Having reviewed the "Lives of the Lindsays" some years since in a separate essay,* we are now only called on to point out its special relation to the genus under discussion. To us, then, we may say, that it appears to

unite, more happily than any other performance, the old sentiment of past days with the knowledge and clearness of the time in which we live the heart of the fifteenth century with the eyes of the nineteenth. This is the combination to be aimed at by the historian, who should share the loyalty of Godscroft or Lord Somerville, while bidding farewell to the "Serpent" or the "Black-gray man." Lord Lindsay has an adequate theme-a family that has " stood against the waves and weathers of time" for many centuries-a line visible, like a streak of light, away to the time when nearly all is dark and shadowy about our Teutonic ancestors— Norman in race, leaders in battle, great in rank, alliances, and possessions, when such were only to be won by the natural lords of mankind. Nor can we forbear to note with satisfaction that a writer so elegant and accomplished should be the historian of a house which early boasted an excellent Scottish chronicler in Lindsay of Pitscottie, and a delightful Scottish humourist in Sir David of the Mount, and which in modern times, by producing the ballad of "Auld Robin Gray," and the book before us, contributes no little to our faith in the hereditary trans

mission of qualities and characteristics. We must not fail to remark, also, the honesty with which Lord Lindsay gives to every branch of his house, poor and decayed as well as rich and flourishing, its due place in the history. When we take into account all the cadets of a numerous and spreading line, the amount of service done to a country by one stock, in the labours of war and peace, can hardly be overrated. Lord Lindsay tells us that he found a degree of interest about the subject among his gens, as he was pursuing the investigation, much greater than he had expected. We are inclined ourselves to believe that there is a great deal more care for these matters all over the country, than is commonly thought. And we happen to know that the same fact is true of the Americans, few of whom now visit England without making pilgrimages to those parts of the island from which record or tradition declares their ancestors to have come. The sentiment of ancestry, in short, is not only inherent in human nature, and especially visible in the higher races of the world, but contributes in no small degree to the stability of kingdoms in the worst periods-as, assuredly, it is always found to be peculiarly vivid in the best. Having spoken so freely of the family histories which we possess in Great Britain-and admitting that they do not adequately represent the strength of the feeling among ourselves-we cannot conclude without

hailing it as a good omen that the latest on our list should be such an admirable specimen of the class as the "Lives" of Lord Lindsay.

THE FAMILY OF TEMPLE.*

HERE is a certain productiveness," says Aristotle, "in the families of men, as in the things that grow in the fields; and, sometimes, if the family be good, extraordinary men are for a certain time produced." Other high authority might be quoted in support of this observation, which is not without its value to historians. and biographers. But the truth is that genealogy has suffered at the hands of genealogists. Partly by their ignorance of the higher applications of which it is capable, partly by the falsities with which they have played into the hands of the fashionable reporter and the fashionable novelist,-they have lowered the credit of a study at once of much historical importance, and of much picturesque interest. Every now and then, however, some event occurs calling attention to the truths with which it is the proper business of genealogy

Reprinted from the Cornhill Magazine by the obliging permission of the proprietors.

to deal; and the recent death of Lord Palmerston had this, besides so many other points, of higher and more mournful significance. When everything else was being recorded of him, it was also recorded that he was the last male of his family,-a family of ancient descent, and of high and long-continued intellectual distinction. The fact in itself touched the imagination of a people so keenly alive to the charm of tradition as the English. But those who from an old interest in such questions had become aware how essentially Palmerston was a child of his house-a Temple of the Temples,-naturally felt the weight of the fact more vividly to them, his death was the fall of an old tree, of an old tower—a tree that would give no more fruit, a tower that would no more shelter human and intellectual life. Let us place ourselves for a little in the position of one of these moralising inquirers; and see from what kind of stock the late Premier came, and how far its history justifies the old belief that every family, like every plant, has a life of its own, and a likeness running through all its leaves and flowers.

:

Thanks in great measure to the kind of genealogists whom we have indicated in the sentence above, most family histories begin with a fable. The ancients made Plato descend from Neptune, Cæsar from Venus, and Antony from Hercules, just as our own early chronicles derive Alfred from Woden. In modern times our