the Greeks, or Jove reclining by streamy Ida, or still farther when Orpheus sang in Thrace of the great men of old, and Moses laid his hands upon Joshua that the son of Nun and not his son, might lead Israel into the land of promise, we find it at work, and so far as can be seen, it is destined to work so long as men shall achieve mighty deeds and be enrolled in the chronicles of fame. The life of Confucius and Zoroaster is the life of Aristotle, and Socrates, of Bacon and Newton; the childless old age of Plato and Æsop is repeated in the histories of Voltaire and Gay. The same narrow circle bounds the family hearth of Sophocles and Shakspere, of Milton and Dryden, and Cæsar and Alexander leave their vast empires to the children of other men, as Napoleon and Nelson must have done, had the one dreamed of conquests and the other been able to retain them.

It is almost needless to say that the loss of so many of the writings of the older authors, which followed upon the fall of the greek republics and the decline of the roman empire, together with the wars which raged like some chronic disease in these states, leaves us quite in the dark about Homer, Hesiod, and even much later writers. Where Plutarch, now nearly eighteen centuries ago, could only gleam a few brief records about some of his heroes, we can scarcely hope with the greatest amount of diligence to trace anything that is certain. What is known however most strongly bears out the view given above.

Of Homer as might be expected nothing is known; in fact, considering the great discrepancies as to the date at which he lived, if anything had come down to posterity it could only have been received with the

greatest caution. Hesiod is not spoken of as having any wife or family. Esop's descendants, if he ever had any, must have soon died off, for when the Delphians offered compensation for his death, the only person who came forward to claim it was a grandson of his master, no one more nearly connected with the sufferer having appeared; at least so says Herodotus " qui ne ment pas toujours."* Confucius had only one son, from whom however three thousand chinese are said to have sprung; a very possible fact, but one of which the proofs must be so vague and distant that the reader must believe just as much of it or as little as he likes.t Pindar had a son and daughter by his two wives, Sophocles also two children by his two wives, Herodotus two sons who died before him. The illustrious Pericles, one of the most brave, munificent, eloquent, and profound men of the great Athenian school, wept over the tomb of his last child who fell by the plague, but as his family is spoken of as numerous before the outbreak of this dire malady, we can only conjecture that he might in the course of nature have left children.‡

Socrates, it is well known, was married to a lady whose energetic disposition, and it is said taste for practical jokes, were fitted to bring out into full relief the forbearance of the great sage's temper. When he fell a victim to that diabolical spirit which persecuted Alcibiades, Pericles, and so many illustrious

* This polite expression of opinion respecting the old historian is borrowed from M. Voltaire.

+ Confucius is introduced here because as far as possible chronology has been taken as a guide in the arrangement of the names. History of Ancient Greece, by John Gillies, vol. ii. p. 226.

men, he was visited in his last hours by his wife, who is said to have brought with her their infant child. If however the speech assigned to her at their last meeting be correct, I should be inclined to doubt if she was quite such a pestilent jade as she has been described. Scolds in general are clever women, shrewdly given to talk, and she seems decidedly in this instance at least to have talked very little and very commonplace. "Socrates," she said, "here come your friends whom you for the last time behold, and who for the last time behold you." As her husband was quite aware of all this previously, it appears in no wise very pathetic or quite like rising to the dignity of the scene. Socrates however does not appear to have felt disposed for her society any further, and she soon raised clamour enough to atone for any silence she had been compelled to observe.

By this excellent lady Socrates was the father of three children. Xenophon is vaguely said to have had some children. Gillies simply says, "Gryllus the son of Xenophon fell in the battle of Mantinea," but it is said that when he built a temple to Diana on the banks of Elian Sellenus, his sons often hunted the wild boar and red deer in the neighbouring woods.

When Epaminondas, mortally hurt in the bloody fight of Mantinea, lay dying in his tent, those around him lamented that he should die without children to inherit his mighty name and emulate his noble virtues. The dying hero, with the prescience of genius, told them that he left two children, Leuctra and Mantinea, which would transmit his renown to the latest ages, and he was right. Plato seems to have lived in the strictest celibacy all his life. Aris

totle had a son and daughter by his two wives, and Demosthenes had a daughter, of whom the only mention I find is that her father put off his mourning for her when Philip of Macedon was murdered, in order that nothing might mar the intense satisfaction he felt on learning the fate of one whom he considered the oppressor of his country. Alexander the Great left no children living, (unless it were his natural son Hercules by the daughter of Darius, of whose further fate I find no account), but his wife Roxolana was pregnant at the time of his death. Anaxagoras had children, for when told that they were dead he said he knew that they had been born mortal. Respecting Archimedes, Anacreon, and Empedocles, I find no history whatever of any family.

The absence of allusions to the children of their great men in the greek writers, and those who have compiled from them, struck me forcibly. I felt drawn to the conclusion that in a country where the claims of genius were so freely recognized (after death only it must be confessed in too many instances), and where above all the domestic habits and lives of all classes were so well known, this silence must really mean the same absence of family as in our own day; that the land which fired the genius of Pindar was no more prolific than hard-working England.

Ovid had a daughter by his third wife but seems to have been blessed with no family by the others. Horace, no mention of wife or family. As Virgil left all he had (the manuscript of the Eneid amongst the rest, with directions that it should be burned) to the Emperor Augustus, Mæcenas, and two other friends, it is most probable that he had no other heirs. Quinctilian

says that Livy left behind him a letter to his son recommending the study of Cicero and Demosthenes. Terence is said to have left a daughter.

Passing them we come to the dark ages of the world. The great emperor Heraclius left but two sons, and the life of one, Gibbon tells us, was a long malady. The character of Mahomet's first wife, if not of his second, is so very doubtful that we may as well dismiss the subject. Charlemagne had several children, and as he is said to have had nine wives, besides falling over head and ears in love with a corpse, the account is quite feasible. Alfred the Great, again, left five children, three of them being daughters. Mr. James, in his life of Coeur de Lion, for whom he might justly claim a much higher title than that of a mere knight-errant, considering him as a great general, speaks of course of his marriage, but not of his having any children.

Wallace, if indeed even the most partial of his admirers can rank him among great generals, seems never to have married, while the illustrious Robert Bruce, who may I suppose be ranked as Scotland's greatest general of ancient times, and who added. to the vast courage and resolution of Wallace, sound judgment and great practical sense, had by his first wife a daughter called Marjory whose only son mounted the throne under the title of Robert II., and by his second wife a son named David who succeeded him, Mathildis who married an obscure person called Isaac, and Elizabeth who became the wife of Sir

*For some very interesting information on the mortality of Mahomet's family, see Gibbon (edition in four vols.), vol. iii. p. 435.