Justice of South Wales, and also sister of an English judge. She bore him Lord Keeper Lyttleton, also Sir Timothy, a judge. Lord Lyttleton's daughter's son (she married a cousin) was Sir T. Lyttleton, the Speaker of the House of Commons. There is, therefore, abundant reason to conclude that the kinsmen of Lord Chancellors are far richer in natural gifts than those of the other judges. I will now take another test of the existence of hereditary ability. It is a comparison of the number of entries in the columns of Table I. Supposing that natural gifts were due to mere accident, unconnected with parentage, then the entries would be distributed in accordance with the law that governs the distribution of accidents. If it be a hundred to one against some member of any family, within given limits of kinship, drawing a lottery prize, it would be a million to one against three members of the same family doing so (nearly, but not exactly, because the size of the family is limited), and a million millions to one against six members doing so. Therefore, if natural gifts were due to mere accident, the first column of Table I. would have been enormously longer than the second column, and the second column enormously longer than the third; but they are not so. There are nearly as many cases of two or three eminent relations as of one eminent relation; and as a set off against the thirty-nine cases that appear in the first column, there are no less than fifteen cases in the third. It is therefore clear that ability is not distributed at haphazard, but that it clings to certain families. We will proceed to a third test. If genius be hereditary, as I assert it to be, the characteristics that mark a judge ought to be frequently transmitted to his descendants. The majority of judges belong to a strongly-marked type. They are not men who are carried away by sentiment, who love seclusion and dreams, but they are prominent members of a very different class, one that Englishmen are especially prone to honour for at least the six lawful days of the week. I mean that they are vigorous, shrewd, practical, helpful men; glorying in the rough-and-tumble of public life, tough in constitution and strong in digestion, valuing what money brings, ( aiming at position and influence, and desiring to found families. The vigour of a judge is testified by the fact that the average age of their appointment in the last three reigns has been fifty-seven. The labour and responsibility of the office seem enormous to lookers-on, yet these elderly men continue working with ease for many more years; their average age of death is seventy-five, and they commonly die in harness. Now are these remarkable gifts and peculiarities inherited by their sons? Do the judges often have sons who succeed in the same career, where success would have been impossible if they had not been gifted with the special qualities of their fathers? The best answer is a list of names. They will be of much interest to legal readers; others can glance them over, and go on to the results. JUDGES OF ENGLAND, AND OTHER HIGH LEGAL OFFICERS BETWEEN 1660 AND 1865, WHO WERE, OR ARE, RELATED. I mark those cases with an asterisk (*) where both relations are English Judges FATHERS. 'Atkyns, Sir Edward, B. E. (Chas. II.) Atkyns, Sir Richard, Chief Just. N. Wales. *Bramston, Sir Francis, Chief K. B. (Chas. I.) Coleridge, Sir John, Just. Q. B. (Vict.) Dolben, Sir Wm., Just. K. B. (Will. III.) *Erskine, T.; cr. Lord Erskine; Lord Chan. *Eyre, Sir Samuel, Just. K.B. (Will. III.) SONS. (Sir Robert, Chief Just. C.P. Sir Gilbert, Just. C. P. Ireland; cr. Bart. 1 I count the fathers of the judges of Charles II. because the judges of the present reign are too young to have judges for sons Finch, Heneage, L. Ch.; cr. E. of Nottingham. Heneage, Solic.-Gen.; cr. Earl Aylesford. Finch, Sir Heneage, Recorder of London. *Forster, Sir James, Just. C.P. (Chas. I.) Gurney, Sir John, B.E. (Vict.) *Herbert, Sir Edw., Lord Keeper. (Chas. II.) Heneage, Ld. Chan.; cr. E. of Nottingham, Sir John, Chief Just. C.P. (Vict.) BROTHERS. *Atkyns, Sir Robert, Chief C.P. (Will. III.) GRANDFATHERS. *Atkyns, Sir Robt. Chief C.P. (Will. III.) Burnet, -- Scotch Judge; Lord Cramond. *Gould, Sir Henry, Just. Q.B. (Anne.) Jeffreys,, Judge in N. Wales. Finch, H. Solic.-Gen.: cr. E. Aylesford. Walter, Sir E. Chief Just. S. Wales. *Heath, Sir R. Chief K.B. (Chas. I.) Sir Edward, B.E. (Jas. II.) Sir Spencer, Just. C. P. (Geo. II.) George, Dean of Arches, &c. GRANDSONS. Sir J. Tracy (assumed name of Atkyns) Sir Thomas Burnet, Just. C.P. Sir Henry Gould, Just. C.P. (Geo. III.) Out of the 286 Judges, more than one in every nine of them have been either father, son, or brother to another judge, and the other high legal relationships have been even more numerous. There cannot, then, remain a doubt . but that the peculiar type of ability that is necessary to a judge is often transmitted by descent. The reader must guard himself against the supposition, that because the Judges have so many legal relations, therefore they have few other relations of eminence in other walks of life. A long list might be made out of those who had bishops and archbishops for kinsmen. No less than ten judges-of whom one, Sir Robert Hyde, appeared in the previous list-have a bishop or an archbishop for a brother. Of these, Sir William Dolben was brother to one Archbishop of York and son of the sister of another, namely of John Williams, who was also the Lord Keeper to James I. There are cases of Poet-relations, as Cowper, Coleridge, Milton, Sir Thomas Overbury, and Waller. There are numerous relatives who are novelists, physicians, admirals, and generals. My lists of kinsmen at the end of this chapter are very briefly treated, but they include the names of many great men, whose deeds have filled large volumes. It is one of my most serious drawbacks in writing this book, to feel that names, which never now present themselves to my eye without associations of respect and reverence, for the great qualities of those who bore them, are likely to be insignificant and meaningless to the eyes of most of my readers—indeed to all of those who have never had occasion to busy themselves with their history. I know how great was my own ignorance of the character of the great men of previous generations, before I occupied myself with biographies, and I therefore reasonably suspect that many of my readers will be no better informed about them than I was myself. A collection of men that I have learned to look upon as an august Valhalla, is likely to be regarded, by those who are strangers to the facts of biographical history, as an assemblage of mere respectabilities. The names of North and Montagu, among the Judges, introduce us to a remarkable breed of eminent men, set forth at length in the genealogical tree of the Montagus, and again in that of the Sydneys (see the chapter on "LITERARY MEN"), to whose natural history-if the expression be permitted-a few pages may be profitably assigned. There is hardly a name in those pedigrees which is not more than ordinarily eminent: many are illustrious. They are closely tied together in their kinship, and they extend through ten generations. The main roots of this diffused ability lie in the families of Sydney and Montagu, and, in a lesser degree, in that of North. The Sydney blood-I mean that of the descendants of Sir William Sydney and his wife—had extraordinary influence in two different combinations. First with the Dudleys, producing in the first generation, Sir Philip Sydney and his eminent brother and sister; in the second generation, at least one eminent man; and in the third generation, Algernon Sydney, with his able brother and much be-praised sister. The second combination of the Sydney blood was with the Harringtons, producing in the first generation a literary peer, and Elizabeth the mother of the large and most remarkable family that forms the chief feature in my genealogical table. sources. The Montagu blood, as represented by Sir Edward, who died in the Tower, 1644, is derived from three distinct His great-grandfather (gF.) was Sir John Finnieux, Chief Justice of the King's Bench; his grandfather (g.) was John Roper, Attorney-General to Henry VIII.; and his father-by far the most eminent of the threewas Sir Edward Montagu, Chief Justice of the King's Bench. Sir Edward Montagu, son of the Chief Justice, married Elizabeth Harrington, of whom I have just spoken, and had a large family, who in themselves and in their descendants became most remarkable. To mention only the titles they won: in the first generation they obtained two peerages, the earldom of Manchester and the barony of Montagu; in the second they obtained two more, the earldom of Sandwich and the barony of Capel; in the third five more, the dukedom of Montagu, earldoms of Halifax and of Essex, the barony of Guilford, |