144 



FOOT-NOTES TO EVOLUTION. 



mainly responsible for the difference between Roundhead 

 and Cavalier, between Royalist and Puritan. Round- 

 heads and Puritans were descended from daughters and 

 younger brothers. The "blue blood" flows only in the 

 veins of the eldest son. But the eldest son of the eldest 

 son forms but a very small fragment of the whole. 

 Galton's remark to the effect that the character of Eng- 

 land has suffered through the segregation of its strong- 

 est representatives as nobility and their exposure to the 

 deteriorating influences of ease and unearned power is 

 scarcely justified. A few individuals have suffered, but 

 not England. They are only the conspicuous few. The 

 rest have joined the mass of common men whose great- 

 ness makes England great. 



One of the many daughters of some king marries a 

 nobleman ; a later scion of nobility is joined to some 

 squire ; some daughter of a squire is 

 Effect of married to a farmer. The farmer's chil- 



dren thus have royal blood in their 

 veins. Or, by reverse process, plebeian blood may 

 enter — and to its advantage — the bluest of nobility. 

 The thirty generations since William's time each con- 

 tain a far and wide mixture of blood. That the de'- 

 scendants of these crosses are alive to-day indicates 

 that in the main each individual has a sound heredity. 

 For a rotten link means the breaking of the chain. 

 Even royal blood is not necessarily degenerate. That 

 which was so has been strengthened by plebeian strains. 

 There can be few if any Englishmen or Americans to- 

 day but have royal blood in their veins. There is 

 probably not a king living who has not somewhere 

 in his ancestry the bar sinister of the common peas- 

 ant. For of one blood, after all, are all the nations 

 of the earth, as well as the men that make up these 

 nations. 



