Such being the case, does it not seem a farce to talk about family types, and family likenesses, and family peculiarities beyond one or two generations at most? And yet it is not a farce; for what comes out abundantly clear is, that certain streams are stronger than others, and colour and affect for several generations the quality of the blood with which they mingle. Not so only, but earlier types reappear after the lapse of time as distinct as though there had been no intermediate blood mixture, as though there had been filiation by gemmation, as is the case with sponges. One day I was visiting a friend, when I was struck by the excellence of a portrait in his hall of a very refined and beautiful old lady; there was nothing characteristic in the dress. Being a fancier in portraiture, and being mightily ill-contented with modern portrait-painting, this picture pleased me especially; it was a picture as well as a portrait, harmonious in colour and tone, and artistically focussed. Moreover, it was a perfectly life-like "presentiment" of my friend's wife. He and she were both old people. Said I to my friend, "What an admirable likeness! The artist has not only made a good picture, but he has caught your wife's expression as well as features and peculiar colouring. Who is the painter? I did not know we had the man nowadays who could have painted such a portrait." "Oh," he answered, "that is not my wife--it is her great-grandmother." Thus the wife represented _four_ united streams of two generations back, but she represented in face, and represented exactly, only one of them. Now for another instance. In a certain family that I know intimately, a son and a female cousin are as much alike as though they were twin brother and sister; what is the more remarkable is, that they deviate altogether from the type of their brothers and sisters, parents, uncles, and aunts. _But_, and here is the curious fact, they resemble, even ludicrously, an ancestor whose miniature and portrait in oils are in the possession of the family. I draw out the pedigree. I must premise that the portrait is of a gentleman in forget-me-not blue velvet, and he goes in the family by the name of the Blue Man. [Illustration: Blue Man = A | | | B = C | | D = E | | +--------+---+ | | | | G = F H = I | | | | +---+ +---+ | | | | M N ]