“The deaths of some, and the marriages of others,” says Cowper, “make a
new world of it every thirty years. Within that space of time the
majority are displaced, and a new generation has succeeded. Here and
there one is permitted to stay longer, that there may not be wanting a
few grave dons like myself to make the observation.”
Man is a self-survivor every year;
Man, like a stream, is in perpetual flow.
Death’s a destroyer of quotidian prey:
My youth, my noontide his, my yesterday;
The bold invader shares the present hour,
Each moment on the former shuts the grave.
While man is growing, life is in decrease,
And cradles rock us nearer to the tomb.
Our birth is nothing but our death begun,
As tapers waste that instant they take fire.—_Young._
Yet, infinitely short as the term of human life is when compared with
time to come, it is not so in relation to time past. A hundred and forty
of our own generations carry us back to the Deluge, and nine more of
antediluvian measure to the Creation,—which to us is the beginning of
time; “for time itself is but a novelty, a late and upstart thing in
respect of the ancient of days.”[31] They who remember their
grandfather, and see their grandchildren, have seen persons belonging to
five out of that number; and he who attains the age of threescore, has
seen two generations pass away. “The created world,” says Sir Thomas
Browne, “is but a small parenthesis in eternity, and a short
interposition, for a time, between such a state of duration as was
before it, and may be after it.” There is no time of life, after we
become capable of reflection, in which the world to come must not to any
considerate mind appear of more importance to us than this; no time in
which we have not a greater stake there. When we reach the threshold of
old age, all objects of our early affections have gone before us, and in
the common course of mortality a great proportion of the later. Not
without reason did the wise compilers of our admirable Liturgy place
next in order after the form of Matrimony, the services for the
Visitation and Communion of the Sick, and for the Burial of the
Dead.[32]
A home-tourist, halting in the quiet churchyard of Mortlake, in Surrey,
about half a century since, fell into the following reflective train of
calculation of generations:
“I reflected that, as it is now more than four hundred years since this
ground became the depository of the dead, some of its earliest occupants
might, without an hyperbole, have been ancestors of the whole
contemporary English nation. If we suppose that a man was buried in this
churchyard 420 years ago, who left six children, each of whom had three
children, who again had, on an average, the same number in every
generation of thirty years; then, in 420 years, or fourteen generations,
his descendants might be multiplied as under:
1st generation 6
2d ” 18
3d ” 54
4th ” 162
5th ” 486
6th ” 1458
7th ” 4374
8th ” 13,122
9th ” 39,366
10th ” 118,098
11th ” 354,274
12th ” 1,062,812
13th ” 3,188,436
14th ” 9,565,308
That is to say, nine millions and a half of persons; or, as nearly as
possible, the exact population might at this day be descended in a
direct line from any individual buried in this or any other churchyard
in the year 1395, who left six children, each of whose descendants have
had on the average three children! And, by the same law, every
individual who has six children may be the root of as many descendants
within 420 years, provided they increase on the low average of only
three in every branch. His descendants would represent an inverted
triangle, of which he would constitute the lower angle.
“To place the same position in another point of view, I calculated also
that every individual now living must have had for his ancestor every
parent in Britain living in the year 1125, the age of Henry I., taking
the population of that period at 8,000,000. Thus, as every individual
must have had a father and mother, or two progenitors, each of whom had
a father and mother, or four progenitors, each generation would double
its progenitors every thirty years. Every person living may, therefore,
be considered as the apex of a triangle, of which the base would
represent the whole population of a remote age.
1815. Living individual 1
1785. His father and mother 2
1755. Their fathers and mothers 4
1725. ” ” 8
1695. ” ” 16
1665. ” ” 32
1635. ” ” 64
1605. ” ” 128
1575. ” ” 256
1545. ” ” 512
1515. ” ” 1,024
1485. ” ” 2,048
1455. ” ” 4,096
1425. ” ” 8,192
1395. ” ” 16,384
1365. ” ” 32,768
1335. ” ” 65,536
1305. ” ” 131,072
1275. ” ” 262,144
1245. ” ” 524,288
1215. ” ” 1,048,576
1185. ” ” 2,097,152
1155. ” ” 4,194,304
1125. ” ” 8,388,608
That is to say, if there have been a regular co-mixture of marriages,
every individual of the living race must of necessity be descended from
parents who lived in Britain in 1125. Some districts or clans may
require a longer period for the co-mixture, and different circumstances
may cut off some families, and expand others; but, in general, the lines
of families would cross each other, and become interwoven, _like the
lines of lattice-work_. A single intermixture, however remote, would
unite all the subsequent branches in common ancestry, rendering the
contemporaries of every nation members of one expanded family, after the
lapse of an ascertainable number of generations.”[33]
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Footnote 31:
Dr. Johnson.
Footnote 32:
_The Doctor._
Footnote 33:
Sir Richard Phillips’s _Morning’s Walk from London to Kew_.
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