THE MORAL VALUE OF ANCESTORS.
THE Ancestor (Constable and Co.) is a new magazine con-
cerned with descent, heraldry, and the preservation of family papers and relics. The subject will appeal to others than those who look to find an interest personal to themselves. Sympathy with and interest in the story and records of the considerable dead are always forthcoming from those un- connected with them by lineage. Their appearance and dress, their virtues and foibles, as shown in their monuments or recorded in family papers, are matters for natural curiosity and material for practical conclusions. For it is not by studying the lives of the greatest and exceptional characters, but by inferences from the acts of average men and women that true views as to the conduct of others are most frequently drawn. Moreover, these glimpses of the past often induce a genial and tolerant attitude towards the present, which the less detached survey of things of to-day does not. There have been men who have been so fully aware of the pleasure which these personal details would give to their descendants that they took the trouble to set down on paper matters which they knew were trifles, but which would aid their descendants to form an idea of what manner of men they were. Thus Sir John Oglander of Nunwell, in the Isle of W ight, besides being a model country gentleman of his day, and a loyal friend to his King when he was a prisoner at Carisbrook, found time to write all his daily impressions for the benefit of his pos- terity, including such facts as that "he was put into the Com- mission of the Peace att ye adge of 22 yeres, when I not well understood myselve, or my place, and was ashamed to sett on ye Bench, as not having then any hayre on my face and less witt he was liftennant Governor of Portsmouth, and was Liftennant of ye island also match trobled with a payne in his head, which wold last him 2 or 3 dayes
but when he came to 40 yeares that miserable payne left him, and he began to be mutch healthier in his bodye than before. But then another infirmitie came to him which was great paynes in the Bowles of his feet. He was of a moderate dyott, not caring how littel or coorse if but clean and handsome ; for his intellectual parts let his actions judge him. God send ye island never a woorse for his paynestaking to administer justice upryghtly to everyone. Sir John's appeal will be readily granted by posterity. But how quaint the following ! He left a number of deeds tied up with laces of silver and gold braid, duly noting :—" These quittances that are here tyed up weare so done by Sir John Oglander, with his own punts, everyone was worne by him. And it may be that in futor tyme somme of his successors may wonder at the fashion. Witness the same my hand—John Oglander." No one can see the good knight s painted effigy in Brading Church, with that of his best- loved son above it, and the tomb of his faithful clerk Toby Kempe close by, without feeling that though he cannot share the pride which his descendants, who still live at Nunwell, derive from their connection with so genial and loyal a forbear, the fact that his race has continued, and that his writiags and other memorials have been preserved in his old home, is a source of proper and legitimate satisfaction to all those who happen by association to come in contact with the events and surroundings of his life.
It would be easy, were it at all needed, to cite proofs and eservutz the
arguments for respecting the memory and pr
relics of the considerable dead in our churches and villages apart from the personal interest felt in them by their sur- vivors. A worthy knight or landlord—inert whose effigies, brasses, and tombs fill our old churches—has nearly always left his mark for good on the land he owned and in the parish in which he lived. He has planted, or made a causeway, or built a bridge, or set up an almshouse, or endowed a charity; or, if he has done none of these things, he has probably led a good and upright domestic life, of which the records and re- membrance might be far better kept and recalled than they are. In certain churches there is an annual sermon commemorating the good deeds of the founders of chapels or chantries. It might be no bad plan if the rectors took sometimes for their subjects the lives and characters of the local worthies of the past, and pointed out what were excellent, solid, and enduring in them. Around them are the tombs, the memorials, and even the likenesses of the dead, to give their silent witness to the fact that they once bad on that spot a local habitation and a name. The events of their lives are often recorded in family archives and in less obvious places. Thus in a remote old Suffolk hall there lived one Sir Basingborne Gawdye, one of an ancient race, who suffered much from fines and confiscations for his loyalty in the Revolution, but was able to lead a life of quiet excellence in his later years. The village clergyman who was with him on his deathbed, and knew his worth, was at pains to have inscribed upon a large shield of brass an estimate of his character and a short history of the man written in natural and affecting terms. This was fastened to his coffin and buried with him, the times not being such as commanded much consideration for this kind of worth. It was not till two centuries later that this interesting and public record of a man whom the village as a community might regard as an ancestral worthy was discovered. The destruction of such tombs and tablets in many of our churches is deplorable ; neither is it easy to conceive the want of sense and deficiency of imagination which have often permitted the removal of personal memorials, such as the helmets, swords, and escutcheons of the dead, or which now allow their monuments to be neglected. It would be well if an inventory could be taken of all the personal relics remaining in our churches, and that no power for their removal should be granted until it was sanctioned by a competent authority. Thus we might no more hear of men from a distance visiting the church where their forbears' names and deeds and arms were carved on slabs in the walls only to find that they had been used for mixing mortar upon. Our country churches, which were filled with the lively memorials of our dead predecessors, have too often been stripped of the major part of this long-continued connection with the human past. The village church is the village Westminster Abbey, in which every object commemorating our ancestors ought to be sacred, small as well as great. Cases of intentional disrespect to the ancestral sentiment damage us as a nation. For if we do not respect our own ancestors, we are also liable to hurt the feelings of the Americans and English over the seas. There are few among the former who do not trace their descent from some English village, and who would not be shocked to find the tombs or memory of their forbears slighted. Most of our Colonies are of more recent date; yet the same sentiment largely prevails there.
The moral value of respect for the ancestor in family life is often strangely overlooked. There is scarcely ever an instance of a forbear whose memmy is held even in the slightest regard by others who did not deserve to be honoured In remembrance by his own descendants. The men who founded families, those who increased their position in the esteem of the world, and those who maintained and kept together what their predecessors had gained,—all were men of character. If the facts were known, it would generally be found that the elements both of strength and weakness in the successful and straight-dealing ancestor are repeated in his descendants. Hence his character should be to them a Peculiarly valuable object-lesson, and in some degree a standard by which to judge of the doings and future of the present generation. The career of the capable forbear ought to be a steady and useful beacon to his descendants, who more than any other persons are able to appreciate it. If there were rather more of the cult of the ancestor than there is. it
might be an additional inducement to men of to-day to found families rather than to spend as largely as is dune in one life- time. There must be something very discouraging in the steady modern disregard of even the recent dead who in their day were so important, and to whose memory no one refers in their family and in their homes six months after their funeral. The Roman ideal was a far saner one, which placed in the hall the images of all the dead, and gave them days of set recollec- tion among those who came after them. Personal affection alone dictates such remembrance here. But posthumous respect for the qualities of an ancestor should rightly be accorded long after the date when personal affection has become impossible by the decease of those who knew him.
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