This setting up for ancestors, among those, who, from the very nature of our institutions, are, and ever must be, a middling interest people, is as harmless, as it is sometimes ridiculous, and no more need be said of its inoffensiveness.
From the very nature of the case, there can be no lack of ancestors. The simplest arithmetic will show, that the humblest citizen has more than _one million of grand parents_, within the twentieth degree; and it is calculated, in works on consanguinity, that, within the fifteenth degree, every man has nearly _two hundred and seventy millions of kindred_. There is no lack, therefore, of the raw material, for this light work; unless, in a case, like that of the little vagrant, who replied to the magistrate's inquiry, as to his parents, that he never had any, but _was washed ashore_. The process is very simple. Take the name of Smith, for example: set down all of that name, who have graduated at the English, American, and German colleges, for Schmidt is the same thing--then enrol all of that name, upon the habitable earth, who have, in any way, distinguished themselves; carefully avoiding the records of criminal courts, and such publications as Caulfield's Memoirs, the State Trials, and the Newgate Calendar. Such may be called the genealogy of the Smiths; and every man of that name, while contemplating the list of worthies, will find himself declaring a dividend, _per capita_, of all that was good, and great, and honorable, in the collection; and he will arise, from the perusal, a more complacent, if not a better man.
This species of literature is certainly coming into vogue. I have lately seen, in this city, a large duodecimo volume, recently printed, in which the genealogy of a worthy family, among us, is traced, through Oliver Cromwell, to Æneas, not Æneas Silvius, who flourished in the early part of the fifteenth century, and became Pope Pius II., but to Æneas, the King of the Latins. This royal descent is not through the second marriage with Lavinia; nor through the accidental relation, between Æneas and Dido--
Speluncam Dido dux et Trojanus eandem Deveniunt----------;
but through the first marriage with the unfortunate Creusa, who was burnt to death, in the great Troy fire, which took place, according to the Parian Marbles, on the 23d of the month, Thargelion, i. e., 11th of June, 1184 years before Christ. Ascanius was certainly therefore the ancestor of this worthy family, the son of Æneas and Creusa; and the grandson of Anchises and Venus. Such a pedigree may satisfy a Welchman.