of whom he will have no cause to complain.

But there is a fatality attends the actions of some men: Order them
as they will, they pass thro' a certain medium, which so twists and
refracts them from their true directions--that, with all the titles
to praise which a rectitude of heart can give, the doers of them are
nevertheless forced to live and die without it.

Of the truth of which, this gentleman was a painful example.--But to
know by what means this came to pass,--and to make that knowledge of use
to you, I insist upon it that you read the two following chapters, which
contain such a sketch of his life and conversation, as will carry its
moral along with it.--When this is done, if nothing stops us in our way,
we will go on with the midwife.

Chapter 1.XI.

Yorick was this parson's name, and, what is very remarkable in it, (as
appears from a most ancient account of the family, wrote upon strong
vellum, and now in perfect preservation) it had been exactly so spelt
for near,--I was within an ace of saying nine hundred years;--but
I would not shake my credit in telling an improbable truth, however
indisputable in itself,--and therefore I shall content myself with only
saying--It had been exactly so spelt, without the least variation or
transposition of a single letter, for I do not know how long; which is
more than I would venture to say of one half of the best surnames in the
kingdom; which, in a course of years, have generally undergone as many
chops and changes as their owners.--Has this been owing to the pride,
or to the shame of the respective proprietors?--In honest truth, I think
sometimes to the one, and sometimes to the other, just as the temptation
has wrought. But a villainous affair it is, and will one day so blend
and confound us all together, that no one shall be able to stand up and
swear, 'That his own great grandfather was the man who did either this
or that.'

This evil had been sufficiently fenced against by the prudent care of
the Yorick's family, and their religious preservation of these records
I quote, which do farther inform us, That the family was originally of
Danish extraction, and had been transplanted into England as early as in
the reign of Horwendillus, king of Denmark, in whose court, it seems, an
ancestor of this Mr. Yorick's, and from whom he was lineally descended,
held a considerable post to the day of his death. Of what nature this
considerable post was, this record saith