ren of the first, or first and second, generation who are in
greater danger, for the race can no more repeat its most successful
performances suddenly and without its ebbings and flowings of success
than the individual can do so, and the more brilliant the success in any
one generation, the greater as a general rule the subsequent exhaustion
until time has been allowed for recovery. Hence it oftens happens that
the grandson of a successful man will be more successful than the son--the
spirit that actuated the grandfather having lain fallow in the son and
being refreshed by repose so as to be ready for fresh exertion in the
grandson. A very successful man, moreover, has something of the hybrid
in him; he is a new animal, arising from the coming together of many
unfamiliar elements and it is well known that the reproduction of
abnormal growths, whether animal or vegetable, is irregular and not to be
depended upon, even when they are not absolutely sterile.

And certainly Mr Pontifex's success was exceedingly rapid. Only a few
years after he had become a partner his uncle and aunt both died within a
few months of one another. It was then found that they had made him
their heir. He was thus not only sole partner in the business but found
himself with a fortune of some 30,000 pounds into the bargain, and this
was a large sum in those days. Money came pouring in upon him, and the
faster it came the fonder he became of it, though, as he frequently said,
he valued it not for its own sake, but only as a means of providing for
his dear children.

Yet when a man is very fond of his money it is not easy for him at all
times to be very fond of his children also. The two are like God and
Mammon. Lord Macaulay has a passage in which he contrasts the pleasures
which a man may derive from books with the inconveniences to which he may
be put by his acquaintances. "Plato," he says, "is never sullen.
Cervantes is never petulant. Demosthenes never comes unseasonably. Dante
never stays too long. No difference of political opinion can alienate
Cicero. No heresy can excite the horror of Bossuet." I dare say I might
differ from Lord Macaulay in my estimate of some of the writers he has
named, but there can be no disputing his main proposition, namely, that
we need have no more trouble from any of them than we have a mind to,
whereas our friends are not always so easily disposed of. George
Pontifex felt this as regards his childre