A literary life, like adversity, introduces a man to strange and opposite acquaintance. Genius, talent, and learning, are not limited to rank or station, and the ingenuous desire of receiving, as well as of communicating information, induces an individual of such propensities to put aside those prejudices, which marked differences of opinion in creeds and in politics, have an inavoidable tendency to excite. That such were the feelings, and such the circumstances of our venerable friend, at a certain period of his life, appear from the following loose memoranda, which he evidently intended, at some period or other, to arrange and methodize. What shall that individual alledge, to ward off and repel the charge of inconsistency, who began his career in life under the auspices of James Townsend, of Bruce Castle, of the patriotic Aldermen Sawbridge and Oliver; who confesses that he spent agreeable hours with Price and Priestley, and Horne Tooke, and Major Cartwright; and Kippis; and afterwards with a well known popular Baronet, and Dr. Disney, and Walker of Liverpool, and very many others of this description. The same person in the decline of life, had no friends, associates, or indeed acquaintance, but with individuals whose principles, sentiments, and conduct, were as diametrically opposite, to those of the characters above named, as light to darkness. The fact is to be thus explained:—The first entrance into life must be incidental altogether; our first connexions are unavoidably those of our relatives, and their friends and associates; principles are unfolded only by time and experience, and then it is, that intimacies and attachments are formed and confirmed by similarity of taste, sentiments, and pursuits. Our Sexagenarian, as appears from his notes, first lived, where almost the whole of what might properly be denominated taste and learning, was confined to the Dissenters. Mark, reader, not Methodists; never was much taste or learning visible among these sectaries, but among the old Presbyterians, who constituted, in the place alluded to, both a numerous and respectable class. Neither did the word Presbyterian by any means imply “an immoral man, a pestilent citizen, or a disloyal subject.” He was therefore and of necessity compelled, though firm and immoveable in his own religious tenets, to associate much and familiarly with them in order to participate in common in the literary barter, which was carried on with much fairness and liberality on all sides.