LONGEVITY AND LINKS WITH THE PAST. [To rim EDITOR OP
Tag "SPECTATOR."] SIE,—Two instances of the above well known to me seem rather striking ones. The present Vicar of Bishop's Cunnings, Wilts, is only the fifth since the year 1720, the ninth since the year 1623, and the eleventh since 1543, giving an average of over thirty years to each for that long period. Furtherrilore, the widow of the last but one, who was installed in the year of Waterloo, has only died quite recently,—within this century at any rate. In the year 1887 a gentleman, just, I think, the age of a century, was living at Uxbridge whose brother had held a commission under Washington ! Mr. C— was member of a family still well known in the State of New York, and owners of large tracts of wild lands there in the late eighteenth century. His mother was a Schuyler, younger sister of Alexander Hamilton's wife, that great statesman being consequently his uncle by marriage. Mr. 0— told me that the brother above mentioned, some thirty years older than himself, after a course of Eton and the Temple, had gone out (or returned) to New York in the interest of the family estates about the year 1793. Two years later " the Whisky Rebellion," a serious rising in Pennsylvania against Hamilton's Excise-duties, demanded strong measures, and a large force was organised. The young man in question, as Hamilton's nephew, very naturally got a commission as his aide-de-camp. Lee was in actual command, but Washington himself went with the troops as far as Bedford. Hamilton remained all the time. Mr. C—, several of whose letters I possess, told me that be distinctly remembered when walking as a child down Broadway, just before leaving for England, as it turned out for good, the relative in charge of him pointing to a small man running up some doorsteps and Baying : "That is the man [Aaron Burr] who shot your uncle." Two years ago there were three widows in the United States of soldiers of the Revolutionary War in receipt of pensions, young girls who had married very old men, with an eye, no doubt, to the future. In the early "seventies" I knew a hardy old miller in Virginia very well who had served against Canada in the war of 1812.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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