In late years, this law of inheritance has been much studied by scientists. The general law is about as has been stated; but it has innumerable offsets and qualifications which are not understood. Sometimes a child is a compound of the qualities of both parents. More frequently the son resembles the mother, and the daughter the father. Sometimes the child resembles neither parent, but seems to inherit every thing from an uncle or aunt. Often the resemblance to the grand-parent is the most marked. That these complications are governed by fixed, though, at present, unknown laws, can not be doubted; but for the purposes of biography the question is unessential. Scientists say that nine-tenths of a man’s genius is hereditary, and one-tenth accidental. The inherited portion may appear large, but it is to be remembered that only _possibilities_ are inherited, and that _not one man in a million reaches the limit of his possibilities_. If the lives of the ancestors of James A. Garfield were studied, we could tell what his possibilities were; while, by studying the life of Garfield himself, we see how nearly he realized those possibilities. This is the reason why biography interests itself in a man’s ancestors. They furnish the key to the situation. Of the many classes of colonists who settled this continent, by far the most illustrious were the Puritans and the Huguenots. Their names, alike invented as epithets of contempt and derision, have become the brightest on the historic page. Their fame rests upon their sacrifices. Not for gold, nor adventure, nor discovery, did they seek the forest-wrapped continent of North America, but for the sake of worshiping God according to the dictates of their own consciences. Different in nationality, language, and temperament—the one from the foggy isle of England, the other from the sunny skies of France—they alike fled from religious persecution; the Puritan from that intolerance and bigotry which cost Charles I. his head and revolutionized the English monarchy; the Huguenot from the withdrawal of the last vestige of religious liberty by Louis XIV. The proudest lineage which an American can trace is to one or the other of these communities of exiles.—In James A. Garfield these two currents of noble and heroic blood met and mingled.