Brighouse & Rastrick Gazette. — 1892-07-16 (Brighouse, West Yorkshire, England)

WHAT BECOMES OF DECENDANTS. In the "Voice of the Flying Day," Mr. Walter Besant, in the Pictorial World, asks: What becomes of all the descendants ? We know that we have ancestors. Some of us have got portraits of great grandfathers (not bought in Wardour•streetj, but how can we tell that we shall have descendants ? Consider, for instance, the City churches before the Fire—there were 120 of them. These churches were ' filled with monuments of the City worthies, with their tombs, their coats of arms, their painted glass, their effigies. There are many hundreds of these worthies; they were all rich, or at least substantial men: merchants; masters or wardens of their companies; Lord Mayors; sheriffs; aldermen; common council men; benefactors to the parish; arm ben. They were notable men, and worth remembering. Now, reader dear, did you ever, in al your life, come across anyone who claimed to be descended from these City worthies? I say nothing about the last hundred years; there are plenty of people connected with City magnates who have flourished during that period ; Igo back to the year 1700 and beyond. Where are the descendat sof the City worthies of the old time? One or two were founders of families, or brought money into fami)ies,which still exist—the names of Ducie, Coventry, Bosebery, at once suggest themselves. But where are all the rest ? My answer to the question is that the test have disappeared; they have gone down into the low—lower— lowest strata. Once there, no recollection remains of ancestry or worthies. The tendency of every family is to produce, now and then—once in a couple of centuries—once for all—a single son, or a single set of sons—who possess the genius which takes them to the front; well. Then they die; they leave some fortune behind them. But the next generation is commonplace; they either dissipate the fortune or they do not extend it, and NI, hen they die the fortune becomes scattered and divided, and that family sinks down very rapidly. Here you have the process. First, the successful man. He builds up fortune, position, distinction, and name. Next, commonplace sons and daughters. The fortune is divided among them; the name is not advanced. Then come grandchildren, also more or less commonplace. Among them the rest of the fortune disappears; they go down a step. More commonplace children, again a downward step; some emigrate, some are occupied in quite humble pursuits; even the memory of the once successful man is now quite gone. Fifthly, some are quite down in the mire; some are beginning to get up ' again; consinship is lost, part of the family slowly rising again, getting ready for the next able son when he shall appear. And when he does, he thinks himself the first man of the family. You know the story of the wrestler who must needs touch earth in order to renew his strength. It is an allegory. It means that the family which lifts its head, and is rich and distinguished for a space, must needs go hack to mother earth again. There it generally abides—perhaps for many generations, perhaps always—so that the descendants of the City worthies ' are now the working men who live amend about the city. That is my theory.  According to a despatch from Sofia, in the course of the trial of the men charged xith conspiring to murder Prince Ferditiand,the witness Zclravcoff,who admitted his complicity in the conspiracy, Oeclared that it was intended to assassicate the Prince on an occasien when he travelled by railway to meet his mother, Princess Clementine. The engine-driver and stoker of the train were in the plot, and at a given signal these men were to step the train in the Dragoman Pass. The conspiracy also included the assucination of M. Sta:nbouloff, the Premier. The chief conspirators, the witness declared, were the risoners Djudjoff, Ghecrghieff, and :Bobekeff and turnself. The a.lthors of the plot were the prisoners Karaveloff and Molloff_  !.t Christ Church, Westminster Bridge-road, tne i?ev. Dr. Newman Hall on Sunday resigned the -zatorate which he had held for 38 years, and ,reached his farewell sermons to vast congregations.