded by relics of former ages, we seem to be removed to ages that are past, and indulge in the imagination of a living world. "Tis then that all that is venerable or laudable in the history of those times, present themselves to the memory; then the imagination and fancy are stimulated. The subjects of consideration seem to approach him still nearer to the ages of his regard: the dress, the furniture, the arms of the times, are so many assistances to his imagination in guiding or directing its exercises; and offering him a thousand sources of imagery, provide him with an almost inexhaustible field in which his memory and his fancy may expatiate." "There is no man who has not some interesting associations with particular scenes. The view of the house where he was born, of the school where he was educated, and where the gay years of infancy were passed, is indifferent to no man. The scenes which have been distinguished by the residence of any person, whose memory we admire, produce a similar effect. The admiration which the recollections afford, seems to give a kind of sanctity to the place where they dwelt." "It is not the first prospect of Rome, as Rome only, which creates our emotions of delight. It is not the Tyber, diminished to a paltry stream. It is ancient Rome, with all its associations, which fills the imagination. It is the country of Cæsar, and Cicero, and Virgil, which is before him. All that he has read and studied opens at once before his mind, and presents him with a mass of high and solemn imagery which can never be exhausted." I cannot but be aware, that my mind has been instinctive in its perception of matters and things in their state of transitu, that are habitually overlooked by many others. In the consciousness of my own peculiarity therein, I cannot but feel the force of remarks made by Colonel Trumbull, in his autobiography,―tending equally to |