Ancestors are relics, and nothing else. Whenever the demand for ancestors becomes brisk, and genealogy becomes a _profession_--it becomes a _craft_. Laboureur, the historian, in his _Additions de Castelnau_, tom. ii. p. 559, affords a specimen of genealogical trust-worthiness. "In 1560, Renatus of Sanzay built, with John le Feron, king at arms of France, a genealogy of the house of Sanzay, made up of near fifty descents, most of them enumerated, year by year; with the names, sirnames, and coats of arms of the women; whilst all those names, families, and arms were mere phantoms; brother Stephen of Lusignan, out of this mighty tub, as from a public fountain, let flow the nobility and blood of Lusignan to all persons, who desired any of it."--Again, on page 320, Laboureur says--"They admitted, as true, all that was vented by certain false antiquaries and downright enthusiasts, such as John le Maire de Belges, Forcatel, a civilian, Stephen of Lusignan, and John le Feron, whom I will charge with nothing but credulity." This, doubtless, is the stumbling block of most men, who engage in this semi-mythical employment. Nothing is more easy, than to mistake one dead person, for another, when corruption has done its work, upon the form and features. There is something bituminous in time. What masculine mistakes are committed by experts! Those relics, which have been the object of hereditary veneration, for thirty centuries, as the virgin daughter of some great high priest in the days of Cheops and Cephrenes, may, by the assistance of the savans, with the aid of magnifiers of extraordinary power, be demonstrated to be the blackened carcass of Hum-Bug-Phi, the son of Hassan, the camel-driver; who kept a little khane or caravansera near Joseph's granaries, in old Al Karirah, on the eastern banks of the Nile, famous--very--for the quality of its leeks and onions, three thousand years ago. No. XCVIII. Thank Heaven, I am not a young widow, for two plain reasons; I do not wish to be young again--and I would not be a widow, if I could help it. A young widow, widder, or widdy, as the word is variously spelt, has been a byword, of odd import, ever since the days, when Sara, the daughter of Raguel, exclaimed, in the fifteenth verse of the third chapter of the book of Tobit--"_My seven husbands are already dead, and why should I live?_" All this tilting against the widows, with goose quills for spears, arises from the fact, that these weapons of war are mainly in the hands of one sex. Men are the scribblers--the lions are the painters. Nothing, in the chapters of political economy, is more remarkable, than the fact, that, since all creation was divided into parishes, there has never been a parish, in which there was not a Mr. Tompkins, who was the very thing for the widow Button. But the cutting out and fitting of these matters commonly belongs to that amiable sisterhood, who are ever happy, without orders, to make up, at short notice.