THE DECAY OF GREAT FAMILIES.

Not the least valuable parts of Burke's just published "Anecdotes of
the Aristocracy," are a species of essay on the fortunes of families.
The following is from a chapter on their decadence:

"It has often occurred to us that a very interesting paper might
be written on the rise and fall of English families. Truly does Dr.
Borlase remark that 'the most lasting houses have only their seasons,
more or less, of a certain constitutional strength. They have their
spring and summer sunshine glare, their wane, decline, and death.'
Take, for example, the Plantagenets, the Staffords, and the Nevills,
the three most illustrious names on the roll of England's nobility.
What race in Europe surpassed in royal position, in personal
achievement, our Henries and our Edwards? and yet we find the
great-great-grandson of Margaret Plantagenet, daughter and heiress
of George Duke of Clarence, following the craft of a cobbler at the
little town of Newport in Shropshire, in the year 1637. Beside, if
we were to investigate the fortunes of many of the inheritors of the
royal arms, it would soon be discovered that

'The aspiring blood of Lancaster'

had sunk into the ground. The princely stream at the present time
flows through very humble veins. Among the lineal descendants of
Edmund of Woodstock, Earl of Kent, sixth son of Edward I., King
of England, entitled to quarter the Royal arms, occur Mr. Joseph
Smart, of Hales Owen, butcher, and Mr. George Wilmot, keeper of the
turnpike-gate at Cooper's Bank, near Dudley; and among the descendants
of Thomas Plantagenet, Duke of Gloucester, fifth son of Edward
III., we may mention Mr. Stephen James Penny, the late sexton at St.
George's, Hanover Square.

"The story of the Gargraves is a melancholy chapter in the romance
of real life. For full two centuries, or more, scarcely a family in
Yorkshire enjoyed a higher position. Its chiefs earned distinction
in peace and war; one died in France, Master of the Ordnance to King
Henry V.; another, a soldier, too, fell with Salisbury, at the siege
of Orleans; and a third filled the Speaker's chair of the House of
Commons. What an awful contrast to this fair picture does the sequel
offer. Thomas Gargrave, the Speaker's eldest son, was hung at York,
for murder; and his half-brother, Sir Richard, endured a fate only
less miserable. The splendid estate he inherited he wasted by the most
wanton extravagance, and at length redu