struck the key-note which the press of two countries at once took up.

Whatever Hayward undertook to do he did exhaustively. He was ever on the crest of the social wave. No matter what might be the most prominent feature in the social life of the moment, he seized upon it, developed it, studied it, made it his own. In this way he brought his great and carefully trained intellectual powers to bear upon the smallest subjects. Let us suppose that some Ministerial crisis or some little, yet it may be, deeply instructive social incident is the topic discussed in a drawing-room. Hayward enters, and instinctively people say, "Here is Hayward, now we shall know the exact truth." He soon shows that he knows more of the subject than any of the gossips. He is not content with retailing the current comments of the hour or of expressing a few disjointed ideas on the topic. He delivers not an opinion but a judgment, and a judgment of a kind from which there is no appeal. Hayward has spoken; causa finita est. In society this was uniformly his way. Hayward bore down everything before him, and the polite world, finding that it could not resist him, that its protests against his vehemence were ineffectual, ended by doing him homage. He dragooned the society in which he moved just as he commanded the waiters at the only club of which he was a member. He occupied the same portion of the dining-room at the Athenæum as tradition assigns to Theodore Hook, and it is not upon record that the instructions he issued upon any special occasion as to the disposition of places and tables at dinner were ever disregarded. Seldom has there been such a combination of manly intellectual strength with feminine activity. It is no paradox to say that though Hayward was a confirmed bachelor he was a born housekeeper. The qualities which made him a social king would have enabled him to organise and control the household affairs of any establishment, big or small. Guests and waiters, masters and servants, mistresses and maids, instinctively gave way to him. They were conscious of the presence of the dominant man, and if they occasionally reflected that his despotism was somewhat galling, they could no more resist him than they could the law of gravitation. Hayward has been described as an habitual diner-out. It would be more correct to say that he was a fastidious, and therefore a comparatively infrequent, diner-out. He chose the houses that he visited with great care, and not merely with a view to the cuisine, but to the company. Occasionally he went to houses where there was little on the part of the hosts to attract him, because he knew he would meet amusing people at the table.

I have already said that great as were Hayward's powers and extraordinary as were his resources of anecdote, his social position was not won by his faculties in this direction. Indeed his skill and felicity as a raconteur were perhaps somewhat overrated. His admir

able love of brevity caused his narratives to be wanting in embellishment and local colour, and as a sayer of good things and a narrator of interesting historiettes he had several superiors. He never, for instance, attained the happy art that nature has conferred upon Sir Henry Drummond Wolff in the description of incidents to which society is never weary of listening. He never acquired, as Sir Henry Wolff has always possessed, the capacity of accompanying the narrative of occurrences with a vein of meditative comment so ingenious and apt that it recalls the peculiar conversational felicity of Lord Melbourne. On the other hand, his conversation was invariably apposite and cogent, and those who listened to it across a dinner-table rose with the knowledge that they had heard everything it was possible to say, said in the best possible of all ways, upon the events of the hour. For these purposes Hayward of course required an appropriate audience. He could tolerate the presence of no rival, and if such an one, who was usually his inferior, asserted himself, he generally relapsed into silence. Above all things he disliked the loud man; and this was probably the reason why he could never arrange a social modus vivendi with one of the best and kindest friends I have ever been privileged to possess, the late Anthony Trollope. In the same way, though having the truest regard and liking for Bernal Osborne, he never succeeded in overcoming his objection to Osborne's habit of talking across the dinner-table and silencing the rest of the guests. Between Bernal Osborne and himself there was indeed an utter want of intellectual affinity. Although a large purveyor of humorous and witty narratives, Hayward was neither a humourist nor a wit. He was, as has been said already, possessed of an overmastering, intellectual love of truth, and he regarded the badinage and cynicism, the quips and facetiæ of talkers like Osborne as impediments in the way of his favourite inquiry and as calculated to distract conversation from its legitimate path. It must not, however, be supposed that Hayward's talk was invariably didactic and austere. On the contrary, he considered that an occasional laxity of tone, or, as he might have expressed it, a grata protervitas, was one of the conversational notes of the high-born gentleman, and he would have found little difficulty in defending the assertion that, as Bacon has declared there is no perfect beauty which hath not some strangeness in its proportions, so no talk can be perfectly high-bred which is without a certain soupçon of licence. Hayward's mind was essentially that of the litterateur, and, as such, it was unsympathetic with the scientific mind. He was, moreover, so passionately fond of ascertaining truth and verified certainty, that he could not simulate fondness for subjects or inquiries which did not admit of demonstration. He might have said of himself as Lord Derby did, that he was born and educated in a præ-scientific era. He had little knowledge and less appreciation of the Dar

winian doctrine. He had not mastered the philosophy of evolution and he disliked it. About," to quote the exact language he used to a friend during his last illness, "a future state, we can know nothing, but there is something great." These words, as they appear in type, bear little meaning; their significance was derived from the tone in which they were uttered. In another conversation with one of his best and most illustrious friends, he said he had no fear of death, denied that he was a sceptic, and spoke with loving and tender reverence of the Lord's Prayer-though “he had talked sceptically” —in which, he said, he found the most natural and frequent vent for his feelings.

As with Hayward his social occupations were part of the serious business of his life, so his literary business, whatever for the time it might happen to be, was manifest in the field of his social occupations. No person who met Hayward in society could fail to know what occupied him at the moment in his study. When he had exhausted a subject with his pen on paper, he would press it home to his audience of private friends with, if the metaphor be permissible, the bayonet point. No sooner had any article of his appeared than, especially if it happened to be of a controversial kind, he proceeded, to use his own phrase, to follow it up. His persistence was as intrepid as it was astounding. He gave his acquaintance no rest until they had not merely read what he had written, but assimilated it. He catechised the company in which he was at home upon it as a lecturer may catechise undergraduates with a view of discovering whether they have followed and understood his discourse. This method, not unnaturally, frequently led him into animated discussions. He was intolerant of contradiction, and often went to invective against those who presumed to differ from him. But if he ventured more upon the licence which society accorded him than others might have done, and in doing so occasionally transgressed the limit of politeness, he was generally ready with the amende, and, once satisfied that he had been unjust or discourteous, he seldom failed to make an adequate apology. Nor was he unforgiving of casual wrongs. A friend once remarked, when he was in one of his most critical humours, that his translation of Faust was exceedingly-only a stronger adverb, or rather not an adverb at all, but a past participle, was employed-bad. He was very indignant at the moment, but he was soon conciliated, and he may well have found substantial satisfaction in the circumstance, generously communicated to him by the aggressor, that Carlyle, who was the chief theme of the conversation in question, declared of the nineteen translations of Faust extant, Hayward's was the best.

For some years past Hayward never exceeded and never fell short of four articles a year in the Quarterly Review. These were always looked forward to with the keenest expectation, and their author never failed to herald their advent in society. The income

which he made from his pen was disproportionately and, in comparison with the time he devoted to it, even ludicrously small. Most of his mornings were given to writing, and his way of work was this: Having collected all the books which told upon his subject, he would devour whatever was essential in their contents, and would then ascertain who were the persons living most likely to give him original and authentic information. He then worried his subject as a dog worries a bone, and when his mind was filled with all the necessary knowledge he would concentrate every fact relevant to his theme into a focus, and display in his treatment of it an omniscience, combined with a lightness of touch, seldom if ever equalled in periodical literature. He did not produce the stately essay of Macaulay or Lockhart, but instead he gave the public a literary macédoine, in which the hand of the artist was apparent throughout. Such, then, in brief, was Abraham Hayward, the man and the writer. In society, in letters, and in politics, he has left a place vacant which will never be filled. His writings are already part of English literature. His rare personal qualities are sufficiently attested by the extraordinary devotion and affection which waited upon his last hours, and by the brilliantly representative character of the mourners who met round his bier in St. James's Church, Piccadilly, three weeks ago.

T. H. S. EsCOTT.

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I have been favoured with this interesting reminiscence by one who knew Mr. Hayward well:-"Naturally, like all men who have the courage of their opinions, Mr. Hayward possessed enemies, and I have heard it asserted by some of these that he never forgot a slight, even when the offender belonged to the weaker sex. From Hayward himself I received once some sort of confirmation of this. Years ago I was re-introduced to him, for he had known me when a child, one morning in the Park, by a lady who was a friend of us both. He seated himself by my side, and we talked, at first, about old times. By-and-by, in answer to some remark of mine, 'That reminds me,' said he, of the celebrated story of "Hymen." But I could not at that moment take any interest in Hymen.' I had had an object in coming into the Park, which seemed to me, then, to be all-important. I was giving one of my first dinnerparties that very evening, to consist, so I had intended, of some twelve or fourteen congenial guests, and Fate was trying hard, as Fate generally does try, upon such occasions, to arrange that it should become a dinner of thirteen. I had come into the Park to look for a 'numéro quatorze. Before the story was finished I broke away, and darted across the gravel-walk to the railing which divided it from the ride. I had seen my numéro quator:e' upon a prancing steed, and to secure him was but the work of a moment. In that moment, however, Mr. Hayward had departed. He had risen abruptly, just after paying the chairman, my friend informed me, with a frown on his brow. He will never forgive you,' she said tragically, as long as you live!--you who wish to succeed in literature, have stupidly offended the severest critic of your time!' I was terrified, but made up my mind that when next I saw Mr. Hayward I would endeavour to atone. As it happened, however, owing to a combination of circumstances, it was nearly four years before I had an opportunity of doing so. Only quite lately I confessed to him what I had done-my supposed offence, my remorse and terror, my atonement. Would you really have been so hard and relentless?' I inquired; and unless I had asked you for the end of that story should I never have been forgiven?' I should have forgiven you, I dare say,' he answered, but perhaps I might have forgotten you too.' And he then read me a lecture upon the satisfaction which a man well-stricken in years may derive from perceiving that younger men-and more especially younger women-are anxious to avoid wounding their susceptibilities. It was this almost feminine sensitiveness, I think, which made him ever anxious to do a kind act or to say a kind word to a friend. He knew, from personal experience, the effect that only a word can produce, and I have known him to go out in bad weather and when every moment was precious, on purpose to tell some one something which he knew it would give them pleasure to hear."

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"VIOLET FANE."

HOME AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS.

I. POLITICAL.

THE eventfulness of the session, so far as it has yet gone, has been in an inverse ratio to the political interest that it has excited. The debate on the Address has come to a conclusion; Sir Henry Brand has retired, and Mr. Arthur Peel has been appointed Speaker in his stead; the vote of censure, by the acceptance of which the Peers rather announced their own impotence than stigmatised the Government, has been rejected in the House of Commons by a majority which proves conclusively that Ministers still possess the confidence of Parliament; the attempt to agitate the country against the Cabinet on the ground of their Egyptian policy and the catastrophes in the Soudan has been made and has failed; the discussion, whether conducted at Westminster or on provincial platforms, has been less instrumental in weakening the Government than in giving fresh prominence to the intestine feuds of Conservatism, in demonstrating once again the obstructive energies and capacity of the Opposition. Most of this might have been confidently predicted a month agowas, in fact, predicted in the pages of this Review. As for the future, it must speak for itself. We have as yet only arrived at the threshold of great events. The Prime Minister will probably introduce the new Reform Bill on the penultimate day of February, and, unless circumstances which it is impossible to foresee should intervene, the interest of the parliamentary session will be exclusively fixed on this.

At such a moment and under such circumstances it is desirable to refer only in the briefest manner to what has happened since the houses assembled on the 5th of February. It was not till Lord Randolph Churchill forced the hands of Lord Salisbury and Sir Stafford Northcote that the vote of censure was announced. If he had not insisted upon moving the adjournment, the leader of the Opposition would have taken no action. As it is, five nights out of the fifteen devoted to the consideration of the Address, were occupied by Egypt. Parts of six nights and nearly the whole of three were given to Ireland. The prolongation of the Egyptian discussion was, from the point of view of Conservative tacticians, a mistake. The chances are that Sir Stafford Northcote would have induced more members of the House of Commons to go into the Conservative lobby if they had been invited to pass judgment upon the ministerial course and its consequences when the news of the fall of Sinkat and the butchery of Tewfik and his troops had arrived. The House of Lords disposed of the whole matter in about seven hours, and no one will say that they omitted to give due consideration in that period to any argument on either