The Romance of a Family

THE English complain that the Americans, in their desire to search out their pedigrees and family histories, have in recent years bought up most of the volumes containing county annals, so that now it is impossible to purchase such books except at enormous prices. Sometimes whole towns in America seem to be fired with the desire to discover ancestral towns in England, and in one ease at least, that of Gloucester, the enterprise has led to pleasant interchanges and interesting results. The English and the Massachusetts Gloucesters have exchanged visits and cartes-de-visite; and I have heard that Mr. Price, for twenty years representative of Gloucester in Parliament, placed on the picture of his town, sent to its namesake in Massachusetts, the Horatian prophecy that in the future it might be debated which was the original place. The results of inquiries into family history have not always corresponded to the motives with which they have been instituted. The rather stout sums paid for guidance along the illustrious rainbow have not led to the bag of gold supposed to have descended from its colors. Even as to fame, there are instances where the investments at the Heralds’ College have been hardly remunerative. One distinguished American family found its name appearing for the first time as that of an executed poisoner; and several have fulfilled almost to the letter that good story which long ago amused the readers of The Atlantic Monthly, of the solemn family conclave gathered to open the long-sealed box supposed to contain the robes of a noble ancestor, but which turned out the livery of his servant. At the same time some of these facts, however apt to cool snobbish ambition, are sufficiently striking. An eminent American family, well represented in literature, found the last and only representative of its English stem to be a cobbler; but it was also found that this cobbler was a very unique workman, and the author of a forcible political pamphlet.

Some inquiries which I have had the opportunity to make have convinced me that our own Emerson belongs to the same family which in England produced the famous and eccentric Durham mathematician, William Emerson. This individual, who was born at Hurworth in 1701, and lived more than eighty years, wrote works still valued by mathematicians. He married the Hurworth rector’s daughter, but having some disagreement with the clergyman put all his wife’s clothing, and other things which she had brought with her, into a wheelbarrow, trundled them back to the rectory, and emptied them at the door. He wrote for the Curiosa Mathematica under the name of Philofluentimechanaalgegeomastrolongo. It is hardly wonderful that in a remote country district a man who indulged in algebraic signs and wrote under such a name should have been regarded four generations ago as a conjurer. But this reputation gave him at one time much disgust, more particularly as he was a very determined freethinker. On one occasion a poor woman, whose husband had gone to sea, came to ask him where her husband was. “ In hell! ” thundered the irate scholar, stalking back to his library. However, it was a time and region in which depredations on property were very frequent; and finding that his reputation for skill in the black art held all depredators in awe, the queer old gentleman does not seem to have repudiated the supposition so warmly in later life. He was a famous angler, and sometimes stood up to his middle in water for hours together, absorbed in his favorite sport. A monument to his memory, with an elegant Latin epitaph, stands in Hurworth churchyard. He was childless.

Since the necessary reaction against the claims of birth asserted itself in politics, there have arisen those remarkable discoveries of some of the laws of heredity which assuredly lend a philosophical interest to the subject of family evolution. The development of nature through the interaction of persistence and differentiation harmonizes with familiar, and yet almost mystical, facts observed in every family, and it is unquestionable that the savant now finds serious interest investing the lineal biography which the democrat has dismissed with contempt. Nor can there fail to attach some moral interest to the scientific generalizations which find their illustrations in the household. Mr. Francis Galton, the accomplished author of two admirable hooks on heredity, has proved that every family is surrounded by forces and laws which, intelligently used, may tend to the maintenance of health, and even in the end to the production of genius! It is perhaps premature to estimate with any attempt at doctrinal precision the bearings on family culture of -the physical and intellectual laws of inheritance; but it is certain that a graver interest than formerly now attaches to the reappearance in children of the tendencies, and even the little tricks of manner, which belonged to relatives they never saw. For a long time, no doubt, observations of this character have exerted some influence in many families, especially in guarding against certain physical dangers; but it is probable that in the future they will enter more largely into the direction of education and vocation. Some of Mr. Galton’s startling facts appear to prophesy a time when parents shall recognize that the choice of their boy’s occupation, now such a source of anxiety, has already been decided, and that they need only read the verdict as the lad’s early years translate it from the annals of his ancestors. The records there of the failure of one and the success of another may possibly intimate the direction of the family genius; and if any such genuine science should arrive to fulfill the disappointed promises of phrenology, and intervene between the child and the conventionalization to which he or she is subjected, the new philosophic genealogist will be triumphantly vindicated.

I happen to know an old Welsh family whose branches had long flourished by mercantile life, but to whose chief representatives there was born, fifty years ago, a seventh son of a seventh son. Enough of ancient superstition survived in their Welsh neighborhood and in themselves, at that period, to affect the destiny of this seventh son, for whom all authorities predicted second - sight and other occult powers. So they educated him to be a physician, the medical art being that which would give most play to the anticipated subtlety. But the seventh-son theory —albeit originating, probably, in some earnest effort at generalizing the phenomena of inheritance by a primitive Galton — failed sadly. The Welsh lad from the first revealed the family talent; he out-traded all the boys at school. He had no occult powers whatever, but clear common sense. If there was one thing he hated more than another it was medicine, and next to that medical study. After groaning through the College of Physicians, and wasting a year or two on a happily idle “practice,” he summed up all his remedial attainments in amputating all invalidism, his own included, and becoming what he now is, a successful and honorable merchant. Many may smile at this instance of the potency of the seventh-son superstition who yet may be determining the career of their children by notions destined to be one day smiled at in their turn, — for instance, by the notion that the path of success can he arbitrarily selected. As one said of old, “ we are born at all adventure,” and many adventures are likely to be of unhappy result, until more serious attention is paid to family biography as the best interpreter of individual tendencies.

It has, however, been as a branch of archæology that the interest in genealogy has lately revealed signs of revival. So many historic facts have been discovered in old family papers and wills that it is pretty certain every old scrap will be overhauled and scrutinized. Some of the papers already found have been of such value that it would hardly be a surprise if there should turn up in some old Warwickshire or London library all the missing links of Shakespeare’s life. At this moment the ablest and most enterprising historic archaeologist living — Colonel Chester, of Philadelphia— is engaged in collecting the wills of all the poets and actors of Shakespeare’s time. These he will edit with full annotations, and the new Shakespeare Society for which he is acting has a very fair chance of making some special discovery with regard to Shakespeare, while it has the certainty of exhuming much valuable information concerning the literary history of his age. No one who has looked into Colonel Chester’s wonderful volume of the Westminster Abbey Registers can fail to anticipate valuable results from the work in which he is now engaged. That volume, to which the author gave many years and much money, and which he presented to the Harleian Society (of which he was a founder), is a sufficient proof of his ability, and also of his enthusiasm.

Personal friendship some few years ago brought this American archaeologist to enter upon researches of a more purely personal interest — as it appeared — than he is in the habit of making. The result, however, has been of such singular interest that one may well doubt whether the expected historic discoveries for which a parliamentary committee is searching among the documents of ancient families are any more likely to be found there than under humbler names. I have before me the volume to which I allude: it is printed for private use only, and it bears the unpromising title, Some Account of the Taylor Family. But this is one of the most instructive books I have ever read. Fletcher, of Madeley, considered that the obscurest individual life, if recorded with fidelity, would possess much of high and general interest; and the saying might be with more truth applied to an individual family, — a living entity, at once impersonal and individual, whose life is the continuous experience of centuries, completing lives that seemed cut short, justifying aims that appeared to fail, and weaving from the commonplace of one generation the romance of another. “Taylor” is a common enough name; antecedently, one would expect the historic tracks of it to be worth noting only if they led by the home where Jeremy, “ Shakespeare of divines,” was born, or the dear old Platonist who sacrificed the bull to Jupiter in the back parlor, or at least the “ water poet.” But no; it is the name of a plain and respectable family of London merchants, whose story has been followed, winding hither, thither, now bright, again sombre, but clearly traceable, through humble as well as grand homes, across seven centuries.

On reading a portion of this volume, it appeared to me such a type of the family histories which might be of great importance that I have obtained the consent of the gentleman who has made this bequest to his family — Peter Alfred Taylor, M. P. — to publish some facts from it that seem to me of general interest. But before proceeding to those interesting facts it may be well enough to refer to one matter, of no general importance except as showing the nature of the hard knots which meet the explorer of a family line, and the method by which alone they can be successfully untied.

The Taylors traced their family without much difficulty to 1662, but there the thread was lost. They had a tradition which connected them with an ancient family of Taylards, and they had the same coat of arms; but the Heralds’ College had found the will of a Cardigan (into which family the main Taylard line had changed) in 1662 making a bequest to a “ Taylard ” kinsman as “ the last of his name and fallen into poverty;” and so they decided that the family had ended then, and that the mere coincidence of arms was no evidence of connection. But Colonel Chester investigated the Taylard pedigree from the fourteenth to the middle of the seventeenth century, and found that the names frequent in the Taylard family during that time were repeated by the Taylor family after that time; even such peculiar names as Ursula, Venetia, Marmaduke, and others of a kind rarely given but for family reasons occurred repeatedly in the two families. So soon as this identity of peculiar names was discovered, the common arms, the family tradition, and other matters were by it cemented into a solid bridge over the genealogical chasm. But this bridge, built of dry stones over a dusty rut where no stream has run for centuries, what is it to us? Well, it is of quite as little importance in itself as any Hecuba that ever existed; but there is some little interest in the “Night-Cap” countries of time if we see living laws of human nature at work there. How is it that a family of aristocratic, wealthy Taylards disappears iu Huntingdonshire, in 1662, and simultaneously a plebeian family of Taylors begins in London, these two being one and the same family ? Just there the tale begins. The Taylors gained their name as workers at the honest occupation indicated by it. When they were first so called men were named after their work, and tailor was then commonly spelt with a y. Having accumulated little by little, they appeared as a very wealthy family, who, having invested in landed estates and become gentry, modified their name to Taylard. So it went on, until by omission of the normal word “male” in a will the vast estates and wealth of the Taylards all fell to be the portion of a little girl. This child married, at the age of fourteen, one Robert Brudenell. The entire Taylard fortune was impoverished at that marriage altar, and their wealth was alienated to become the foundation of the earldom of Cardigan. The rich Brudenell was at once adopted by the nobility; the disinherited Taylards were scattered, one to New England, another to the Bermudas, while their chief representative set up in London in something like the same business as that with which the family began. With a disgust at even the name associated with their family pride and its fall, this man set up his sign as plain “Mr. Taylor, Haberdasher,” on the spot where the Longmans now publish their books in Paternoster Row, and when he died left his family what would now be a million dollars, as the nest-egg of a new family fortune. And so it was simply on account of this reversion to the more ancient but less aristocratic name which led the Earl Cardigan to mention the only one who retained the name Taylard as “ the last of his name,” — a bit of irony which quite nonplused the Heralds’ College, until it was explained to them by the Philadelphian.

This honest haberdasher married a sister of the Rev. John Wilson, the first preacher ever settled in Boston (Massachusetts), and who. was from 1630 to 1667 one of the ruling spirits of the colony. The same lady was the widow of one of the Rawson family, which gave the Massachusetts Colony from 1650 to 1686 that enterprising secretary of state, Edward Rawson, who served the government and persecuted the Quakers with equal zeal.

The humbled Taylor family became thoroughly puritanized. Tt is, perhaps, to be regarded ns among the many symptoms of social anarchy two hundred years ago that we find here a man and his son marrying mother and daughter. The inner nature of these primitive Puritans seems to have been in every way confused. For example, Daniel Taylor, in his will, after sternly ordering his executors to keep his children from dancing or learning to dance, confirms gifts to his wife, such as pearl necklaces, diamond rings, and other finery. Here is the portrait of this gentleman who frowned on dancing and loved decorations: a right Greek nose above a projecting under-face; tasseled lace collar and cuffs on a dress otherwise funereal. His widow was married to Deputy Governor Willoughby, of Massachusetts, and on his death (1671) she married a Captain Hammond. One of her daughters married a Professor Salisbury, of Yale College, and no doubt the brilliants just mentioned are now heirlooms in that family. There are not a few documents here which show that the Puritans were quite as much mixed up in their theological doctrines as in their notions of practical propriety. What especially strikes me is the persistency with which these godly men were accused of — Socinianism. The most hated Puritan preacher in London at. the time was Mr. Goodwin, and his most able defender was Daniel Taylor, and the charge they had chiefly to combat was Socinianism. The eminent Mr. Goodwin seems also to have been put to much pains to rebut the charge of believing too much in good works. The divine approbation, he says, “is to bee obtained by good works; yet not properly nor so much by the merit of these works as by vertue of God’s law, of God’s most gracious and beautifull acceptation.”

Against this divine one Rev. John Vicars levels a pamphlet intituled thus: “ Coleman St. Conclave Visited & that Grand Impostor the Schismatics’ Cheater in Chief (who hath long slyly lurked therein) truly and duly discovered: containing a most palpable and plain Display of Mr. John Goodwin’s Self-Conviction (under his own hand-writing) and of the notorious Heresies, Errors, Malice, Pride & Hypocrisy, of this most Huge Garagantua in Falsely Pretended Piety: to the lamentable misleading of his too credulous, soul-murdered Proselytes, of Coleman Street and elsewhere, collected principally out of his own Big Braggadochia, Wave-like, Swelling, and Swaggering Writings; full-fraught with Six-footed terms, and Flashy Rhetorical Phrases, far more than solid and sacred Truths; and may fitly serve (if it be the Lord’s will), like Belshazzar’s hand-writing upon the wall of his conscience, to strike Terror and Shame into his Soul and shameless Face, and to Undeceive his most miserably Cheated and Enchanted, or Bewitched Followers, 1648.”

One of the drollest documents found among the Taylor papers is a pardon issued by Charles II. to a boy, William Taylor, in condonation of the wickedness of his father, who bore an important part in the commonwealth. For this pardon the guardians of the child had to pay some five hundred pounds, equal to as many thousands now; and it seems that these compulsory condonations were a felicitous invention for keeping the ever-blessed Defender of the Faith in pocket-money. The pardon is written in dog-Latin, and makes no reference to the father at all, but condones the son, in his own name, of “ all manner of treacheries, crimes, treasons, . . . misprisions, . . . all and singular murders,” and so on, with an endless catalogue of all possible and impossible crimes; exception to the presents, however, being made in case the said William Taylor (then fourteen years old!) should have been found guilty of fomenting rebellion in Ireland, of aiding the Jesuits, of bigamy, conjuration, invocation, or witchcraft. The whole document would fill eight pages of The Atlantic.

Among the most interesting papers is an old MS. diary, which was found at a book-stall in Oxford Street, and gravitated through strange hands to the possession of its writer’s descendant. It is the diary of a Mrs. Dorothy Turner, whose daughter married him whose pardon has just been noticed. It is admirably written, extending from 1644 to 1672; and surely there never was a more curious example of how little events of vast historic moment may be to a family living amid them. In January, 1649, we learn that this lady bore a still-born child, but of the execution of Charles I. in Lhe same month there is no hint. In June of the same year another child died; what were the accession of Cromwell and Milton, the invasion of Ireland, to this mourning mother! She records the child’s burial in Allhallows Bread Street “by my Cousen thomas Downes; the Scriptur he spoke to was the 1: thes: the 4th and the 13th. to the end.” The Restoration, the Great Plague, the Great Fire, may have had their vast influence on this lady’s life, — probably did, for there is a gap in the diary from 1657 to 1672, — but her homely records relate only to the sorrows and joys of her own life. Among these sorrows there was one which even now, after two centuries have elapsed, it is difficult to read without emotion. A beautiful daughter, Susannah, aged fifteen, dies. It is to be feared the lovely child perished of precocious piety. “How pationatlv [writes the mother] would shee mourne for sin and that shee had done noe more for god how much Time would she say shee had lost which if shee had well improved she might have bin a growne Christian wheras now shee was but weak and should god damn her he were but Just . . . shee would uter it with much vehemency powering out her Teares in abundance . . . how did shee warne her sisters of that sin of curiosity in dreseing said shee have a care the divill will perswad you this curell is not struck right and might be new done and this pin is not well till he hath drawn you to while away that time you should devote to god.” There is a portrait preserved of Susannah: here is the dainty little thing, a sort of snow-drop, around which one can imagine nothing less pure than the snow, and looking into her clear poetic eyes I feel a pang in reading of the agonies by which she was torn. “The divill knowing his time to be short set upon her with his fiery Asalts which made her cry out in this manner with tears oh said she if after all that god hath done for mee I should be Damd at last.” It is a relief when one Sunday the child says, “ Tomorrow shall I be singing my Hallelujahs in heaven and begin my eternall saboth ther,” and when, indeed, on that morning the gentle Lethe touches her lips and ends her struggles with the phantasms of fear.

There is something in the bare simplicity of these annals of people who never dreamed that any eye would look upon them which is strangely realistic, and awakens a feeling which few novelists have had the art to excite. Here is a history, told in a few letters written by a mother to the young husband of her daughter, who has left his wife for a time while he is off merchandising in Dantzie. In the first letter, just four months after the marriage, the young girl is described as longing for her husband’s return, and contains a sly intimation that “your litell one is able to spring for ioy at youre returne come as soone as you will; ” then comes the mother’s death, with the child’s birth; then the outpourings of the grandmother’s love for the babe that had cost them all so dear; then, alas, mingled love and reproaches to the young father, who had hardly fulfilled her hopes; and finally, after three short years, the sad surrender of the little one to the new wife, to whom, however, the old lady has the grace to write “ deare daughter, ffor so you must give me leave now to call you, being now in the Roome and place of my own poore daughter.” The heartbroken old lady! we can almost see her lay down her pen to wipe her moistened spectacles; ah, if her gathering tear could only have been a time-lens to reveal all the interesting results which were to follow the event of the pretty little lady’s stepping into the place of her “ poore daughter!”

Among the curiosities that turn up so frequently by the way is an account of a hail-storm that broke over London in May, 1680, of which Rebecca Sherbrooke writes to her daughter: “ It ratled in the Are: and fell at first by degres the gretest part about the bignes of a nutmeg; but intermixed with a bundance as big as eggs: som biger som wer Long som round & squar hard & Ise: many waide after taken up in to hot hands a ounce som more coz John Thorald saw one and a Gent man a nother wayed 4 ounces a pece many 7 inches . . . beside great raine and thunder; god is terible in his Judgments how should we fear be fore him . . . one com to se me tould me a Gent man he saw had his hat of complimenting to a nother: and a hail stone sudenly came & broke his head by rasing down flesh and hair together: thes warnings calls for cencer repentance Lord grant I nor mine may not put it of till the evill day comes; ” and so on; with the usual sermon that winds up so many letters of the period. It may be noted how this lady gathers courage as she proceeds in narrating the size of the hailstones. It is to be regretted she did not name the gentleman who fell a martyr to taking off his hat to an acquaintance in such a storm, in order that we might know the politest personage of English history.

Death appears to have maintained his sway as the King of Terrors in those days. Here is the fac-simile of a card of invitation to a funeral: a skeleton stands on either side, each beneath an hourglass, ghastly on the deep black border; there are three death’-heads, a shrouded figure, four picks and spades, and many detached human bones scattered about for further ornamentation; the whole crowned at the arched, tomb-shaped top with a big death’s-head, winged hourglass, and scroll with “ Memento mori.” The Taylor family was not now Puritan, but they, their clerical pastors and church neighbors, appear to have been quite as sombre in their conceptions of life and death as any who went before them. Every letter bears some shadow of the religions glooms which perhaps corresponded with the gay frivolities prevailing in more worldly circles. The pious people of the time plainly had their little enjoyments, but they were received with dolorous reflections. A gentleman thanks his niece for “ a briaw pig which was heartily eat & thanks drank round,” but it at once leads him to reflect how much such kindness is needed because “ In this worlds pilgrimage all of us are to expect many Conflicts from Enemys without and within, real & imaginary, there are evill men and variety of Diseases, there are unruly passions & inbred Corruptions there are foreboding and disquieting thoughts, there are vain projects & wild Imaginations, there are fruitless Cares & immoderate desires and there is superadded the great Enemy to our Souls the Devil].”

One has sometimes to suspect that among these formidable assailants the imaginary were made more of than the real, and the divine judgments better attended to when they came as huge hail-stones than when they came in such simple ways as is here recorded in the case of Mr. Justice Pengelly, who died of disease caught through the filthy condition of prisoners brought before him, from the horrible dens in which they were then kept and for some time after. The Puritan movement seems to have set every one — man, woman, and child — to preaching for about a century. Then we find the reaction, —a new atmosphere, people grown hearty, lusty, and fond of writing and singing merry songs. Instead of the funereal gentlemen of the seventeenth century, we have by the middle of the eighteenth, in this family, a hilarious old gentleman writing sonnets to all the ladies of his acquaintance, and chaffing his son (a clergyman) while regaling him with the latest clerical scandals. He writes to his reverend son as follows: “ When orpheus went down to the Regions below — whch men are forbidden to see — he tun’d up his Lyre as old History shews — To set his Eurydice free — All Hell was astonish’d a person so wise — Should rashly endanger his life—and venture so far. But how vast their surprise! When they heard he had come for his wife — To find out a punishment due to the fault — Old Pluto had puzzled his brain — But Hell had not torments sufficient he thought — So he gave him his wife back again — But pity succeeding soon vanquished his heart—And pleased with his playing so well— He took her again in reward of his art — Such power has musick in Hell. Think of this and sin oak e tobacco.” As an offset to the lack of gallantry in the above, I might extract pages of the opposite kind, such as this: “ Very gallant copy of verses but somewhat silly on ye ladies fine cloths at ye ball: ”

The son to whom the many droll epistles, of which I have given a specimen, were written became one of the most eminent authors of his day. By his most important work, The Apology of Benjamin Ben Mordecai for embracing Christianity, the Rev. Henry Taylor acquired the name of Ben Mordecai. He had to conquer some scruples before subscribing the thirty-nine articles in order to enter the University of Cambridge, where he matriculated (1729) and subsequently obtained his M. A. and a fellowship. At the age of twenty-four he was ordained by Bishop Hoadly, and very soon was leading the reformers who labored to secure those changes in the prayer-book which are still the hope of the Broad Churchman. He was perhaps the most heretical man that has ever been allowed to remain as a clergyman in the English Church, unless Bishop Colon so be excepted. He boldly avowed Arian and Universalist opinions, and no menaces or persuasions could induce him to obey the law requiring him to read the Athanasian creed in his pulpit. Among his papers are various threats from his parishioners that they would invoke the authorities unless he should comply, but he stoutly refused. He was also a political radical, and it must have been an impressive discovery to his descendant, the present member of Leicester, when, after he had these many years annually challenged the Game Laws in Parliament, he found a resolution for their abolition penned by his ancestor of four generations before! Not less must this republican representative have felt his pulses warm when he read an account of the vain endeavor of certain courtiers to get Ben Mordecai to put himself out of the way to be presented to the king when the latter landed at Portsmouth, where the erratic rector resided as the most considerable personage of the place. It probably would have astonished those who were contemporary with Ben Mordecai, and not a little softened the wrath with which many regarded him, if they could have known half as much about the man as any reader of these memoirs may know of him now. He was a gentleman after the old definition; he was benevolent in small things. The daughter of the clerk at Portsmouth remembered that one Sunday, having put off the surplice for the black gown, and nearly reached the pulpit, he suddenly turned round and walked back to the vestry, whence he presently proceeded again to the pulpit. A friend learned afterwards that this incident was caused by the fact that, while arranging his surplice in the vestry he had observed a bee struggling on its back on the table; something drew his attention away at the moment, but he remembered it again when near the end of the service, and returned to set the bee right before entering on his sermon. Here are his love-letters, so sweet throughout that it must have been not time but love which has obliterated the first sentence of the earliest, and made it begin: “with a Robin singing at my ” (torn). The robin sings all the way through, from youth to gray hairs: sings to the wife as it sang to the maid; sings to the daughter as it sang to the mother and the bride. Ben Mordecai lived a happy life, and mainly, I suspect, because lie noted the robins which sang at his door, and possibly learned his theology from their song rather than the hairsplitting Homoiousians of his time,— a theology which may be summed up in one doctrine, the Divine Love.

It is amusing to note how very closely the situation in things ecclesiastical a hundred years ago resembled that of today. The rationalistic clergyman was denounced by a rigid bishop (Gloucester) on one side, and encouraged by a latitudinarian bishop (Winchester) on the other; the Broad Churchmen seem to have expected the speedy realization of a reformed prayer-book as confidently as their successors of the present time. We find even the familiar sermon-trade flourishing one hundred and twenty vears ago. Among Ben Mordecai’s papers is a circular, appropriately labeled by him “ Impudent,” which runs thus: “ One hundred and fifty sermons, such as have been greatly admired and are but little known, engraved in a masterly running Hand, printed on stout writing paper, and made to resemble Manuscript as nearly as possible: in length from twenty to twenty-five minutes, as pithy as possible, intelligible to every Understanding, and as fit to be preached to a polite as a country congregation. As these sermons are designed for the use of clergymen only, and consequently the less known to others the more valuable, they will never be advertised in the public Papers. The price of each sermon stitched in purple Paper will be only ONE SHILLING. Send a line to the Rev. Dr. Trusler, Care of Mr. Burns, King St. Covent Garden. Secresy may be depended on.”

Nor did the rationalist clergyman of the church in the last century lack.reminders such as are familiar to his brother of to-day of the vulnerable point in his armor. The problem often rose before Ben Mordecai, with what consistency he could maintain his rectory and pulpit while abjuring one of the creeds and several articles. His sympathetic sister admonishes him, on one occasion, of an adversary on his track who means to press this question, and asks, “ What hole will you creep out by? ” but the reply is undiseoverable. A hundred years have brought us several hundred rectors of similar views and position, but without eliciting any reply to that question of the shrewd and anxious sister.

One of the daughters of Ben Mordecai, Elizabeth, appears to have set up as a medical practitioner in London, to give the poor aid and advice gratis; and as this was in 1782, she may be regarded as the first British physician of her sex. Perhaps she did not know what a radical thing she was doing. Clearly the writer of another letter here, proposing to have a lady made parish clerk or pulpit reader (as she already is, virtually), was unconscious of the fearfulness of his suggestion. It is even a curate who writes as follows of his aged clerk: “ He is so weak as to be obliged to use crutches. His daughter officiates for him; she has an excellent voice, & reads very well indeed, & is much approved of. When old George is called hence, I wish to recommend her as his successor. She can easily procure assistance for the graves : every other office she can do very well: the Parish approves of her.” It is plain that the process of “ Americanizing our institutions,” so often denounced by Tories as a modern innovation, is of respectable antiquity. Though the Taylors had long ceased to he Puritans in religion, they seem to have preserved their political liberalism, and the sympathy of one of them with America, clergyman though he was, reveals itself incidentally during the revolutionary war. Under date of August 14, 1775, he writes : “ We

thank Bessy for her American news. But do not believe above one half of it. The Ministry may for a short time hire Foreign Troops, but in the way they go on, of diminishing the Revenue by destroying our trade with the Americans, they will not long have wherewith to pay Foreigners or other troops. The Quarrel Is of the Americans among themselves I believe to be all idle tales.” Another letter of May 27, 1778, is still more interesting: “ John Deval was born at Wexford in Ireland, by trade a Miller, he inlisted abt 3 years ago into ye 61 Compy of Marines, Portsmouth division. He was drummed out of Portsmth on 21 of Octr last for cutting off two fingers, wch he uniformly declared he did because he wd not and cd not in conscience fight agt the Americans. He declared his readiness to serve his Majesty anywhere but in America. But when he pleaded Conscience agt this ye Officer was in great heat & asserted yt a Soldier ought not to have any Conscience abt the matter. The Soldier gave reasons : the Officer gave Oaths. The Soldier talkd of Conscience; the Officer talkd of Damnation : The man was committed to the Black Hole where with astonishing art, & patience of suffering, he cut off his fingers. Since this Another man wth more Character has attempted to cut his Throat to avoid this American Destination.” Yet another clergyman writes (August 3, 1776): “ We wait here in anxious expectation of the next news from America, great things I think depend on what that may be — But to Old England it cannot be good, good care has been taken of that — cutting of our own throats can never increase ye importance of this empire. A thunderclap I expect from some quarter. If Providence does let us down easy, it is infinitely more than we deserve—Individuals have long been gamblers. It is at this instant ye case of ye Nation. It has staked at one throw more than it can afford to lose & has little or no chance of winning. This is not only gambling but gambling like a fool.”

One of the most curious things in this volume is an account of a Spiritualist seance in London in 1762. Under date of February 16th in that year Rebecca Taylor writes to her brother: “ I have lately been at London very near the Ghost of Fanny, yes! I have been among the Believers but could not help being, and owning myself an Infidel notwithstanding I was so near the spirit. Oh! that all the clergy had but as much understanding in their whole composition as my Brother has in his one little Toe, they would not then give in to such ridiculous nonsense. a friend of Mrs. Frenches a person of whose veracity and whose Integrity and Honour she could depend on, was present while the following Farce was Acting he was admitted at 10 o’clock one night where he found about 15 more persons 3 of whom were revde the Candle was immediately put out and silence desired, soon after a soft rapping began & scratching, but not in an angry mood, one of the clergymen declared the spirit was come, and asked if he should question it which was assented to & accordingly he began. Fanny are you come? to which one knock was given, (which you must know is yes; and 2 knocks is no.) are you willing to answer such Questions as I shall put to you? if you are give one knock if not give 2 knocks One knock given. He then proceeded with great Solemnity to Interrogate this Female Ghost — are you a spirit? one knock. are you a good spirit? one knock, are you in a state of happiness? one knock, are you in a state of progressive happiness ?

I mean by that an increasing happiness, one knock, are you troubled in mind ? one knock, have you injurd any one?

2 knocks, has Mr Parsons injurd you? 2 knocks, has his wife? 2 knocks. Did you die an unnatural death? 2 knocks. Some persons present having heard that the Ghost came to reveal its being poysoned, was Surprised at the answer to the last Query, but the Parson gravely said it was his fault in not Stating the Question right; he would therefore ask it again. Parson: Did you die a natural Death? Spirit gave 2 knocks. Was you poisoned? one knock. Was it in Beer Tea or Purl? knocked for Purl. What is it o’clock? gave 10 knocks. How many Quarters after? 2 knocks. Some persons said the Ghost was again out, for that it gone 3 quarters by St Sepulchre’s chimes — the Revd Genn answerd that clocks might be faulty, but by real time the Spirit might be right. He then pursued his Interrogation — can I be of any service to you? one knock. Would it appear that you died by poyson if your Corps was taken up — one knock, yes. Would it give you satisfaction if Mr K was hangd ? Yes. Will you appear in a Court of justice if he should he prosecuted? Yes, one knock. Is there no one here that comes to scoff ? No. Do all present come with a serious mind ? Yes. How many Clergymen are in the room? One knock. Parson — What only one knock ? 2 knocks. Some observd there was 3 Clergymen in the room to which the parson judiciously observed that the 3d was a stranger & not in a Canonical habit. Then Mrs Frenches friend askd if it could tell the coulour of the arsenick by which it was poisoned. One knock, yes. Was it red arsenick ? yes. Now am I convinced of the imposture for red arsenick has not the least poisonous quality in it, ’tis white. I appeald to a physician present for my assersion. This was excused; how should a woman know such nice distinctions as to the coulour. Mrs Frenches friend — pray Gentlemen how does she know that she took arsenick at all? she declard she lived but 3 hours after taking it, its plain she did not know the Tast or she would not have taken it. Upon this much altercation ensued, at which the spirit shewd much anger by scratching. 1 hant room for more.” A postscript adds: “I was much pleasd with one clergyman who sayd it was a Damd Lying spirit.”

The history of the Taylors possesses a further interest for American readers through their intermarriage with the Courtauld family. This family, still distinguished in London by the culture and wealth of its members, is traceable to Augustine Courtauld, born in the Isle d’Oléron, said by tradition to have been brought to England as an infant, concealed in a pannier, soon after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, when the children of Huguenots were being placed in convents. From him was descended George Courtauld, grandfather of Peter Alfred Taylor, M. P., whose life belongs to the romance of the far West. Colonel Chester writes of him that, “ after a life of most varied enterprise in America and England, he invested what property he finally found himself possessed of in the purchase of lands in the Western (United) States, and died as he was about to introduce the growth and manufacture of silk in the State of Ohio. He was a man of great power of character and of great philanthropy, and it is said of him that ‘ in all his path through life he left a track of light behind him.’ ”

The following narrative will fitly close my notes on the volume before me: —

“ He [George Courtauld] had from early youth been a radical in his political opinions, and indeed held republican principles. At the age of fifty-nine [1819] he once more turned his steps to the United States of America, whither he went alone, intending to purchase land wherever it might seem most advantageous for the carrying out of a project he had of forming an association for the union of capital and labor on terms mutually advantageous. He purchased large tracts of uncultivated land in the State of Ohio, near the town of Marietta, and returned to England early in 1820, to organize the society and take over his family. On his homeward journey he went the whole distance from the Ohio River to New Orleans alone in a little skiff, navigating the Mississippi, . . . his only guide being a little painted chart. He arrived in New Orleans in safety, after facing and surmounting many difficulties and some dangers with his indomitable courage and inexhaustible buoyancy of spirit. Several persons and some families of different ranks in life sailed with him and most of his family from London to Philadelphia; only two of the intended members of the association proceeded with him to Ohio, therefore the whole plan fell through. Much hardship and many difficulties were encountered by him, and those of his family with him, alone in ‘ the forest primeval,’ which were greatly increased by three years of almost unexampled sickness throughout the Union. All the family suffered from fever and ague, and from the fever of the country, which was of the type of yellow fever, though not so malignant. To this fever he fell a victim, August 13, 1823.” This was at Pittsburgh, where he was buried. Like the rest of the family, and the Taylors also, within this century, George Courtauld was an earnest Unitarian, and he was a friend of Dr. Priestley. His letters from America reveal his strong sympathy with the political principles of Thomas Paine. “I cannot but think with Mr. Payne,” he writes to a reverend relative in England, “that you have no Constitution; you have indeed a form of government, but how you came by that is very difficult to say,—certainly it was not that form which after mature deliberation the People of England chose for themselves.” “May God bless Old England! In a political sense she is corrupt and abominable, but I love her private character, and her manners are congenial to my own.” It has been for many years the happiness of the present writer to know a daughter of George Courtauld and his beautiful wife, Ruth Minton, of New York, who still resides at Hampstead. At the age of eighty-three this venerable lady’s fine intellectual powers are still vigorous, and her memory undimmed. Many times have I listened to her recollections of that brave voyage which she shared with her father across the Atlantic and into the (then) far West. The disappointment of his and her enthusiastic dream of a happier life in the West seemed cruel at the time, but from her serene old age, surrounded by the devotion of her family and friends, she is able to see all those clouds float into the tinted light of even-tide. And even the young among her relatives may be enabled by this story of their forerunners to gain some of that wisdom which generally is the crown of prolonged individual experience. Browning’s Luria found too late

It takes the life of a family to round out and complete the events and incidents which its individual members often find so out of joint, and which have baffled the efforts of this or that generation to set them right. Another reflection suggested by such volumes as the one before me is the extent to which an honorable family record must influence and direct those who inherit it, and with whom it must advance or decline. The youth is surrounded by shadowy but potent witnesses, who look to him to further their aims and keep their scutcheon without stain. Blood is a great deal thicker than water: the first impulses of that red tide which turns to follow some noble ideal like a moon will in the end set many waves beating on the far shore of solid fulfillment, and the humblest family which to-day is trying to adorn its lowly circle with genuine virtues and culture may work on with assured faith that its labors cannot be in vain. Somewhere, in a future near or far, all the worth they have stored up in themselves or their children will be ripened and reaped. “ Quisque patimur suos manes ’ ’ was seen by Virgil as the destiny of the dead; the ages have revealed it as the law of the living.

In closing this unique work I will only add that at every stage of its tale of centuries the impression has grown upon me of the rarity with which the greatest events have been recognized at the time of their occurrence. What was the discovery of America to a Tailard of A. D. 1492, if he heard of it? Less, probably, than to us now would be the discovery of a promontory north of Greenland. The many families whose lives are traced in this large volume were each, in their generation, molded in mind and fortune by the outcome of events amid which their ancestors seem

to have passed with little or no — generally no— note or comment. The forefathers and foremothers pursued the even tenor of their way while the voice of John Knox thundered through the land, and the Queen of Scots fell before Elizabeth, and the tramp of Cromwell’s men shook the earth; but these events are left to be recorded in the lives of their descendants. Little was it to any one that, among the many barks which weighed anchor in English ports, one named the Mayflower bore a small band of emigrants to the wild coast of New England. The news was long in reaching English ears — as may be the yet unarrived light of some star—that beyond the sunset a nation was born. Not a word here of George Fox and the Quakers; one or two expressions of dislike sum up Wesley and Whitefield and their revivals. The omissions are remarkable, because the writers of these letters and papers were generally people of intelligence, wealth, and position, fair representatives of the great English middle class. They noted faithfully and even minutely events that seemed to them of commanding importance; but in most cases the so-startling event now looks small enough beside others that came and worked around them “without observation,” as perhaps may be silently working at our side to-day unnoted men and events with whom history is traveling. Owing to the freedom of the press and its enterprise, we no doubt dwell in a larger world than our fathers, and are more intimate with events of public import; but it must be considered also that, as a result of civilization, social and political changes advance with comparatively noiseless instead of, as once, with revolutionary steps. It seems unquestionable that many intelligent people have passed through revolutions without knowing it, and there is all the more probability that the more quiet, but not less profound revolutions of modern times may be eluding much contemporary apprehension. “ To-day is a king in disguise,” says Emerson; and it seems as if our ideas of culture should include some means of penetrating the disguise. A curious advertisement recently appeared in the London Times, in which a gentleman, much occupied with his mercantile business, desired to employ some competent person for a few hours of each week to “post him up ” in the current affairs of the world. He would have the key to the Porte, Transvaal, the electoral trouble in America, and so forth, and not pass his life in a money safe. But we may be victims even of what appears to us culture, if the current of temperament or any special interest— even moral or religious —be so

strong as to sweep us too rapidly past the living things around, above, and beneath us. And the same tendency to special interests may characterize a generation of men. Posterity may listen to our story at the other end of our time telephone, but decide that, with all our unearthed Homeric treasures and deciphered obelisks on the one hand, and our poetic dreams on the other, we were really, however unconsciously, dwelling in that circle of Dante’s Inferno, whose spirits could see clearly the past and the future, while the present was to them dim and blurred.

Moncure D. Conway.