Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/586

580 will be observed, moreover, that our discussion is confined to the statures of men. Those of women are notoriously lower, and the two can not well be treated together in an article of short compass.

Towering above all the historic characters thus gathered before the mind's eye is the immense form of Charles Sumner with his 6 feet 4 inches. Beside him, only an inch and a half less in height, stands Thomas Jefferson, while near these two are Charles Godfrey Leland and Andrew Jackson with statures of 6 feet 2 and 6 feet 1 inch.

Described as "over six feet" are Samuel Adams, Bismarck, Samuel P. Chase, Captain Cook, Jonathan Edwards, Eugene Field, Henry Fielding and Walt Whitman, while Charles Darwin (" about six feet "), Alexander Dumas, the elder, James Monroe ("six feet or more"). Bayard Taylor ("six feet at seventeen"), Alfred Tennyson, General Thomas and George Washington must be ranged with celebrated men six feet in height.

Another group—still of majestic presence—is referred to as "slightly under" or "a little below" six feet, and in this we find the names of Henry Ward Beecher, Rufus Choate, Sidney Lanier and Daniel O'Connell. The remainder are of less impressive height—Benjamin Franklin, Albert Gallatin, John Buskin, Robert Louis Stevenson and Daniel Webster, who could claim five feet ten inches, General Charles George Gordon, whose stature was five feet nine inches, and Washington Irving, who was 5 feet 8 to 9 inches.

In addition to these individuals there is a goodly company spoken of by the biographers as "tall"—Matthew Arnold, Louis Agassiz, William Cullen Bryant, Julius Cæsar, Charlemagne, Charles XII. of Sweden, Christopher Columbus, Stonewall Jackson, General Sam Houston, Leigh Hunt, Edward Fitzgerald, Ben Johnson, Chief Justice Marshall, Sir Walter Scott, Robert Southey ("very tall"), Phillips Brooks ("of great height"), Wm. M. Thackeray ("above medium height"), Patrick Henry, Lorenzo de Medici, Francis Parkman, Coventry Patmore, Peter the Great, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Sidney Smith ("of middle height, rather above than below"), Thaddeus Stevens,. N. P. Willis, Richard Strauss and John Bunyan.

Described as of "medium height" are Robert Browning, John Adams, Sir Thomas More, Wm. Hazlitt, Julian, S. S. Prentiss, Lord Palmerston, Duke of Wellington, William the Silent, Sir Arthur Sullivan, Frederick the Great ("not of imposing stature"—Carlyle), Admiral Nelson ("a little man of about medium height"), Schubert ("moderately tall"), and as 5 feet 8 inches we have the names of Grant, Theodore Parker and Rossetti.

Under medium height were, according to their biographers, Admiral Farragut, who was 5 feet 6 inches, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Paul Jones and General Phil Sheridan, each of whom was 5