THE LIFE OF

ABRAHAM NEWLAND, ESQ.

&c. &c.

IT is not an unpleasant task to record the

annals of successful men, for whatever has been their pursuit, they have usually advanced towards it with a chearful step; and the happiness of existence depends less upon the selection of the object we seek, than upon its attainment. We may regret that the highest moral and intellectual acquisitions were not the aim of the individual whose actions we relate ; that motives were not presented, to unfold his latent virtues, and to enflame his generous passions; yet the history of the warmest heart is the tale of sorrow; and he who begins his course with the fondest hopes, commonly terminates it with the keenest mortification. felicity of life is the result of the comparison of the good and evil incident to it; and if the B

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one be liberally bestowed, the other may be more abundantly supplied, and the poise may be in favour of him, whose joys and cares apbut the dust of the balance, which, after pear many successive vibrations, slowly preponderates with the former.

The subject of these pages, is a peaceful citizen. If we have no victories to applaud, we have no defeats to excuse; the scene, at least, is bloodless, and our compassion will not be painfully excited by the distresses of violated humanity. He was not only a peaceful, but a wealthy Citizen, and we shall not be ashamed to disclose his progress to riches, although the cynic may be inclined to decry that affluence, which he has neither the talent to acquire, or the wisdom to enjoy. In a commercial country, the expedients by which opulence is attained, will receive the notice of the prudent and the nonourable; and the attention of the gay, and the thoughtless, will be often more beneficially directed to the votaries of successful industry, than to the favourites of hereditary wealth, who have obtained the goods of fortune without the exercise of that patient labour and tried

integrity which ought to precede the distributions of her bounty.

Whatever may have been the termination, the path to credit and fortune we have to describe, was smooth and easy. In the midst of the avocations of the busy and the lassitude of the indolent, he, whose story we récord, moved onward in his course with a steady pace, neither turning to the right, or to the left, but plucked the fruit which fell in his way; then moderately indulging his appetite, he deposited the larger portion in his garner, to relieve the necessities of his friends, and to support the infirmities of his declining years.

Should we, in our narrative, discover noTM extraordinary effects of the social feelings, we should remember, that the man whose character we contemplate, sustained none of those nearest relations which conduce to chear the solitudes of existence, and to expand the affections of the heart, If he were insensible to the pleasures, he was relieved from the anxieties of the married state, and if he were not, according to the sentiment of the American philosopher, a broad mark for hap

piness, neither was he, in the language of the English Divine, a broad mark for misery.

In these pages, we have not to represent an individual whom, "the splendor of rank or the extent of capacity has placed upon the summits of human life;" but if his ambition presented to his mind no great designs, we have to deplore no great miscarriages; what he proposed to attain, he took the best means to acquire, and having gained the prize, he sat down contented with his reward, without disturbing the repose of his neighbours by the reserved superciliousness of wealth, or by the obtrusive insolence of prosperity.

MR. ABRAHAM NEWLAND was of obscure parents, but the humility of their situation did not prevent their fulfilling the most important duties to their numerous progeny. William Newland, the father, was a miller and baker, at Grove in Bucks. He had twenty-five children by two wives. Ann Arnold was the mother of the subject of these pages, who at the ceremony of baptism, received the patriarchal name of Abraham. He was born on the 23d of April, 1730, in Castle

Street, Southwark. His father was of the established Church, Mrs. Newland was a nonconformist; but it does not appear that the difference of sentiments between them at all obstructed the harmony of their mutual intercourse, or the religious instruction of their offspring.

We are not friends to the puritanical pole mics of Christmas pies and plumb-porridge, but we are advocates of that dissonance of opinion, without rancour or acrimony, in either party to the marriage contract, which indicates sanity and strength of intellect, due respect for the sacred character of truth, and an admission of its superiority in all the relations of domestic and social life.

It will be in vain at this distance to look for anecdotes of the childhood of a person, however respectable, born under such circumstances; nor would the narratives of the cradle and the horn-book be at all interesting to the public. The infancy even of the heroes of antiquity, or of modern times, very much resembles that of others under less notorious circumstances; and if any material variations be given, any extraordinary presages announced,