It was not only lead, but copper ore was found there, and at last silver; so that in the course of three generations the trumpeter's descendants became amongst the very richest of the land; and when my father succeeded to the estate, he owned almost the entire country between Newrath Bridge and Arklow. There were seventeen townlands in our possession, and five mines in full work. In one of these, gold was found, and several fine crystals of topaz and beryl,--a few specimens of which are yet to be seen in the Irish Academy. It has been often remarked that men of ability rarely or never transmit their gifts to the generation succeeding them. Nature would seem to set her face against monopolies, and at least, so far as intellect is concerned, to be a genuine “Free-Trader.” There is another and very similar fact, however, which has not attracted so much notice. It is this: that not only the dispositions and tastes of successive generations change and alternate, but that their luck follows the same law, and that after a good run of fortune for maybe a century or two, there is certain to come a turn; and thus it is that these ups and downs, which are only remarked in the lives of individuals, are occurring in the wider ocean of general humanity. The common incident that we so often hear of a man winning an enormous sum and losing every farthing of it, down to the very half-crown he began with, is just the type of many a family history,--the only difference being that the event which in one case occupied a night, in the other was spread over two, or maybe three, hundred years.