complete
independence and disinterestedness. For a very able man his ambition
was singularly moderate. As he once said, he had made it his object
throughout life only to aim at things which were well within his
power. He had very little respect for the judgment of the multitude,
and he cared nothing for notoriety and not much for dignities. A
moderate competence, congenial work, a sphere of wide and genuine
influence, a close and intimate friendship with a large proportion of
the guiding spirits of his time, were the things he really valued, and
all these he fully attained. He had great conversational powers, which
never degenerated into monologue, a singularly equable, happy, and
sanguine temperament, and a keen delight in cultivated society. These
characteristics showed conspicuously in two small and very select
dining-clubs which have included most of the distinguished English
statesmen and men of letters of the century. He became a member of the
Literary Society in 1857 and of Dr. Johnson's Club in 1861, and it is
a remarkable evidence of the appreciation of his social tact that both
bodies speedily selected him as their treasurer. He held that position
in 'The Club' from 1868 till within a year of his death, when failing
health and absence from London obliged him to relinquish it. The
French Institute elected him 'Correspondant' in 1863 and Associated
Member in 1888, in which latter dignity he succeeded Sir Henry Maine.
In 1869 the University of Oxford conferred on him the honorary degree
of D.C.L.

It was in 1855, on the death of Sir George Cornewall Lewis, that he
assumed the editorship of the 'Edinburgh Review' which he retained
till the day of his death. Both on the political and the literary side
he was in full harmony with its traditions. His rare and minute
knowledge of recent English and foreign political history; his vast
fund of political anecdote; his personal acquaintance with so many of
the chief actors on the political scene, both in England and France,
gave a great weight and authority to his judgments, and his mind was
essentially of the Whig cast. He was a genuine Liberal of the school
of Russell, Palmerston, Clarendon, and Cornewall Lewis. It was a sober
and tolerant Liberalism, rooted in the traditions of the past, and
deeply attached to the historical elements in the Constitution. The
dislike and distrust with which he had always viewed the progress of
democracy deepened with age, and it was h