generous allowance, but letting the titles go to the second boy, who was
bright and brave and withal a right manly fellow.

Personally, I'm glad the honors went to the best man. But Hallam Tennyson,
son of the poet, sees only rank injustice in the action of his ancestor,
who deliberately set his own opinion of right and justice against
precedent as embodied in English Law. As a matter of strictest justice, we
might argue that neither boy was entitled to anything which he had not
earned, and that, in dividing the property between them, instead of
allowing it all to drift into the hands of the one accidentally born
first, the father acted wisely and well.

But neither Alfred nor Hallam Tennyson thought so. How much their opinions
were biased by the fact that they were descendants of the firstborn son,
we can not say. Anyway, the descendants of the second son, the Honorable
Charles Tennyson d'Eyncourt, have made no protest of which I can learn,
about justice having been defeated.

Considering this subject of the Law of Entail one step further, we find
that Hallam, the present Lord Tennyson, is a Peer of the Realm simply
because his father was a great poet, and honors were given him on that
account by the Queen. These honors go to Hallam, who, as all men agree, is
in many ways singularly like his grandfather.

Genius is not hereditary, but titles are. Hallam is eminently pleased with
the English Law of Entail, save that he questions whether any father has
the divine right to divert his titles and wealth from the eldest son. Lord
Hallam's arguments are earnest and well expressed, but they seem to show
that he is lacking in what Herbert Spencer calls the "value sense"--in
other words, the sense of humor.