axy of illustrious names stands involved, not only in a great and
priceless heritage, but also in a weighty national responsibility.
Three citizens of the United States, bearing three of the most
distinguished names in American history, have recently figured with
painful prominence before the criminal courts of that country. 'It is
not rarely,' as a leading American journal remarks, 'that a man who has
acquired credit and reputation ruins his own good name by some act of
fraud or passion. It is much rarer that the case appears of one who
soils the good name of a distinguished father. But it is without
parallel that three names, borne by men the most famous in our annals,
should all have been so foully soiled by their sons.' And the pitiable
element in the case is not relieved by the circumstance that these
unhappy men have clearly inherited, with their fathers' names,
something of their fathers' genius. The fact is that American soil has
proved singularly congenial to the growth of greatness. The length of
America's scroll of fame is altogether out of proportion to the brevity
of her history. The stirring epochs of her short career have developed
a phenomenal wealth of leaders in all the arts and crafts of national
life. In statesmanship, in arms, in letters, and in inventive science,
she can produce a record of which many nations, very much older, might
be pardonably proud. And she therefore displays a perfectly natural
and honourable solicitude when she looks with serious concern on the
untoward happenings that have recently smudged some of those fair names
which she so justly regards as the shining hoard and cherished legacy
which have been bequeathed to her by a singularly eventful past.

'Names!' exclaims Carlyle's Teufelsdrockh. 'Could I unfold the
influence of names, I were a second greater Trismegistus!' Names
occupy a place in literature peculiarly their own. From Homer
downwards, all great writers have recognized their magical value. The
most superficial readers of the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ must have
noticed how liberally every page is sprinkled with capital letters.
The name of a god or of a hero blazes like an oriflamme in almost every
line. And Macaulay, in accounting for the peculiar charm of Milton,
says that none of his poems are more generally known or more frequently
repeated than those that are little more than muster-rolls of names.
'They are not always more appropriate,' he says, 'o