PASSING GENERATIONS.
“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]]
[31]. Dr. Johnson.
[32]. The Doctor.
[33]. Sir Richard Phillips’s Morning’s Walk from London to Kew.