THE PURITANS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS.

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"Thus lived and died this distinguished woman. Had she been a Roman dame, statues would have been erected to her memory in the capital, and we should have read in classic pages the story of her virtues.

“When another century shall have elapsed, and the nations of the earth, as well as our descendants, shall have learned the true value of liberty, the name of our hero will gather a glory it has never yet been invested with; and then will youth and age, maid and matron, aged and bearded men, with pilgrim step, repair to the NOW NEGLECTED GRAVE of the mother of Washington."

Washington was remarkable for dignity and majesty of mein, for method and management, and for his great goodness and true piety-all which qualities were conspicuous in one or the other line of his ancestry.

365. THE DESCENDANTS OF THE PURITANS

Furnish another hereditary fact, on a great scale, of the descent of the moral affections from generation to generation. Mr. PACKARD'S great grandmother, Thayer, when she first landed on Plymouth rock, offered up a devout prayer that all her descendants might be religious, and, to this day, all, except children, are or have been eminently so. Mr. P. was a deacon, as were also two of his sons, and a great majority of his great grandmother's descendants have been ministers or deacons.

NEW ENGLAND was settled by the moral sentiments. The most godly of the old world fled to the new, and erected churches in the wilderness, solely that they might worship God "under their own vine and fig-tree." This hereditary law being true, what could reasonably be expected of their descendants but that religious zeal seen wherever New England's sons and daughters have settled. Puritanism, after having framed our laws after its own model, and been enthroned upon our republic, has conferred on clergymen the mighty influence they now wield, and almost worships them. Behold the swarms from every city and hamlet, which throng our churches at the ringing of the Sabbath bells; and to possess or counterfeit religious devotion, is a sure passport to success in whatever business depends upon the public patronage; where as infidelity is considered infamous, and is most detrimental

to the pockets of its possessors. The English, notwithstanding

their union of church and state, are no where near as devoted to their religion as the Americans. It does not engross their feelings as it does ours, but is more nominal. Nor do religious vagaries find as many or as enthusiastic devotees there as here. Admitted that this is partly caused by education, yet that form of the heads of the children of devotedly pious parents differ from those of the irreligious, is but a summary of all the author's professional examinations. In fact, the moral developments of the children of the several sects differ from each other so essentially that I can usually tell by examining a child's head, to which sect its parents belonged, provided they were both whole-souled sectarians 212, And this general fact, that the relative size of the moral ORGANS is hereditary, besides coinciding perfectly with the entire range of facts and laws adduced in this work, shows that the children of religious parents are constitutionally more susceptible to religious influences than others.

Yet the CONSCIENTIOUSNESS in the American head averages less than even in the English, and in them far less than in the Swiss, German, and Russian head, doubtless in part, because the Anglo-Saxon nation was founded in Danish usurpation and Norman rapine, and has followed war almost incessantly; and their American descendants have driven out the Indian by wickedness and violence, and are now perpetually preying upon each other, in their selfish scrambling after riches and power. Watch a Yankee, or he will trick you, but Germans, Turks, and Chinese do just as they AGREE. That a part of this national and sectarian organization is educational, is admitted, yet that it is partly hereditary, is perfectly obvious, especially to every phrenologist.

A range of facts establishing the descent of the moral faculties has already been recorded in the case of the Jews 349, and other ranges to any required extent, might be adduced to show that, in addition to the gross descent of the moral affections, the particular TONE and SHADES of manifestation of parentage are transmitted to offspring-that when the former take a missionary or sectarian turn, so do the latter, that

CONSTRUCTIVENESS HEREDITARY.

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when the ancestry is generous and hospitable, the progeny will be benevolent; when the former is reformatory, or melancholy, or theological, or anything else, the latter will be like them-but is it requisite either for proof or illustration, to multiply cases? What good man or devoted minister of this age, or of past ages, is not a practical witness of this great hereditary law?

True, we often find the sons of pious parents and ministers to be hardened in sin, yet we hope fully to account for such facts in subsequent pages, and have already virtually done so in "LOVE AND PARENTAGE;" so that our great doctrine stands on the immutable rock of a fixed ORDINANCE OF NATUre.

The converse of this law, that irreligious parents beget irreligious children, is rendered too apparent by our subject to require proof. Confirmations of this, probably every reader will find within the circle of his own observation and acquaintance-a fact which contains a solemn and earnest appeal to all whom it may concern.

SECTION VII.

CONSTRUCTIVENESS, IDEALITY, IMITATION, AND MIRTHFULNESS

TRANSMITTED.

366. CONSTRUCTIVENESS HEREDITARY.

To enumerate all the cases which establish the transmissibility of CONSTRUCTIVENESS, or the mechanical instinct and talent, would be to cite most of the parents and children of New England-of all natural mechanics. The following cases will be sufficient for our present purpose.

DR. PHILIP SYNG PHYSIC was the BEST of practical surgeons, one of the main requisites of which is Constructiveness. No other organ is equally essential, and no surgeon can be without it. In all Physic's busts and paintings this organ is extraordinarily developed, so as to form a distinct ridge on each side of the head. See his portrait in the possession of his son, and also his bust.

Two of his sons have this organ very large, and faculty powerful, and take their greatest pleasure in its exercise, as well as excel therein.

A deceased daughter of one of them had this organ and faculty developed in an extraordinary degree, together with one of the best heads I ever saw.

Dr. P.'s father was remarkably ingenious. This faculty is thus traced FOUR GENERATIONS.

DR. of Brighton, Mass., nephew of the inventor of the method of manufacturing cards by machinery, has a mechanical PASSION, can make almost anything, and is given to inventing.

MR. TAYLOR, of Lowell, Mass., has invented a gun for the patent right of which he has been offered $60,000, a method of cutting the stamps used to print calico by machinery, which has superceded the old one of cutting them by hand, and made several valuable improvements in machinery. Constructiveness is very large in him and his two sons, one of whom has already made several valuable inventions. It is large in all his children, but largest in those who most nearly resemble him.

Some months before the birth of one of them, he was completely engrossed in perfecting his new gun, and this son, besides having larger Combativeness and Destructiveness than any of his other children, when but two years old, would often steal into the closet and there amuse himself for hours together with the gun-a fact, however, which belongs more appropriately to "Love and Parentage," the drift of which is to show that parents impress upon their offspring those particular faculties and characteristics most active in them AT THE TIME the former receive being and character from the latter—a subject to which special attention is invited.

Observe whom and where we may, there is really no end to the facts which establish and exemplify the descent of the inventive, tool-using propensity and skill from parents to children, nor its converse, of awkwardness in this respect, yet the nature of our subject does not require additional detail. We shall, however, recur to this point hereafter in proof of another hereditary law.

THE DAVISONS-GOETHE.

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367. THE POETICAL GENIUS INNATE.

"Poets must be BORN, not made."

The time-proved proverb, "Poetry is INHERITED, not educational," acquires strength by age, and is in perfect keeping with our great hereditary argument, that all constitutional peculiarities are entailed. That the "poetic TEMPERAMENT”

-the first great condition of the poetic talent-is transmitted, has already been virtually proved under the former heads, that all the various physical conditions of parentage were entailed 324 345 But to the testimony of FACTS.

MRS. DAVIDSON, the mother of those stars whose poetic brilliancy, meteor-like, dazzled our nation, and then burst in death, possessed a temperament exceedingly nervous and exquisite, and excessively susceptible to excitement, which she imparted to her daughters, and hence their poetic and intellectual precocity. Did a sluggish tavern-loafer ever produce such children? Washington Irving thus describes the similarity between mother and child :—

"The narrative will be found almost as illustrative of the character of the mother as of the child; they were singularly identified in tastes, in feelings, and pursuits; tenderly entwined together by maternal and filial affection, they reflected an inexpressibly touching grace and interest upon each other by this holy relationship, and, to my mind, it would be marring one of the most beautiful and affecting groups in the history of modern literature, to sunder them.

"This maternal instruction, while it kept her apart from the world, and fostered a singular purity and innocence of thought, contributed greatly to enhance her imaginative powers, for the mother partook largely of the poetical temperament of the child; it was, in fact, one poetical spirit ministering to another."

GOETHE and his mother confirm and illustrate this law as seen in the following, from his life by Falk :—

"It has often been remarked, that great and eminent men receive from their mothers, even before they see the light, half the mental disposition and other peculiarities of character by which they are afterwards distinguished." "Thus in Goethe's character we find a most sensitive shrinking from all intense impressions, which by every means, and under every circumstance of his life, he sought to ward off from himself. We find the same peculiarity