Emerson, Hans Andersen, Wordsworth, Bunyan, Audubon, Corot, Moltke, Millet, Gounod, Lord Clive, and Lord Brougham were tall men. So were Humboldt and Helmholtz. Lord Kelvin is five feet seven inches, Lord Reay six feet two inches. Conan Doyle is six feet one inch, Anthony Hope three inches shorter. All these figures give the stature of the men in their boots.
King Edward is five feet eight and a half inches, the Kaiser just an inch shorter. The Mikado is five feet six inches, the King of Italy five feet two inches. The Czar’s height is the same as the Kaiser’s. Leopold, King of the Belgians, is six feet five inches.
Americans Taller Than Englishmen.
Peter the Great was six feet eight and a half Inches. Abraham Lincoln was just under six feet two inches, Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Richard Burton six feet. Alfred de Musset, Froude, Puvis de Chavannes, Poussin, Lessing. Schiller, Lamartine, and Sterne were tall men. W. S. Gilbert is over six feet.
It would be possible to lengthen this list to the point of tediousness. But the more the subject is examined, the farther away we get from the Napoleonic theory. Nature has a pretty wide range in these matters, and she makes the most of it.
When it comes to averages, figures prepared by the anthropometric committee of the British Association for the Advancement of Science indicate that the average stature of the male adults of England is five feet seven inches and seven-eighths, although the professional and commercial classes show “a mean height of from two to three inches above this, and the laboring classes an inch or two below.” The Scotch and Irish are a little taller, and the Welsh a little shorter than the English.
The average for the United States is said to be taller than the English—a fact which implies neither genius nor the lack of it.
AMERICAN TRADITIONS AND THE ICONOCLASTS.
Persons Who Hew Too Close to the Line of History Get Little Thanks for Their Pains.
Iconoclasts have been busy with American history for a good many years. They have cut the props from under more than one valued tradition. In the interest of literal fact they have destroyed much that is imaginatively valuable. Too often the one can be gained only by loss of the other, and it is not easy to decide which vantages most. At least there is some ground for nourishing tradition.