he went up to him, and asked wherefore he was weeping? The old man replied he wept because his father had just beaten him. The Cardinal who was amazed to hear that so old a man had a father still living, was curious enough to enquire what he had beaten him for: “because,” said the old man, “I past by my grandfather without paying my respects to him.” The Cardinal then entered the house that he might see this extraordinary family, and there indeed he saw both father and grandfather, the former still a hale though a _very_ aged man; the latter unable to move because of his extreme age, but regarded by all about him with the greatest reverence. That the habit in this instance, as in most others of the kind, should have been hereditary, was what the Doctor would have expected: good constitutions and ill habits of body are both so;—two things which seldom co-exist, but this obstinate longevity, as he called it, was proof both of the one and the other. A remarkable instance of hereditary longevity is noticed in the Statistical Account of Arklow. A woman who died at the age of an hundred and ten, speaking of her children said that her youngest boy was eighty; and that old boy was living several years afterwards, when the account was drawn up. The habit, however, he thought, was likely in such cases to correct itself, and become weaker in every generation. An ill habit he deemed it, because no circumstances can render extreme old age desirable: it cannot be so in a good man, for his own sake; nor in a bad one for the sake of every body connected with him. On all accounts the appointed term is best, and the wise and pious Mr. How has given us one cogent reason why it is so.