him, was Mr. Bagehot, whose books on the English Constitution, on Physics and Politics, and the fragment on the Postulates of Political Economy, were all published in these pages.  He wrote, in fact, the first article in the first number.  Though himself extremely cool and sceptical about political improvement of every sort, he took abundant interest in more ardent friends.  Perhaps it was that they amused him; in return his good-natured ironies put them wholesomely on their mettle.  As has been well said of him, he had a unique power of animation without combat; it was all stimulus and yet no contest; his talk was full of youth, yet had all the wisdom of mature judgment (R.H.  Hutton).  Those who were least willing to assent to Bagehot’s practical maxims in judging current affairs, yet were well aware how much they profited by his Socratic objections, and knew, too, what real acquaintance with men and business, what honest sympathy and friendliness, and what serious judgment and interest all lay under his playful and racy humour.

More untimely, in one sense, than any other was the death of Professor Clifford, whose articles in this Review attracted so much attention, and I fear that I may add, gave for a season so much offence six or seven years ago.  Cairnes was scarcely fifty when he died, and Bagehot was fifty-one, but Clifford was only four-and-thirty.  Yet in this brief space he had not merely won a reputation as a mathematician of the first order, but had made a real mark on his time, both by the substance of his speculations in science, religion, and ethics, and by the curious audacity with which he proclaimed at the pitch of his voice on the housetops religious opinions that had hitherto been kept among the family secrets of the domus Socratica.  It is melancholy to think that exciting work, done under pressure of time of his own imposing, should have been the chief cause of his premature decline.  How intense that pressure was the reader may measure by the fact that a paper of his on The Unseen Universe, which filled eighteen pages of the Review, was composed at a single sitting that lasted from a quarter to ten in the evening till nine o’clock the following morning.  As one revolves these and other names of eminent men who actively helped to make the Review what it has been, it would be impossible to omit the most eminent of them all.  Time has done something to impair the philosophical reputation and the political celebrity of J.S.  Mill; but it cannot alter the affectionate memory in which some of us must always hold his wisdom and goodness, his rare union of moral ardour with a calm and settled mind.  He took the warmest interest In this Review from the moment when I took it up, partly from the friendship with which he honoured me, but much more because he wished to encourage what was then—­though it is now happily no longer—­the only attempt to conduct a periodical on the principles of free discussion and personal responsibility.  While recalling these and others who are no more, it was naturally impossible for me to forget the constant and valuable help that has been so freely given to me, often at much sacrifice of their own convenience, by those friends and contributors who are still with us.  No conductor ever laid down his baton with a more cordial and sincere sense of gratitude to those who took their several parts in his performance.