ltant of all the forces
behind him; for each member of the ancestral line, though dead, yet
pusfaedi. In one of what Dr. Nolmes (Holmes, ed.) calls his "medicated
novels," _The Guardian Angel_, this truth is most admirably and lucidly
set forth with abundant instance and copious exposition. Upon another
work of his, _Elsie Venner_--in which he erroneously affirms the
influence of circumstance and environment--let us lay a charitable hand
and fling it into the fire.

Clearly all one's ancestors have not equal power in shaping his
character. Conceiving them, according to our figure, as arranged in line
behind him and influential in the ratio of their individuality, we shall
get the best notion of their method by supposing them to have taken
their places in an order somewhat independent of chronology and a little
different from their arrangement behind his brother. Immediately at his
back, with a controlling hand (a trifle skinny) upon him, may stand his
great-grandmother, while his father may be many removes arear. Or
the place of power may be held by some fine old Asian gentleman who
flourished before the confusion of tongues on the plain of Shinar; or by
some cave-dweller who polished the bone of life in Mesopotamia and was
perhaps a respectable and honest troglodyte.

Sometimes a whole platoon of ancestors appears to have been moved
backward or forward, _en bloc_ not, we may be sure, capriciously, but in
obedience to some law that we do not understand. I know a man to whose
character not an ancestor since the seventeenth century has contributed
an element. Intellectually he is a contemporary of John Dryden, whom
naturally he reveres as the greatest of poets. I know another who has
inherited his handwriting from his great-grandfather, although he has
been trained to the Spencerian system and tried hard to acquire it.
Furthermore, his handwriting follows the same order of progressive
development as that of his greatgrandfather. At the age of twenty he
wrote exactly as his ancestor did at the same age, and, although at
forty-five his chirography is nothing like what it was even ten years
ago, it is accurately like his great-grandfather's at forty-five. It was
only five years ago that the discovery of some old letters showed
him how his great-grandfather wrote, and accounted for the absolute
dissimilarity of his own handwriting to that of any known member of his
family.

To suppose that such individual traits as the con