gures of the end of the last century.

Those who like to indulge in the fascinating task of tracing the origin
of genius will find few instances offering more striking coincidences or
curious ancestral inheritances than that afforded by Lafcadio Hearn.

On his father's side he came of the Anglo-Hibernian stock--mixture of
Saxon and Celt--which has produced poets, orators, soldiers, signal
lights in the political, literary, and military history of the United
Kingdom for the last two centuries. We have no proof that Lafcadio's
grandfather--as has been stated--came over with Lionel Sackville, Duke
of Dorset, when he was appointed lord lieutenant of Ireland in 1731. The
Rev. Daniel Hearn undoubtedly acted as private chaplain to His Grace,
and about the same time--as recognition for services done, we
conclude--became possessed of the property of Correagh in the County of
Westmeath.

A Roman Catholic branch of the Hearn family is to be found in County
Waterford--has been settled there for centuries. At Tramore, the seaside
place near the city of Waterford, where Lafcadio spent several summers
at the Molyneuxs' house with his great-aunt, Mrs. Brenane, the Rev.
Thomas Hearn is still remembered as a prominent figure in the Roman
Catholic movement against Protestantism. He founded the present
cathedral, also the Catholic College in Waterford, and introduced one of
the first of the Conventual Orders into the South of Ireland. It is
through these Waterford Hearns that Henry Molyneux claimed relationship
with the County Westmeath portion of the family.

As to the English origin of the family, the Irish Hearns have an
impression that it was a West Country (Somersetshire) stock. Records
certainly of several Daniel Hearns--it is the Christian name that
furnishes the clue--occur in ecclesiastical documents both in Wiltshire
and Somersetshire.

In Burke's "Colonial Gentry" there is a pedigree given of a branch of
Archdeacon Hearn's descendants, who migrated to Australia about fifty
years ago. There it is stated that the Hearn stock was originally
"cradled in Northumberland." Ford Castle in that county belonged to the
Herons--pronounced Hearn--to which belonged Sir Hugh de Heron, a
well-known North Country baronet, mentioned in Sir Walter Scott's
"Marmion." The crest, as with Lafcadio's Irish Protestant branch of
Hearns, was a heron, with the motto, "The Heron Seeks the Heights."

Mrs. Koizumi, Hearn's widow, tells us that her husba