ete, Hypatia,
Madame de Stael, and George Sand,--all four had philosophers for their
fathers. The mother of Bernardo Tasso had the gift of poetry. Buffon
often speaks of the rich imagination of his mother. The poet Burns,
'Rare Ben Jonson,' Goethe, Walter Scott, Byron, and Lamartine,--all were
born of women remarkable for their vivacity and brilliancy of language.
Byron, in his journal, attributes his hypochondria to a hereditary taint
derived from his mother, who was its victim in its most furious form;
and her father 'was strongly suspected of suicide.' He was said to have
resembled more his maternal grandfather than any of his father's family.
The daughter of Moliere was like her father in her wit and humor.
Beethoven had for a maternal grandmother an excellent musician. The
mother of Mozart gave the first lessons to her son. A crowd of composers
have descended from John Sebastian Bach, who long stood unrivaled as a
performer on the organ, and composer for that instrument. It may be
remarked here, that it is almost invariably true that the ability or
inability to acquire a knowledge of music is derived from the ancestry.
Parents who cannot turn a tune or tell one note from another, bring
forth children equally unmoved 'with concord of sweet sounds.' Examples
could easily be adduced at still greater length, illustrating the direct
influence of the father over the daughter, and of the mother over the
son. Those given will suffice.

INFLUENCE Of EDUCATION OVER INHERITED QUALITIES.

In correcting the evil effects of inheritance on the mind, education
plays a very important part. A child born with a tendency to some vice
or intellectual trait, may have this tendency entirely overcome, or at
least modified, by training. So, also, virtues implanted by nature may
be lost during the plastic days of youth, in consequence of bad
associations and bad habits.

Education can therefore do much to alter inherited mental and moral
qualities. Can it be invoked to prevent the transmission of undesirable
traits, and secure the good? Everything that we have at birth is a
heritage from our ancestors. Can virtuous habits be transmitted? Can we
secure virtues in our children by possessing them ourselves? Science
sadly says, through her latest votaries, that we are scarcely more than
passive transmitters of a nature we have received, and which we have no
power to modify. It is only after exposure during several generations to
changed co