ur grandmother was thirty when her daughter was born, and was born
therefore in 1715.

We will begin with the present granny first. My good old creature, you
can't of course remember, but that little gentleman for whom your mother
was laundress in the Temple was the ingenious Mr. Goldsmith, author of
a "History of England," the "Vicar of Wakefield," and many diverting
pieces. You were brought almost an infant to his chambers in Brick
Court, and he gave you some sugar-candy, for the doctor was always good
to children. That gentleman who wellnigh smothered you by sitting down
on you as you lay in a chair asleep was the learned Mr. S. Johnson,
whose history of "Rasselas" you have never read, my poor soul; and
whose tragedy of "Irene" I don't believe any man in these kingdoms ever
perused. That tipsy Scotch gentleman who used to come to the chambers
sometimes, and at whom everybody laughed, wrote a more amusing book
than any of the scholars, your Mr. Burke and your Mr. Johnson, and your
Doctor Goldsmith. Your father often took him home in a chair to his
lodgings; and has done as much for Parson Sterne in Bond Street, the
famous wit. Of course, my good creature, you remember the Gordon
Riots, and crying No Popery before Mr. Langdale's house, the Popish
distiller's, and, that bonny fire of my Lord Mansfield's books in
Bloomsbury Square? Bless us, what a heap of illuminations you have seen!
For the glorious victory over the Americans at Breed's Hill; for the
peace in 1814, and the beautiful Chinese bridge in St. James's Park; for
the coronation of his Majesty, whom you recollect as Prince of Wales,
Goody, don't you? Yes; and you went in a procession of laundresses to
pay your respects to his good lady, the injured Queen of England, at
Brandenburg House; and you remember your mother told you how she was
taken to see the Scotch lords executed at the Tower. And as for your
grandmother, she was born five years after the battle of Malplaquet, she
was; where her poor father was killed, fighting like a bold Briton for
the Queen. With the help of a "Wade's Chronology," I can make out
ever so queer a history for you, my poor old body, and a pedigree as
authentic as many in the peerage-books.

Peerage-books and pedigrees? What does she know about them? Battles and
victories, treasons, kings, and beheadings, literary gentlemen, and
the like, what have they ever been to her? Granny, did you ever hear of
General Wolfe? Your mother may hav