tained with traditional scandal on persons of whose names there would have been no remembrance, had they not committed somewhat that might disgrace their descendents.
In one of my visits I happened to commend the air and dignity of a young lady who had just left the company; upon which two grave matrons looked with great sliness at each other, and the elder asked me whether I had ever seen the picture of Henry the eighth. You may imagine that I did not immediately perceive the propriety of the question: but after having waited awhile for information, I was told that the lady's grandmother had a great-great-grandmother that was an attendant on Anna Bullen, and supposed to have been too much a favourite of the king.
If once there happens a quarrel between the principal persons of two families, the malignity is continued without end, and it is common for old maids to fall out about some election, in which their grandfathers were competitors; the heart-burnings of the civil war are not yet extinguished; there are two families in the neighbourhood who have destroyed each other's game from the time of Philip and Mary; and when an account came of an inundation, which had injured the plantations of a worthy gentleman, one of the hearers remarked, with exultation, that he might now have some notion of the ravages committed by his ancestors in their retreat from Bosworth.
Thus malice and hatred descend here with an inheritance, and it is necessary to be well versed in history, that the various factions of this country may be understood. You cannot expect to be on good terms with families who are resolved to love nothing in common; and in selecting your intimates, you are perhaps to consider which party you most
