r and editor of _The Athenaeum_,
was born in London on the 18th of February 1810, and was educated at
Westminster school and Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He studied law, and in
1834 took his degree of LL.B., but did not practise. He assisted his
father in his literary work, and was for some years chairman of the
council of the Society of Arts, besides taking a prominent part in the
affairs of the Royal Horticultural Society and other bodies. He was one
of the most zealous promoters of the Great Exhibition (1851), and a
member of the executive committee. At the close of the exhibition he was
honoured by foreign sovereigns, and the queen offered him knighthood,
which, however, he did not accept; he also declined a large remuneration
offered by the royal commission. In 1853 Dilke was one of the English
commissioners at the New York Industrial Exhibition, and prepared a
report on it. He again declined to receive any money reward for his
services. He was appointed one of the five royal commissioners for the
Great Exhibition of 1862; and soon after the death of the prince consort
he was created a baronet. In 1865 he entered parliament as member for
Wallingford. In 1869 he was sent to Russia as representative of England
at the horticultural exhibition held at St Petersburg. His health,
however, had been for some time failing, and he died suddenly in that
city, on the 10th of May 1869. A selection from his writings, _Papers of
a Critic_ (2 vols., 1875), contains a biographical sketch by his son.

His son, SIR CHARLES WENTWORTH DILKE, BART. (1843- ), became a
prominent Liberal politician, as M.P. for Chelsea (1868-1886),
under-secretary for foreign affairs (1880-1882), and president of the
local government board (1882-1885); and he was then marked out as one of
the best-informed and ablest of the advanced Radicals. He was chairman
of the royal commission on the housing of the working classes in
1884-1885. But his sensational appearance as co-respondent in a divorce
case of a peculiarly unpleasant character in 1885 cast a cloud over his
career. He was defeated in Chelsea in 1886, and did not return to
parliament till 1892, when he was elected for the Forest of Dean; and
though his knowledge of foreign affairs and his powers as a critic and
writer on military and naval questions were admittedly of the highest
order, his official position in public life could not again be
recovered. His military writings are _The British Army_ (1888);