Making a grand total of fourteen cases out of seventy peers, resulting in eight instances of absolute sterility, and in two instances of only one son.

I tried the question from another side, by taking the marriages of the last peers and comparing the numbers of the children when the mother was an heiress with those

when she was not. I took precautions to exclude from the latter all cases where the mother was a co-heiress, or the father an only son. Also, since heiresses are not so very common, I sometimes went back two or three generations for an instance of an heiress-marriage. In this way I took fifty cases of each. I give them below, having first doubled the actual results, in order to turn them into percentages :

I find that among the wives of peers

100 who are heiresses have 208 sons and 206 daughters, 100 who are not heiresses have 336 sons and 284 daughters.

1 I fear I must have overlooked one or two sterile marriages; otherwise I cannot account for the smallness of this number.

The table shows how exceedingly precarious must be the line of a descent from an heiress, especially when younger sons are not apt to marry. One-fifth of the heiresses have no male children at all; a full third have not more than one child; three-fifths have not more than two. It has been the salvation of many families that the husband outlived the heiress whom he first married, and was able to leave issue by a second wife.

Every advancement in dignity is a fresh inducement to the introduction of another heiress into the family. Consequently, dukes have a greater impregnation of heiressblood than earls, and dukedoms might be expected to be more frequently extinguished than earldoms, and earldoms to be more apt to go than baronies. Experience shows this to be most decidedly the case. Sir Bernard Burke, in his preface to the "Extinct Peerages," states that all the English dukedoms created from the commencement of the order down to the commencement of the reign of Charles II. are gone, excepting three that are merged in royalty, and that only eleven earldoms remain out of the many created by the Normans, Plantagenets, and Tudors.

This concludes my statistics about the heiresses. I do not care to go farther, because one ought to know something more about their several histories before attempting to arrive at very precise results in respect to their fertility. An heiress is not always the sole child of a marriage contracted early in life and enduring for many years. She may be the surviving child of a larger family, or the child of a late marriage, or the parents may have early left her an orphan. We ought also to consider the family of the husband, whether he be a sole child, or one of a large family. These matters would afford a very instructive field of inquiry to those who cared to labour in it, but it falls outside my line of work. The reason I have gone so far is simply to show that, although many men of eminent

ability (I do not speak of illustrious or prodigious genius) have not left descendants behind them, it is not because they are sterile, but because they are apt to marry sterile women, in order to obtain wealth to support the peerages with which their merits have been rewarded. I look upon the peerage as a disastrous institution, owing to its destructive effects on our valuable races. The most highly-gifted men are ennobled; their elder sons are tempted to marry heiresses, and their younger ones not to marry at all, for these have not enough fortune to support both a family and an aristocratical position. So the side-shoots of the genealogical tree are hacked off, and the leading shoot is blighted, and the breed is lost for ever.

It is with much satisfaction that I have traced and, I hope, finally disposed of the cause why families are apt to become extinct in proportion to their dignity-chiefly so, on account of my desire to show that able races are not necessarily sterile, and secondarily because it may put an end to the wild and ludicrous hypotheses that are frequently started to account for their extinction.

CHAPTER IX.

COMMANDERS.

IN times of prolonged war, when the reputation of a great commander can alone be obtained, the profession of arms affords a career that offers its full share of opportunities to men of military genius. Promotion is quick, the demand for able men is continuous, and very young officers have frequent opportunities of showing their powers. Hence it follows that the list of great commanders, notwithstanding it is short, contains several of the most gifted men recorded in history. They showed enormous superiority over their contemporaries by excelling in many particulars. They were foremost in their day, among statesmen and generals, and their energy was prodigious. Many, when they were mere striplings, were distinguished for political capacity. In their early manhood, they bore the whole weight and responsibility of government; they animated armies and nations with their spirit; they became the champions of great coalitions, and coerced millions of other men by the superior power of their own intellect and will.

I will run through a few of these names in the order in which they will appear in the appendix to this chapter, to show what giants in ability their acts prove them to have been, and how great and original was the position they occupied at ages when most youths are kept in the background of general society, and hardly suffered to expre

opinions, much less to act, contrary to the prevailing sentiments of the day.

Alexander the Great began his career of conquest at the age of twenty, having previously spent four years at home in the exercise of more or less sovereign power, with a real statesmanlike capacity. His life's work was over æt. 32. Bonaparte, the Emperor Napoleon I., was general of the Italian army æt. 26, and thenceforward carried everything before him, whether in the field or in the State, in rapid succession. He was made emperor æt. 35, and had lost Waterloo æt. 46. Cæsar, though he was prevented by political hindrances from obtaining high office and from commanding in the field till æt. 42, was a man of the greatest political promise as a youth; nay, even as a boy. Charlemagne began his wars æt. 30. Charles XII. of Sweden began his, æt. 18; and the ability showed by him at that early period of life was of the highest order. Prince Eugene commanded the imperial army in Austria æt. 25. Gustavus Adolphus was as precocious in war and statesmanship as his descendant Charles XII. Hannibal and his family were remarkable for their youthful superiority. Many of them had obtained the highest commands, and had become the terror of the Romans, before they were what we call "of age." The Nassau family are equally noteworthy. When William the Silent was a mere boy, he was the trusted confidant, even adviser, of the Emperor Charles V. His son, the great general Maurice of Nassau, was only eighteen when in chief command of the Low Countries, then risen in arms against the Spaniards. His grandson, Turenne, the gifted French general, and his great-grandson, our William III., were both of them illustrious in early life. Marlborough was from 46 to 50 years of age during the period of his greatest success, but he was treated much earlier as a man of high mark. Scipio Africanus Major was only 24 when in chief command