For never in the long and tedious tract Of slavish grammar was I made to plod; No tyranny of Rules my patience rackt; I served no prenticehood to any Rod; But in the freedom of the Practic way Learnt to go right, even when I went astray. DR. BEAUMONT. It has been the general practice of historians, from the time of Moses, to begin at the beginning of their subject: but as a river may be traced either from its sources or its mouth, so it appears that a history may be composed in the reversed order of its chronology; and a French author of very considerable ability and great learning has actually written a history of the Christian religion from his own times upwards. It forms part of an elaborate and extensive work entitled _Parallele des Religions_, which must have been better known than it appears to be at present if it had not happened to be published in Paris during the most turbulent year of the Revolution. Perhaps if I had carried back the memoirs of the Dove family, I might have followed his example in chusing the up-hill way, and have proceeded from son to father in the ascending line. But having resolved (whether judiciously or not) not to go farther back in these family records than the year of our Lord 1723, being the year of the Doctor's birth, I shall continue in the usual course, and pursue his history _ab incunabulis_ down to that important evening on which we find him now reaching out his hand to take that cup of tea which Mrs. Dove has just creamed and sugared for him. After all the beaten way is usually the best, and always the safest. “He ought to be well mounted,” says Aaron Hill, “who is for leaping the hedges of custom.” For myself I am not so adventurous a horseman as to take the hazards of a steeple chace.