Next to the good fortune of having figured in some brilliant, active career; of having been the companion of a hero, or the depositary of state secrets; of having seen cities and men; of having. wandered "through antres vast, and deserts idle," or been the subject of" moving accidents by flood and field;" the avowed inducement of Mr. Cumberland, is perhaps the most plausible.

Unfortunately, for the person, who, here presumes to appear before the public, he is without one of these claims to attention. He has no pretensions to fame or distinction in any kind, neither as soldier, nor statesman, nor traveller, nor author. He is not wholly without hope, however, that his presumption may be palliated; and that, in his object, of giving a representation of the character, spirit and more minute occurrences of his time, it will be perceived, that there is no form, into which his work can be thrown, with so much advantage, as into that of personal memoirs, By his own story, if he is not misled by self-love, a kind of menstruum is afforded, for the incongruous mass of his materials, serving to harmonize, in some degree, the abrupt transitions and detached details, which, a delineati¬ on of the various incidents of " many coloured life requires.

As to himself, he is fully conscious, that

it matters not

To whom related, or by whom begot;.

and, therefore, he would fain buttress his undertak-· ing, by the opinion of an eminent poet, as vouched by Mr. Walpole, viz. "That if any man were to "form a book, of what he had seen or heard him"self, it must, in whatever hands, prove a most use❝ful and entertaining one." A most seducing ig nis fatuus truly, considering the latitude with which it is laid down!

But far from wishing to foreclose the reader by an opinion, which he must own he considers a vcry questionable one; or to lure him on to an expectation of what he might vainly seek to find, he announces at his outset, that the pages here set before him, hold out no other inducement to his perusal, than such as may arise from the fidelity with which he will relate incidents within the scope of erdinary life; and depict some occurrences, which came under his notice, during the progress of the revolution, and since its consummation. In doing this, he will have occasion to speak as well of others as himself. He may sometimes resort to motives in accounting for men's actions; and, as these receive their qualities from the mind of the agent, he will with equal freedom and truth disclose the complexion of his own, having little, he thinks, no inclination that it should pass for better than it is. If the mould in which it has been formed, is not the most perfect, so neither, does he trust, is it absolutely the most worthless: if not calculated to próduce a cast to the taste of worldly wisdom; one, may advance experimentally the sound philosophy of thrift, and practically mark the routes to private wealth and public greatness, it will yet be found abundantly fruitful, in negative instruction on both points.

that

MY recollections of the village of Bristol, in which I was born on the 10th of April, N. S. in the year 1752, cannot be supposed to go further back than to the year 1756 or 1757. There are few

towns, perhaps, in Pennsylvania, which, in the same space of time, have been so little improved, or undergone less alteration. Then, as now, the great road leading from Philadelphia to New-York, first skirting the inlet, at the head of which stand the mills, and then turning short to the left along the

B

banks of the Delaware, formed the principal and indeed only street, marked by any thing like a continuity of building. A few places for streets, were opened from this main one, on which, here and there, stood an humble, solitary dwelling. At a corner of two of these lanes, was a Quaker meeting house; and on a still more retired spot, stood a small Episcopal church, whose lonely grave yard with its surrounding woody scenery, might have furnished an appropriate theme for such a muse as Gray's. These, together with an old brick jail, (Bristol having once been the county town of Bucks) constituted all the public edifices in this my native town. Its scite, though flat, is not unpleasant, particularly along the bank of the Delaware, rising to a commanding height from a fair and gravelly margin. From hence, the eye might rove at large both up and down the river, and after traversing a fine expanse of water in an oblique direction, find an agreeable resting place in the town of Burlington on the opposite shore.

As in this country, there is little temptation to the tracing of a long line of ancestry, I shall content myself with deducing a very brief genealogy. And this, not so much perhaps, from an acquiescence in the revolutionary idea of the insignificance of an illustrious pedigree, as from real inability to produce one. I can go no further, at least, than to vouch, that we had a coat of arms in the family, borne about on the body of an old fashioned chaise, and engraved upon our spoons, and a double-handled caudle cup. But if instead of groping amidst the darkness of transatlantic heraldry, we confine ourselves to our own shores, which seems much the most congenial to the noble spirit of independence we are pleased to manifest on other occasions, I am warranted in asserting, that I am descended from ancestors, respectable both as to station and character; from a stock not ignoble, but honest and generous: And if

parental propensities are transmitted to offspring in the human race, but in half the degree that they are among quadrupeds, the value we may be disposed to set on virtuous progenitors, is very far from chimerical. Several years residence on a farm, has afforded me opportunity for some observations upon the nature of domestic animals; and I have found, what I should have been disposed to laugh at, had I not proved it, that, among the ox kind especially, the vices, which seemed mere habits of the female parent, have invariably descended to her offspring. I venture this remark, though not quite in unison with the tone of the subject; and though liable to be strained into an assumption of worth on my part, to which I may in fact be wholly destitute of pretension.

My father was an Irishman, and, as it appears from some imperfect documents in my possession, came to this country in the year 1730. He was born, I think, in Longford, and was brought up under the care of his maternal grandfather in Dublin, or its neighborhood. Being designed for the pulpit. he had received a suitable education, to which, having added many of the accomplishments at that time in fashion, he was distinguished in Philadelphia both as a scholar and a gentleman. It was not long since, that the late chief justice Shippen informed me, he was the person always appealed to, in the coffee house controversies of the young men of the day, on points of science and literature. During his presidency of the county courts of Bucks, he had made himself, as I have understood, a very tolerable lawyer, insomuch that at the time of his death, he was, as I have been informed, in nomination for the office of a judge of the supreme court of Pennsylvania. From the copies of letters to his friends in Ireland, soon after his arrival in Philadelphia, he appears not to have taken up very favorable sentiments of its inhabitants. "Most of our trading people

"here," says he, " are complaisant sharpers; and "that maxim in trade, to think every man a knave, "until the contrary evidently appears, would do well "to be observed here if any where.-In this province "we have a toleration for all religions, which some "have enlarged so far, as to make a neglect and indifference of all religion, their only religion." These being the opinions of a young man but of about two and twenty years of age, it is not improbable, that they were too hastily formed; but if, unfortunately for the honor of our infant metropolis, they were correct, it is some relief to hear, that mercantile integrity, joined to genuine and unaffected hospitality, was also to be found there, as appears from the following extract of a letter, dated the 18th of March, 1731. "Soon after we arrived here, it "happened, and I hope providentially for us, (him"self and his father-in-law, Mr. Emerson, who made 66 one family) that we rented a house from one Mr. "Peter Baynton, adjacent to his own, who is a consi"derable merchant in this city. As he is a man of "singular sobriety, and not well affected to the "reigning humor in this town, he has admitted us "into his chief confidence, and distinguished us as "his principal friends and associates, in so much "that he will enter upon no project or design in "trade, without admitting us to a share in it: and "from the success of some we have already under-' "taken, we have not the least room to doubt of his

sincerity and kindness." Such is my father's sketch of Philadelphia manners eighty years ago. From the same letter it appears, that at the instance of this Mr. Baynton, he had contemplated with him a partnership in trade, to be carried on in the town of Burlington, which, he observes, "though it be "now somewhat obscure, it has yet many advanta "ges capable of improvement."

This contemplated removal, however, did not take place. He continued in business in Philadelphia,