To the Editor:

Cornelius Vanderbilt died in 1877 at the age of 82, the world's richest man, leaving an estate that topped the size of the United States Treasury. Within 30 years of the Commodore's death, no member of his family was among the richest people in the United States.

Forty-eight years after his death, one of his descendants died penniless. Within 70 years of his death, the last of the 10 great Vanderbilt mansions that had once lined Fifth Avenue was broken to rubble. When 120 of the Commodore's descendants gathered at Vanderbilt University in 1973 for the first family reunion, there was not a millionaire among them.

The fast rise, and often equally fast fall, of our great fortunes seems to be a peculiarly American phenomenon, a special part of our history, the latest chapter of which is unfolding with the saga of Donald J. Trump, whose fortune began with the old Commodore Hotel and whose ''glittering towers, plazas, palaces and hotels'' occupy the old Vanderbilt neighborhood (''Up, and Down, With Donald Trump'' editorial, June 9).

Last year, a review of my book, ''Fortune's Children: The Fall of the House of Vanderbilt,'' a four-generation saga of the decline of what was once the nation's most conspicuous family of millionaires, noted with percipience that this book ''could give Donald Trump nightmares.'' The Commodore even painted his name on all his acquisitions as avidly as Mr. Trump.