Along with them may be ranked the great painters, architects, and musicians, over whose lot fate rules with the same stern impartiality. Thus Albert Durer had a wife but we hear nothing of his having children. On both points their biographers are silent respecting Michael Angelo, Raphael, and Domenichino; Correggio had a son and three daughters. Vandyck married and left one daughter. Claude, no mention of wife or family; in fact when he died his only surviving relations were two nephews and a niece to whom he left his property. Rembrandt had a son, Titus, who inherited his ample means; he was the pupil of his father but being Rembrandt's son was the only distinction he ever enjoyed. Of Teniers the younger and by far the greater there is no mention of wife or family, and the same of Murillo.

Of Handel again there is no evidence that he ever had either a wife or family. It is said that while at Venice his wonderful genius made sad havoc with the affections of a very famous and beautiful singer of the name of Vittoria, "but in this as in every instance of a similar kind, Handel showed no disposition to avail himself of any partialities exhibited in his favour,"* music in fact was his idol; for it alone he lived, thought and worked. Haydn was married, but soon after his marriage he was separated from his wife and left no children. Mozart, sublimely gifted Mozart, left behind him a widow and two sons, one of them adopted music and was living a few years ago, but he inherited his father's goodness rather than his talent; the other entered the austrian service and I have

* Gallery of Portraits.

never heard that he distinguished himself in any way. Beethoven, like Handel, was never known to form a tender attachment of any kind, unless it were for that Adelaide to whose memory, he composed the divine air which bears her name.

Again the philosophers appear in modern times to have fared almost as ill. Roger Bacon seems to have kept his vow of celibacy. Respecting Copernicus I find no notice of any wife or family. Paracelsus not spoken of as being ever married. Bacon was married but had no children. Kepler had children but I have not been able to trace their fate; they were probably soon lost to view on account of their indigence, for when this illustrious man died his widow and her offspring were in such poverty that they had not even the common necessaries of life. Galileo when seventy years old is spoken of as having lost a beloved daughter who was his stay, and of having had an illegitimate son. Harvey the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, a profound observer, though married never had any issue, and the famous Des Cartes seems to have had neither wife nor family. Of Sydenham, of whom it was truly said that fame shed her brightest honours on his head, Wallis in his brief life of him is silent. Boyle was never married. In the Life of Locke given in the large edition of his works published in 1794 there is no allusion to either wife or family. The illustrious rivals Newton and Leibnitz seem also to have never married and to have had no children; a coincidence repeated later in Lagrange and Laplace.

*Life of Sir Edward Coke, by E. W. Johnson, vol. ii. p. 443.

Of all the offspring of the famous Burman of Utrecht only two survived.* Bradley the famous astronomer left one daughter but his line has now been many years extinct. Robert Simpson the restorer of Euclid remained unmarried. Boerhaave had four children of whom three died in infancy. Of Haller's wife if he had any I find no account. Franklin married and had children, a grandson of the eminent philosopher is also spoken of. Buffon left an only son who perished on the scaffold for the crime of being an aristocrat. Hume seems to have had no family.† Linnæus was married, but the only notice I have found of his family is that he joined with his profligate wife in persecuting his equally profligate son. Johnson, the rude coarse Johnson, had no children and was better without any. William Hunter who would have been the most illustrious man in his profession of that day, had he not been contemporary with his renowned brother, had no family and left nearly the whole of his large property to persons who were only distantly

connected with him.

Sir William Jones the great sanskrit, persian, and oriental scholar, seems to have had neither wife nor family. Baron speaks of Jenner as having a family and celebrating the birthday of his eldest son. Brougham introduces to us Robertson the historian's eldest daughter and also his son, but like most biographers he gives us very obscure information on such points. Kant seems never to have married. Edmund Burke had a son who died before him. John Hunter was married but childless. "Watt," says his eloquent

* Johnson's Lives of Eminent Persons.

+ Gallery of Portraits.

historian Lord Brougham, "had been married as early as 1764 to Miss Miller his cousin, and had by her a daughter who predeceased him, leaving children, and a son James who still survives, inheriting the scientific tastes, the extensive knowledge, the masculine understanding and the scrupulous integrity of his father. By his second wife Miss Macgregor, whom he married in 1776, he had one son Gregory, who unfortunately died in October 1804, after giving an earnest of brilliant talent and accomplishment." * Lavoisier was married and strange to say his widow also married a scientific man, the famous Count Rumford. Wollaston says Dr. Wilson "led a solitary life and was never married." Laplace no family, nor had Gibbon or Sir Humphrey Davy, though married. Porson lost his wife two years after he married and seems never to have sought wedlock again. Cuvier had four children by his marriage with the widow of M. Duvancel but they all died before him. Of all the family of the illustrious Robert Knox, the greatest anatomist and one of the most profound observers of his day, I believe only a son and daughter now survive.

There is no need to go into statistics here, even with the temptation before one's eyes of all this preponderance of daughters. But let any one simply review the history of his private friends or the annals of a village, and he will find the decline of one family almost invariably so balanced by the rise of another, that no such wide-spread decay can be traced as has now been chronicled. Were such results as these to ensue in a village they would depopulate it

*Lives of Men of Letters and Science.

within half a century, an event of which there is no record except among races like the red indian doomed to decay. Of course war, famine, and pestilence unpeople whole realms, but that arises entirely from visible causes and is therefore a different matter. Besides it is quite a mistake to suppose that wars however bloody and wide-spread, or plagues and earthquakes produce any enduring diminution in the population of a country. The wars of the roses and the league, the revolt of the Netherlands, the thirty years' war, the ferocious cruel wars begun and carried on by those champions of liberty and humanity, the republic, the convention, and Napoleon, produced so little lasting effect, that at the lapse of a quarter of a century the devastated countries were as well filled as

ever.

There has been many a sad chapter in the history of genius, but the stern tale told by these figures is the saddest of all. A man of genius is perhaps in many respects more purely the child of destiny than people think him; in this part of his fate certainly there is clearly more of destiny than of choice. He reaps

indeed the fame for which he has struggled, because there is no genius without the strength that always wins in the end. Biography shows that all that neglect, stupidity, and even the fiendish malice of foes and critics could invent, while it never yet destroyed a line worth saving, really adds more lustre to a writer's renown, as the blackness of the cloud lends beauty to the lightning and the rainbow. But the picture of his life is saddened with the decaying hues of autumn, the fame of his triumph is borne to us on the hollow voice of the winter wind, and his glory is