Jonathan Edwards the most eminent divine and metaphysician in New England, thus bringing another new departure for Pomeroy blood.* Their daughter Elizabeth married William W. Woolsey, Esq., "one of the wisest, most upright, and most successful merchants of his day." One of their sons, President Woolsey, was so extraordinary an instance of intellectual development as might seem to defy classification with the Pomeroys. In his case, the executive ability was conspicuous, as it was in the old gunsmiths, but found its sphere in the abstruse problems of science, the unfolding the hidden stores of classical learning, the profound questions of metaphysics and those of international law. The mastering will was there also, and in his eighty-eighth year as strong as ever. With these eminent intellectual gifts, all acquainted with him will recognize his sympathetic nature-generous, many-sided, and all-embracing.

As to the origin of race characteristics, much may be said according to the point of view taken. They are the gift of God evolved in his providence. They have dependence on any thing that happens to the individual. An impression made on the nervous system leaves its mark as surely as the photographic negative is impressed by light and shade, and as mysteriously as the hypnotic force controls the will and bewilders the reason of its subject. In the tablets of the brain (or whatever may answer as such) beyond the scrutiny of the anatomist, the record is preserved ready to be reproduced when memory shall be awakened with sufficient intensity. But the brain cell has relations even more surprising. It is itself a part of the aggregate of parentage. The inheritance of the child depends, in a measure, on the physique of the parent. An impression, or an action, if repeated may become a habit. The habit if continued and intensified may appear in the progeny. The process continuing evolves a race characteristic. How much depends on the human will, and to what extent choice and cir. cumstances may complicate and modify the result, are problems too obscure for us to enter upon.

* It would require a volume to depict the many and striking results of these unions, especially in the families of the Lymans and the Dwights. See the History of the Descendants of John Dwight of Dedham, Mass., by Benjamin W. Dwight.

A characteristic may be cherished, expanded, intensified, and handed on to the next generation, or it may be wasted, the brain cell becoming atrophied by neglect or abuse. Every human being has potentially such germinal aptitudes. All will not be actively developed in one person. But a trait or the physical basis of it may not appear in the individual, and yet be found in the offspring. If the causes which favor it were repeated with constancy, we may presume that its transmission would be as uniform and constant as the operation of other natural laws.

In certain natural aptitudes the Pomeroys excel, and did so as far back as we are able to study them. But none can be masters in all directions. Roughly speaking, the sphere of the Pomeroy may be said to be things rather than thoughts. The power of abstraction and the gifts thence depending are not eminent in this family. Scientific acumen, lofty imagination, and philosophical speculation do not appear. When these gifts show themselves we may be sure there have been turned into the vital stream some new elements.

The individuals of the Pomeroy family used in this paper to elucidate its positions have been selected because known to the writer either in person or by reputation. His lists contain many other names that it is believed would equally illustrate the positions taken.

May not these historical studies be used, also, retrospectively? and something be learned through them concerning the family in times which to us are prehistoric? It seems safe to assume that where the hereditary tendencies are so positive and persistent, they must be a reproduction of those existing prior to the time of Eltweed and for generations. We conclude that they lived in a homogeneous community, or at least intermarried only with accordant elements: they belonged to the mid. dle class rather than the gentry; they did not live in ease, luxury, and idleness, but in active employments wherein the capacity for work was constantly stimulated. In whatever sphere they were engaged, they were the best workmen to be found; their productions were the best to be had; in matters to which they gave their attention their opinions were authoritative; their will was undisputed law. Ambition did not

draw them to other pursuits; pleasure did not tempt them astray. The claims of duty, obedience to law, the love of right, of liberty, and of humanity, these were paramount. The corruptions of power and place, the seductions of an advancing civilization took no hold of them. Large families with a full proportion of sons give ample proof of the hardihood of the race, which otherwise runs to daughters and in a few generations is absorbed in other families.

How far back may these retrospective deductions be permissible?

I sometimes wonder in what ways the Pomeroy traits were manifested long ago, long before we have their history. But they were not historians and we do not have the record. Actions not words characterized them. Not the action that made military heroes, not brilliancy, nor strategy, but constructiveness. They were busy workers, though I doubt not Sir Ralph had courage and fighting capacity. Perhaps it was then, as later, that the forge, the anvil, and the hammer first bound them to the Royal heart. As his armorers they would find their exact sphere. Skill and executive capacity were as essential helps to William of Normandy as were the power to wield the sword and hurl the lance. In times of peace the Pomeroys had their gardens with fruit and flowers, in an age and country where Horticulture was established by law. Hence it might be that in a lucky moment, according to an old tradition or suggestion, a new fruit presented to the King, "un Pomme de Roi" did more to perpetuate their name than the mechanical force and executive ability to whose energizing power we are so much indebted.

If the limitations could be removed that include these researches, this line of enquiry might be traced backward indefinitely. It is also possible that if family traits were studied in their elementary forms and the modifications were followed in later generations, more progress might be made in the study of Heredity.

WM. W. RODMAN.

ARTICLE II.-A SO-CALLED PESSIMIST OF THE OLD DRAMA: JOHN WEBSTER.

WHEN people of fair literary culture meet the name of John Webster two or three impressions are likely to sweep rapidly across their minds. Whether these readers belong to that unhappy majority who form their estimate of classical authors from the opinions of critics, or to that smaller class who regard firsthand impressions of books as the only literary culture worth having, they will probably associate the mention of Webster with a notion of powerful occasional expression, of a few strong characterizations, and of gloom almost incomparable. For these qualities are so prominent that even a rapid reader can hardly miss them, while they have appealed effectively to the numer ous gaugers of dramatic fame by their capacity for positive representation.

Certainly every lover of poetry must be attracted by that diction imaginative, intense, compressed almost to an extreme, with its power of sending tinglings through our nerves, and making us lay aside our book to follow the long suggestions of single lines. Such dying cries as Brachianno's invocation to "soft natural death"; Flamineo's

"We cease to grieve, cease to be Fortune's slaves,

Nay, cease to die, by dying ;"

or his sister's

"My soul, like to a ship in a black storm,

Is driven I know not whither;"

Ferdinand's supreme line over his innocent victim's body"Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle; she died young;"

the lover's disillusioned glimpse of his enchantress

"Thou hast led me like a heathen sacrifice,
With music and with fatal yokes of flowers,

To my eternal ruin ;"

such passages have compelled a general recognition and reverence for Webster's style. Equally impressive is his skill in

producing characters that live. Flamineo, Bosola, Isabella, Cornelia, the Duchess of Malfi, and the other figures suggested by these names, are designed with imaginative power and are most carefully elaborated. Their birth was royal, and, unlike many princely conceptions in our old drama, they were not abandoned to unworthy futures as soon as born. Most wonderful of them all, perhaps, is the heroine of The White Devil, whose brilliancy has thrown into darkness many of Webster's gentler claims to admiration. Nor does it seem strange that to so great an extent she has concentrated attention upon herself when we recall Vittoria's wildness of passionate daring and her defiant beauty. Physically and mentally magnificent, shrinking from no crime, her hand never bearing the faintest marks of guilt, she sins, and flashes a challenge at her censors, enjoys, resists, quivers for an instant in haughty fear, and then sweeps forward to meet death—a queen of passion's tragedy. The atmosphere in which these characters live is equally worthy of the notice it has attracted. Websterian gloom is almost a byword: in the two plays always in mind when this author is named, the air is murky and miasmatic, our spirits are oppressed as we pass through it. Thence has arisen the prevalent notion of Webster as absorbed from first to last in bitterness, or even in pessimism. One is imagining an easily conceived picture when one fancies this poet walking alone in midnight groves, finding in the owl's shriekings an apt suggestiveness of life; turning homeward to sit in the light of a single taper brooding over things of death, and dreading the return of day with its irony of sunshine.

From these qualities a divided judgment has been formed of Webster as a man and as a dramatist. Intellectually and poetically, he has received generous admiration; indeed, sometimes the praise may have been pitched too high. But personally he is almost always spoken of harshly. These "night pieces," with passion and villainy for main motives, where moments of tranquillity seem introduced only by contrast to bring out more dreadfully the fury of the scenes that precede and follow, have induced a more or less thorough identification of the author with such aspects of his work. Taine, for example, has nothing to say of Webster except that he is unequaled "in creating