580 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 
will be observed, moreover, that our discussion is confined to the statures 
of men. Those of women are notoriously lower, and the two can not 
well be treated together in an article of short compass. 
Towering above all the historic characters thus gathered before the 
mind’s eye is the immense form of Charles Sumner with his 6 feet 
4 inches. Beside him, only an inch and a half less in height, stands 
Thomas Jefferson, while near these two are Charles Godfrey Leland 
and Andrew Jackson with statures of 6 feet 24 and 6 feet 1 inch. 
Described as “ over six feet” are Samuel Adams, Bismarck, Samuel 
P. Chase, Captain Cook, Jonathan Edwards, Eugene Field, Henry 
Fielding and Walt Whitman, while Charles Darwin (“about six feet ”), 
Alexander Dumas, the elder, James Monroe (“six feet or more”), 
Bayard Taylor (“six feet at seventeen”), Alfred Tennyson, General. 
Thomas and George Washington must be ranged with celebrated men 
six feet in height. 
Another group—still of majestic presence—is referred to as 
“ slightly under ” or “a little below” six feet, and in this we find the 
names of Henry Ward Beecher, Rufus Choate, Sidney Lanier and 
Daniel O’Connell. The remainder are of less impressive height— 
Benjamin Franklin, Albert Gallatin, John Ruskin, Robert Louis Steven- 
son and Daniel Webster, who could claim five feet ten inches, General 
Charles George Gordon, whose stature was five feet nine inches, and 
Washington Irving, who was 5 feet 84 to 9 inches. 
In addition to these individuals there is a goodly company spoken 
of by the biographers as “tall”—-Matthew Arnold, Louis Agassiz, 
William Cullen Bryant, Julius Cesar, Charlemagne, Charles XII. of 
Sweden, Christopher Columbus, Stonewall Jackson, General Sam 
Houston, Leigh Hunt, Edward Fitzgerald, Ben Johnson, Chief Justice 
Marshall, Sir Walter Scott, Robert Southey (“very tall”), Phillips 
Brooks (“of great height”), Wm. M. Thackeray (“above medium 
height”), Patrick Henry, Lorenzo de Medici, Francis Parkman, Cov- 
entry Patmore, Peter the Great, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Sidney Smith 
(“of middle height, rather above than below”), Thaddeus Stevens, 
N. P. Willis, Richard Strauss and John Bunyan. 
Described as of “medium height” are Robert Browning, John 
Adams, Sir Thomas More, Wm. Hazlitt, Julian, 8. 8. Prentiss, Lord 
Palmerston, Duke of Wellington, William the Silent, Sir Arthur Sulli- 
van, Frederick the Great (“not of imposing stature ”’—Carlyle), 
Admiral Nelson (“a little man of about medium height”), Schubert 
(“moderately tall”), and as 5 feet 8 inches we have the names of 
Grant, Theodore Parker and Rossetti. 
Under medium height were, according to their biographers, 
Admiral Farragut, who was 5 feet 64 inches, Oliver Wendell Holmes, 
Paul Jones and General Phil Sheridan, each of whom was 5 
