became dreaded throughout the Mediterranean. Et. 37, he obtained great renown from his share in the battle of St. Vincent. He was afterwards under severe fire at Cadiz, also at Teneriffe where he lost an arm by a cannon-shot. He then received a pension of £1,000 a year. The memorial which he was required to present on this occasion, stated that he had been in action one hundred and twenty times, and speaks of other severe wounds besides the loss of his arm and eye. Æt. 40, he gained the victory of the Nile, where the contest was most bloody. He thereupon was created Baron Nelson with a pension of £3,000 a year, and received the thanks of Parliament; he was also made Duke of Brontë by the King of Naples, and he became idolized in England. Æt. 43, he was engaged in the severe battle of Copenhagen, and æt. 47 was shot at Trafalgar. Thus his active career extended through twelve years, during the earlier part of which he was much more frequently under fire than afterwards. Had he only lived through two-thirds, or even three-fourths, of his battles, he could not have commanded at the Nile, Copenhagen, or Trafalgar. His reputation under those circumstances would have been limited to that of a cashing captain or a young and promising admiral. Wellington was a small man; if he had been shot in the Peninsula, his reputation, though it would have undoubtedly been very great, would have lost the lustre of Waterloo. In short, to have survived is an essential condition to becoming a famed commander; yet persons equally endowed with military gifts-such as the requisite form of high intellectual and moral ability and of constitutional vigour-are by no means equally qualified to escape shot free. The enemy's bullets are least dangerous to the smallest men, and therefore small men are more likely to achieve high fame as commanders than their equally gifted contemporaries whose physical frames are larger. I now give tables on precisely the same principle as those in previous chapters. TABLE I. SUMMARY OF RELATIONSHIPS OF 32 COMMANDERS. Nelson . Runjeet Singh Saxe, Marshal Four or more relations (or five or more in family). 3. Alexander, Philip, and Pyrrhus. F. f. B. N. gBP. f. B. b. S. 2 N. s. GF. Gb. NP. F. 3 B. F. g. n. NS. GGF. F. uS. 2 B. n. US. &c. 3 B. 2 uS. F. &c. F. G. 2 S. 2 P. GN. 2 S. P. PS. 1 Coligny, Maurice, Turenne, and William I. are impossible either to separate or to reckon as one family. If they were considered as only one family, the number of groups would be reduced from 27 to 24. Precisely similar conclusions are to be drawn from these tables, as from those I have already given; but they make my case much stronger than before. I argue that the more able the man, the more numerous ought his able kinsmen to be. That, in short, the names in the third section of Table I. should, on the whole, be those of men of greater weight, than are included in the first. section. There cannot be a shadow of doubt that this is the fact. But the table shows more. Its third section is proportionally longer than it was in the Statesmen, and it was longer in these than in the Judges. Now, the average natural gifts of the different groups are apportioned in precisely the same order. The Commanders are more able than the Statesmen, and the Statesmen more able than the Judges. Consequently, comparing the three groups together, we find the abler men to have, on the average, the larger number of able kinsmen. Similarly, the proportion borne by those Commanders who have 1 For explanation, see similar table, p. 61. any eminent relations at all, to those who have not, is much greater than it is in Statesmen; and in these, much greater than in the Judges. Their peculiar type of ability is largely transmitted. My limited list of Commanders contains several notable families of generals. That of William the Silent is a most illustrious family, and I must say, that in at least two out of his four wives-namely, the daughter of the Elector of Saxony and that of the great Coligny-he could not have married more discreetly. To have had Maurice of Nassau for a son, Turenne for a grandson, and our William III. for a great-grandson, is a marvellous instance of hereditary gifts. Another most illustrious family is that of Charlemagne. First, Pepin de Heristhal, virtual sovereign of France; then his son, Charles Martel, who drove back the Saracenic invasion that had overspread? the half of France; then his grandson, Pepin le Bref, the founder of the Carlovingian dynasty; and lastly, his greatgrandson, Charlemagne, founder of the Germanic Empire. The three that come last, if not the whole of the four, were of the very highest rank as leaders of men. Another yet more illustrious family is that of Alexander, including Philip of Macedon, the Ptolemys, and his second cousin, Pyrrhus. I acknowledge the latter to be a far-off relation, but Pyrrhus so nearly resembled Alexander in character, that I am entitled to claim his gifts as hereditary. Another family is that of Hannibal, his father and his brothers; again, there is that of the Scipios; also the interesting near relationship between Marlborough and the Duke of Berwick. Raleigh's kinships are exceedingly appropriate to my argument, as affording excellent instances of hereditary special aptitudes. I have spoken in the last chapter about Wellington and the Marquess of Wellesley, so I need not repeat myself here. Of Commanders of high but not equally illustrious stamp, I should mention the family of Napier, of Lawrence, and the singular naval race of Hyde Parker. There were five brothers Grant, all highly distinguished in Wellington's campaigns. I may as well mention, that though I know too little about the great Asiatic warriors, Genghis Khan and Timurlane, to insert them in my appendix, yet they are doubly though very distantly interrelated. The distribution of ability among the different degrees of kinship, will be seen to follow much the same order that it did in the Statesmen and in the Judges APPENDIX TO COMMANDERS. LIST OF COMMANDERS THAT HAVE BEEN EXAMINED. Those printed in Italics are included in my Dictionary of Kinships. They are 32 in number; the remaining 27 are by no means wholly destitute of gifted relations. Alexander. Baber. Belisarius. Berwick, Duke of Blake. Blucher. Bonaparte. Cæsar. Charlemagne. Charles Martel. Charles XII. Clive. Coligny. Condé. Cromwell. Cyrus the elder. Dandolo. Doria. Dundonald, Lord. Eugene, Prince. Frederick the Great. Genghis Khan. Gustavus Adolphus. Hannibal. Henri IV. Hyder Ali. Lawrence, Sir H. Mahomet Ali. Marius. Massena. Maurice of Nassau. Marlborough. Miltiades. Moore, Sir J. Moreau. Napier, Sir Charles. (Napoleon, see Bonaparte.) Nelson. Peter the Great. Pericles. Philip of Macedon. Pompey. Pyrrhus. Raleigh. Runjeet Singh. Saladin. Saxe, Marshal. Schomberg. Scipio Africanus. Soult. Themistocles. Timurlane. Titus. Trajan. Tromp Marten. Turenne. Wallenstein. Wellington. Villiam I of Orange. Wolfe. Alexander the Great. Is commonly reputed to be the commander of the greatest genius that the world has produced. When only æt. 16 he showed extraordinary judgment in public affairs, having governed Macedonia during the absence of his father. He succeeded to the throne, and began his great career of conquest æt. 20, and died æt. 32. Living as he did in a time when the marriage tie was loose, there necessarily exists some doubt as to his re |