GEORGE GROTE, (1794-1871), the historian of Greece, eminent also as a philosopher, a politician, and a labourer in the advancement of university education, was born on the 17th of November 1794, at Clay Hill, near Beckenham in Kent. He drew his lineage from a Dutch, or, more strictly speaking, a Low German family. The name (Groot, equivalent to ''great,") is the same as that of Hugo Grotius, I with whom the Grotes would gladly have traced a relation- j ship, but the evidence was wanting. George Grote's grandfather, Andreas (born in 1710), a merchant of Bremen, removed to England, and after some years of successful business joined Mr George Prescott in founding the banking-house of " Grote, Prescott, k Company " (January 1, 1766). He was married twice. His eldest son by his second marriage, George (born in 1762), was married (in 1793) to Selina, daughter of the Rev. Dr Peckwell, one of the countess of Huntingdon's chaplains, whose portrait is pre-served in the vestry of the chapel at Chichester, where he ministered. Dr Peckwell was descended on the mother's side from the French Protestant family of De Blosset, who had left Touraine in consequence of the revocation of the edict of Nantes ; and thus the historian, who was the son of George Grote and Selina Peckwell, had a share of that Huguenot blood which has been a rich source of intellectual as well as industrial life in England.
Like many other eminent men, George Grote owed much of his future intellectual greatness to his mother's careful training. Having a strong desire to see her son excel in learning, she taught him reading and writing herself, and even grounded him in the elements of Latin before he was sent to the grammar school at Sevenoaks, in his sixth year (1800). The four years spent there gave an earnest of his whole future life. In the language of his biographer, who has lately attained the end of a life inseparably interwoven with his, " he evinced a decided aptitude for study, being rarely found behindhand with his tasks, and ranking habitually above boys of his age in the class to which he belonged." In his tenth year he was removed to the Charter-house, the headmaster of which, Dr Raine, had the honour of training, along with George Grote, Connop Thirlwall, Dean Wad-dington and his brother Horace, Sir Cresswell Cresswell, Sir Henry Havelock, and other men of future distinction. Grote was not allowed to share the course of most of his schoolfellows at a university; but this great privation was turned into a pre-eminent distinction by the resolution with which his own strong will and untiring industry supplied the loss. The supposed advantage of an early application to business led the father to take George into the bank at the age of sixteen. But his six years at the Charter-house had not only imbued him with a strong taste for classical learning, but had supplied him with that motive to high culture, which forms the most convincing argument in its favour, and to which he remained faithful through a half century of educational disputes and heresies. It was not as an alternative to a life of business, but as its proper complement, that he chose and advocated ancient learning. " Looking forward," says his biographer, " to a commercial course of life, certain to prove uninteresting in itself, he resolved to provide for himself the higher resources of intellectual occupation." Engaged in the bank throughout the day, he devoted his early mornings and evenings to a systematic course of reading, of which the chief subjects were the ancient classics, history, metaphysics, and political economy, to the last of which he was attracted by the writings of David Ricardo, whose personal acquaintance he formed in 1817. To these studies he added the learning of German by the aid of a Lutheran clergyman, which, together with his knowledge of French and Italian, placed the stores of Continental scholarship within his reach. His chief recreation was music, and he learned to play the violoncello, to accompany his mother, who was a fine musician. Arrived at the age of manhood (in the winter of 1814-1815), he formed the acquaintance of the young lady who afterwards became his wife, devoted to and worthy of him, the very complement of his life, intellectual as well as social, and finally his biographer in a spirit of loving but not indiscriminate admiration. This was Miss Harriet Lewin, the daughter of Mr Thomas Lewin, of Bexley, in Kent, a gentleman of old family and independent fortune. She was born at Southampton, July 1, 1792, and was consequently nearly two years older than Grote. From causes which need not be related here their intimacy was suspended for three years, during which Grote's studies made steady progress. To this period belongs his earliest literary composition, an essay on his favourite Lucretius, which still exists in MS. His letters also record the careful study of Aristotle, his final estimate of whom formed his last unfinished work. But the most interesting light is thrown on the method and course of his studies in the diary which he kept for Miss Lewin's information. This record bears witness, not only to the wide diversity of his studies in ancient and modern literature, philosophy, and political economy, but also to the fact that he read the authors themselves whom he wished to know,— read them as a whole, instead of merely reading what others had written about them.
An epoch, perhaps the most critical turning-point of Grote's intellectual life, was formed by his introduction, through David Ricardo, to James Mill, who was then composing his metaphysical work entitled An Analysis of the Human Mind. Already attracted to this study, Grote became Mill's admiring disciple in mental and political philosophy. From this time he adopted the fixed principles, from which he never receded, of experience as the source of all knowledge, and utility as the foundation of morals. The views derived from Mill were confirmed by the teaching of Jeremy Bentham, and by intercourse with a band of young disciples, over whom the two philosophers wielded an unbounded influence. Among these John Stuart Mill began now to make his appearance as a boy of twelve years old. It is important to note the influence which the study of metaphysics exercised upon the development of Grote's intellectual character. To the general public he is chiefly known as an historian; but he was equally dis-tinguished as a metaphysical philosopher. To the teaching of James Mill may also be traced his democratic principles and his zeal for freedom of thought, hardening into in-tolerance of all religious systems and their ministers. But, however they may have determined his course upon certain occasions, these antipathies never struck their root down into the real soil of his gentle and courteous nature.
In 1820, at the age of twenty-four, he was married to Miss Harriet Lewin. They lived at first at the banking-house in Threadneedle Street. The confined situation soon told on Mrs Grote's health, and the death of her only child, a week after its birth, was followed by a dangerous illness. It was at her bedside at Hampstead, during her slow recovery, that Grote composed the first work he pub-lished, an Essay on Parliamentary Reform, in reply to an article by Sir James Mackintosh in the Edinburgh Review, No. 61 (1821). The pamphlet is a vigorous assertion of the broadest principles of popular representation, in oppo-sition to a scheme of class representation sketched by the reviewer. It proclaimed Grote's adherence to those political views held by the party afterwards called the " philosophic radicals," and it strongly pleaded for the vote by ballot, of which he afterwards became the parliamentary advocate. The most important parts of this pamphlet were embodied in his later essay on the Essentials of Parlia-mentary Reform (1831), reprinted in his Minor Works.
In April 1822 Grote sent a vigorous letter to the Morning Chronicle in reply to Canning's speech against Lord John Bussell's motion for reform. In the same year he spent much time upon some MSS. of Jeremy Bentham, which the aged philosopher entrusted to his young disciple to put into a readable form. After carefully digesting and arranging them, he published them anonymously in a small 8vo volume, entitled Analysis of the Influence of Natural Religion on the Temporal Happiness of Mankind, by Philip Beauchamp. Meanwhile the quiet course of life went on in Threadneedle Street. The scanty leisure of each day was devoted to the joint studies of husband and wife, for " Mrs George Grote was habitually studious, after her fashion, under the direction of her husband, who laid great stress upon her cultivating the ratiocinative vein of instruction—above all, logic, metaphysics, and politics; and she accordingly strove to master these subjects, out of deference to his wish, and in order to qualify herself to be associated with his intellectual tastes and labours as time wore on." Their pleasures were likewise in common; the wife, who was an accomplished musician, learnt the violoncello to accompany her husband ; but he dropped his music in 1830. A circle of congenial minds frequented the house in Threadneedle Street from 1822 to 1830. Within that choice society there was a narrower circle of students, who met there twice a week at half-past eight in the morning for an hour or two's reading. Among others were John Stuart Mill, Charles Buller, and John Arthur Boebuck. They read the most recent works on metaphysics and kindred subjects in the light of their adored teachers, Bentham and James Mill, beyond whom they believed all to be in Cimmerian darkness.
The year 1823 marks the epoch of the first conception of Grote's great work; and an extant letter shows the spirit in which he approached it. On January 14th he writes :—" I am at present engaged in the fabulous ages of Greece, which I find will be required to be illustrated by bringing together a large mass of analogical matter from other early histories, in order to show the entire uncertainty and worthlessness of tales to which early associations have so long familiarized all classical minds. I am quite amazed to discover the extraordinary greediness and facility with which men assert, believe, re-assert, and are believed. The weakness appears to be next to universal, and I really think that one ought to write on the walls of one's dressing-room the caution of the poet Epicharmus :—
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The subject ever present to his thoughts came up so often in the discussions with his friends as to suggest to his wife's sympathy and ambition for his fame the definite work of his future life. One day she said to him—" You are always studying the ancient authors whenever you have a moment's leisure, now here would be a fine subject for you to treat. Suppose you try your hand ! " " The idea" (she adds) " proved acceptable to the young student, and, after reflecting for some time, he came to the resolution of enter-ing upon the work." Henceforth this definite aim prevailed amidst the still wide range of reading which threw new light from all quarters upon the central object, and the mass of notes and extracts still preserved attest the diligence with which he prepared for it. Happily for himself and for the world, he was diverted from the work till he could resume it, not only with that clearer mental perspective in which a long meditated object appears when we return to it afresh, but with the enlarged experience of nearly twenty years occupied in practical politics and converse with statesmen, abroad as well as at home. Mean-while he gave the world an earnest of his work in an ex-haustive review of Mitford's History of Greece in the West-minster Review for April 1826,—one result of which was a letter from Niebuhr, clearly designating Grote as the historian of Greece, and inviting him to a visit which events never permitted him to pay.
From 1825 to 1827 Grote took part in the scheme of founding the " University of London " in Gower Street, with the management of which institution he became after-wards intimately connected. As the political crisis of 1830 approached, public and private events conspired to draw Grote into the vortex of politics. The failure of his father's health gave him a new position in the bank; and in the spring of 1830 he was able to arrange for a visit to the Continent, which brought him into connexion with the liberal politicians of Paris on the eve of the revolution. An interesting record of the state of affairs and of the impressions of this visit are preserved in Mrs Grote's Life of Ary Scheffer, published in 1860. The travellers were recalled in June by the illness of Grote's father, who died before their arrival, at the age of 70.
Thus, in his 36th year, George Grote, now the head of the family, found himself master of his own affairs, and of about £40,000 personal property, besides the family estates in Lincolnshire and Oxfordshire. His business and studies alike led him to fix his residence in London; and the first use he made of his wealth was to subscribe £500 to the revolutionary committee of the Hotel de Ville, with an offer to come himself to Paris if his presence would be of any use. The pressure of business as his father's executor kept him, in spite of strong solicitations, out of any active part in the agitation for reform, but did not prevent the steady progress of the History, which Mrs Grote writes (February 1, 1831), " must be given to the public before he can embark in any active scheme of a political kind." He refused an invitation to stand for the city in 1831; but he made an able contribution to the argument in a statement of the Essentials of Parliamentary Reform, published this year, to which reference has already been made. His reluctance to enter parliament was overcome after the passing of the Reform Act in 1832 ; and, being returned at the head of the poll, he appeared as one of the members for the city of London in the first reformed parliament, which met on February 4, 1833. He at once gave notice of a motion for the vote by ballot in parliamentary elections, which he brought before the house on the 25th of April following. His speech on that occasion was prepared with great care, and displayed that cogent reason and calm earnest eloquence which marked all his efforts in debate. The substance of the argument, and a notice of his principal speeches in parliament, will be found in Professor Bain's sketch of his character and writings prefixed to his " minor works." Earnest as were his political convictions, and faithfully as he discharged the duties which he had undertaken, Grote's parliamentary career forms only an episode in his life, but an episode which contributed to refresh and qualify him for his main work. He sat in three succes-sive parliaments, from 1833 to 1841, witnessing the gradual passage from the first triumphs of reform to the Conser-vative reaction under Sir Robert Peel, and the steady decay of his own sect of philosophic radicalism, which never had a root in popular opinion. He was returned the last time by a bare majority of six, and his party numbered just the same figure. Charles Buller said to him one evening : " I see what we are coming to, Grote; in no very long time from this, you and I shall be left to 'tell' Molesworth."
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During the eight years and a half of his parliamentary life, Grote kept up his varied reading, and formed a grow-ing desire for a knowledge of physical science. But the staff of his mental diet, and his refuge from all meaner objects of thought, was still the same. In the weary intervals of attendance on parliament a Tauchnitz copy of Plato was ready in his pocket, and when snowed up in the country during the vacation he writes—" A Greek book is the only refuge." His hospitalities expanded with his social position; and among his new friendships the one he most valued was that formed in 1835 with Mr (afterwards Sir) George Cornewall Lewis, the letters exchanged with whom on various points in classics and philosophy enrich the narrative of his Life. Among the other objects of his literary interest at that time was Sir William Molesworth's collected edition of the works of Hobbes, dedicated to Grote, whose review of the first two volumes in the Spectator (1839) is reprinted among the Minor Works.
During the whole period of Whig decay, and especially from the beginning of the present reign, Grote felt a declining interest in politics, and accordingly, on the dis-solution in June 1841, he determined to retire from parlia-ment. Thus at the age of forty-six he was set free to spend the remaining thirty years of his life in the work long pre-pared and contemplated. In half that period the History of Greece was finished; the remaining half was devoted to the two works on Plato and Aristotle, which made up the Hellenic " trilogy " of his life-long studies.
After a six months' holiday (1841-1842) for the long I desired purpose of visiting Italy and studying the anti- j quities of Rome upon the spot, he returned to his business | at the bank, and set vigorously to work on the new plan for the first two volumes of his History—reperusing the authorities, revising his notes, and rewriting the whole. The greater part of these two volumes was occupied with the first division of his subject, which was now for the first time severed from actual history, and placed in its proper mythical light, under the title of " Legendary Greece." The closing months of 1842 were employed in sending forth a sort of " pilot-vessel" in the form of a review of Niebuhr's Griechische Heroen-Geschichte, which appeared in the Westminster Review (May 1843) under the title of "Grecian Legends and Early History," and is reprinted in the Minor Works. His biographer states that, "this article, wherein the collected store of Grote's long and assiduous studies on the subject found a vent, was written with uncommon zest, and he anticipated with lively curiosity the effect it would produce over the learned world." It was received as a striking promise of the new light in which he was about to place the primeval ages of Grecian history. It is important to record an incidental remark, which shows that, amidst his uncompromising severance of legend from real history, Grote adhered to the great principle avowed alike by Herodotus and by Bede: "An historian is bound to produce the materials upon which he builds, be they never so fantastic, absurd, or incredible."
With the beginning of 1843, exactly ten years after the interruption caused by his entrance into parliament, the composition of the first volume for the press was vigorously begun; and at midsummer he further cleared his path by retiring from the banking-house of Prescott, Grote, & Company. While still at work upon the History, he published in the Classical Museum (1843) an important essay on ancient weights and measures, reviewing Boeckh's Metrologische Untersuchungen, which is reprinted among his Minor Works.
The first two volumes of the History were completed early in 1845, and published in March 1846. Their reception is well known; and the effect of their success upon Grote himself was thoroughly characteristic of the man :—" From all sides congratulation and eulogy flowed in upon the author, insomuch that he himself now began to feel something like confidence in the success of his long-cherished work. Thus I became" (writes Mrs Grote) "for once witness of a state of feeling on his part approach-ing to gratified self-love, which at times would pierce through that imperturbable veil of modesty habitually present with him." The first volume and nearly half of the second are occupied with "Legendary Greece"; the latter half of the second volume begins " Historical Greece," and consequently contains only a small portion of the real history. These volumes were reviewed with great praise by John Stuart Mill in the Edinburgh Review, and by Dean Milman in the Quarterly Review.
The success of the first two volumes incited Grote to prosecute the work with redoubled ardour ; and such progress had been already made that the third and fourth volumes, bringing the narrative down to the battle of Marathon, and containing an account of Grecian poetry and philosophy in its earlier stages, appeared in the following year (1847). Two more volumes, the fifth and sixth, coming down to the eleventh year of the Peloponnesian war, were published in 1849. These two volumes, together with the two preceding ones, were reviewed in the Edinburgh Review by Sir George Cornewall Lewis. The seventh and eighth volumes, which brought the Peloponnesian war to the end, and which contained the striking and original view of the Sophists and of Socrates, appeared in 1850. Two articles in the Quarterly Review upon this portion of the work, one upon the history, and the other upon Socrates and the Sophists, were written by Dean Stanley. The ninth and tenth volumes were published in 1852, the eleventh in 1853, and the last and twelfth in 1856, just ten years after the appearance of the first two volumes. The work closes with the generation contemporary with Alexander the Great, " an epoch," the historian observes, " from whence dates not only the extinction of Grecian political freedom and self-action, but also the decay of productive genius, and the debasement of that consummate literary and rhetorical excellence which the 4th century B.C. had seen exhibited in Plato and Demosthenes."
The peculiar merits of Grote as an historian are dis-cussed at length by the writer of the present notice in a review of the whole work in the Quarterly Review in 1856. It is sufficient to state here that the quality in which he surpassed all his predecessors in Grecian history, and which achieved for him a success that can never be undone or superseded, lies in his placing his whole subject in the full light of historic truth apart from partial judgments, looking at the actions of men from their own points of view and not only from ours, and having constant regard to those ethical principles of human nature which his twofold training as a philosopher and politician qualified him to estimate. Many of his details may be disproved and his judgments reversed, but his work will last for ever. The opinion of scholars may be summed up in Bishop Thirlwall's "hearty congratulations on the completion of this glorious monument of learning, genius, and thought, to which I believe no other literature can exhibit a parallel."
An episode during the progress of the History is characteristic of the wide range of political observation which Grote brought to bear upon his work. In the Swiss dissensions during 1847, which led to the war of the " Sonderbund," he saw so close a resemblance to the con-flicts of the Greek republics that he resolved to study the question on the spot. His Letters on the subject, which originally appeared in the Spectator newspaper, were collected into a volume, which was reprinted in 1876 by Mrs Grote, with the addition of a letter written by him to M. de Tocqueville after the termination of the war.
On the completion of the History, Grote contributed to the Edinburgh Review (1856) a criticism of Sir George Cornewall Lewis's Enquiry into the Credibility of the early Roman History, which is reprinted in his Minor Works, a most interesting study of the points in which the two scholars agreed and differed, Grote stopping short of his friend's scepticism in some cases.
After a well-earned holiday on the Continent in the summer of 1856, Grote set steadily to work upon his Plato, which occupied him nine years, and appeared in 1865 in three volumes 8vo, under the title of Plato and the other Companions of Socrates, when the author had completed his sequel and supplement to his History of Greece." After giving an exhaustive review of early Greek philosophy, from Thales to Democritus, and an account of the life of Plato, of the Platonic Canon, and of Platonic compositions generally, he analyses at great length each of the dialogues, with illustrative remarks, unfolding a number of his own philosophical views. The work concludes with two chapters, one on the " Other Companions of Sokrates," and another on " Xenophon."
On the completion of this work, Grote wrote in the Westminster Review (1866) an elaborate criticism of John Stuart Mill's Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy." At the same time, though in his seventy-first year, he set to work upon Aristotle, hopeful in the continuance of those powers which he thus described three years later :—" My power of doing work is sadly diminished as to Quantity, as my physical powers in walking are; but as to quality (both perspicacity, memory, and suggestive association bringing up new communications), I am sure that my intellect is as good as it ever was," and all who knew him well can attest the accuracy of this judgment. But he did not live to complete the third portion of his " trilogy," though he had been studying the Aristotelian treatises from his earliest manhood. The fragment of his Aristotelian labours was published in 1872, the year after his death, in two volumes, edited by Professors Bain and Bobertson. Besides the life of Aristotle and the canon of his works, these volumes are chiefly occupied with an examination of the logical treatises of the great philosopher; but the editors have been able to give, from the MSS. of the author and from the contributions which he made to Professor Bain's Manual of Mental and Moral Science, some account of Aristotle's other works. There are also two valuable essays on the ethics and politics of Aristotle, found among the author's MSS. after the publication of Aristotle, which were printed in 1876 in the Fragments on Ethical Subjects by the late George Grote.
During the composition of the Plato and the Aristotle Grote resided in London, at 12 Savile Bow, and in two country houses, which he occupied in succession, first at Barrow Green in Kent from 1859 to 1863 (where Jeremy Bentham had once lived), and afterwards at Shiere among the Surrey hills, in which places his day was divided between regular work, exercise as regular, and the society of congenial friends. Many a work of social duty and benevolence found prompt performance ; and he paid unremitting attention to the business of his three favourite institutions—the University of London, University College, and the British Museum, of which last he became a trustee on the death of Henry Hallam in 1859. But his connexion with the two former bodies was so close, and he made their administration so completely the chief business of his life after his literary works, that a few words upon the subject are necessary.
It has been already mentioned that he took an active part in the foundation of the university of London in Gower Street. He was a member of the original council of that institution from 1827 to 1831, from which he retired upon entering parliament. This institution exchanged its name for that of " University College " before the foundation in 1836 of the "University of London," which now conducts its business in Burlington House. Grote joined again the council of University College in 1849, and from that time till his death he took a leading part in the adminis-tration of its affairs. He became treasurer in 1860, and president in 1868, on the death of Lord Brougham. Grote was one of the seven new members added by the crown to the senate of the "University of London" in 1850. From 1862, when he was elected vice-chancellor, on the resignation of Sir John Shaw Lefevre, he became the leading spirit of the university.
In both University College and the university of London he was the constant advocate of the threefold cord of knowledge—literature, philosophy, science,—which he held to be ruined by tampering with any one of them,—earnestly upholding what he regarded as sound metaphysics, supporting the establishment of degrees in science, and opposing, to the last of his life and strength, the omission of Greek from the examination for matriculation. He left his library to the university; and he showed his attachment to the college and to metaphysical studies by bequeathing to it a sum of £6000 for the endowment of a professorship of mental philosophy. He continued to labour in the discharge of his duties to these institutions, even when far gone in the malady which appeared in 1870, and carried him off on the 18th of June 1871, in his seventy-seventh year. He found his fit resting-place in Westminster Abbey, just beneath Camden's monument, and near Macaulay's grave. His portrait by Mr Millais, taken the year before his death, is preserved in the senate-room of the university of London.
Grote's great literary merits received due and fitting 'acknowledgment from his contemporaries. He was elected a fellow of the Boyal Society, received from the university of Oxford the honorary degree of D.C.L. ^nd from that of Cambridge the honorary degree of LL.D., was made a foreign member of the French Institute in the place of Macaulay, and lastly was offered a peerage by Mr Gladstone in 1869, an honour which he declined. His personal character cannot be better described than in the words of his friend Professor Bain :—" In the depths of his character there was a fund of sympathy, generosity, and self-denial rarely equalled among men; on the exterior, his courtesy, affability, and delicate consideration for the feelings of others were indelibly impressed upon every beholder; yet this amiability of demeanour was never used to mislead, and in no case relaxed his determination for what he thought right. Punctual and exact in his engagements, he inspired a degree of confidence and respect which acted most beneficially on all the institutions and trusts that he took a share in administering; and his loss to them was a positive calamity."
The authorities for Grote's life are — The Personal Life of George Grote, by Mrs Grote, 1873, and the Critical Remarks on Ids Intel-lectual Character, Writings, and Speeches (170 pages), by Professor Bain, prefixed to Grote's Minor Works, 1873.
The following is a list of Grote's works, most of which have been noticed in the course of the preceding memoir:—A History of Greece, in 12 vols. 8vo, 1846-1856, reprinted in 1862 in 8 vols. 8vo, in 1869 in 12 vols. 12mo, and lastly in 1871 in 10 vols. 8vo; Plato and the other Companions of Sokrates, in 3 vols. 8vo, 1865, reprinted in the same form in 1867, and a third time in 1874; Aristotle, edited by Alexander Bain and G. Croom Robertson, 2 vols. 8vo, 1872; The Minor Works of George Grote, edited by Professor Bain, 1873, con-taining—(1) "Essentials of Parliamentary Reform;" (2) "Notice of Sir William Molesworth's edition of the Works of Hobbes;" (3) "Grecian Legends and Early History;" (4) " Review of Boeckh on Ancient Weights, Coins, and Measures;" (5) "Presidential Address, in commemoration of the twenty-first Anniversary of the London Scientific Institution;" (6) "Address on delivering the prizes at University College;" (7) " Review of Sir G. C. Lewis on the Credibility of Early Roman History;" (8) "Plato's Doctrine respecting the Rotation of the Earth, and Aristotle's Comment upon that Doctrine;" (9) "Review of John Stuart Mill on the Philo-sophy of Sir William Hamilton;" (10) "Papers on Philosophy;" Seven Letters concerning the Politics of Switzerland, pending the Outbreak of the Civil War in 1847, 1847, reprinted in 1876, with the addition of an unpublished letter written by the author to M. de Tocqueville shortly after the termination of the war; Fragments on Ethical Subjects, 1876 (a selection from his posthumous papers).
MRS GROTE survived her husband upwards of seven years, and died on the 29th of December 1878, at her residence in Shiere. She was one of the most remarkable Englishwomen of the present century. Endowed in youth with great personal beauty, which matured into a grand expression and noble presence in advanced age, she possessed intellectual powers of the highest order, combined with a lofty sense of duty and the strictest regard to truth. The chief events of her life have been already related in the preceding notice of her husband. Her own writings, besides the biography of Mr Grote, are A Memoir of the Life of Ary Scheffer (I860), and Collected Papers (original and reprinted) in Prose and Verse (1862), of which the most important are a "Review of M. Lavergne's Essay on the Rural Economy of England," " Case of the Poor against the Rich correctly stated," a " Review of Thomas Moore's Life and Works," and the "History of East Burnham." But though she wrote lucidly and powerfully, it has been well observed by one of her friends that " her writings fail to give a just idea of the irresistible fascination of her conversation. That she never succeeded in fully transmitting to paper ; and it remains a thing of unapproachable excellence and tender memory, only understood by those to whom it offered the highest mental enjoyment." (W. SM.)