The younger Nicholas was the first Marshal, or presiding officer,
of the Society of Musicians, incorporated at the Restoration,
"for the improvement of the science and the interest of its professors;"
and it is remarkable that four others of the name of Lanier
were among the few incorporators, one of them, John Lanier,
very likely father of the Sir John Lanier who fought as Major-General
at the Battle of the Boyne, and fell gloriously at Steinkirk
along with the brave Douglas.

The American branch of the family originated as early as 1716
with the immigration of Thomas Lanier, who settled with other colonists
on a grant of land ten miles square, which includes the present city
of Richmond, Va. One of the family, a Thomas Lanier, married an aunt
of George Washington. The family is somewhat widely scattered,
chiefly in the Southern States.

The father of our poet was Robert S. Lanier, a lawyer still living
in Macon, Ga. His mother was Mary Anderson, a Virginian of Scotch descent,
from a family that supplied members of the House of Burgesses of Virginia
for many years and in more than one generation, and was gifted in poetry,
music, and oratory.

His earliest passion was for music. As a child he learned to play,
almost without instruction, on every kind of instrument he could find;
and while yet a boy he played the flute, organ, piano, violin, guitar,
and banjo, especially devoting himself to the flute in deference to
his father, who feared for him the powerful fascination of the violin.
For it was the violin-voice that, above all others, commanded his soul.
He has related that during his college days it would sometimes so exalt him
in rapture, that presently he would sink from his solitary music-worship