.

It was however in secular literary society that he was most fitted to
shine, and there he passed many of his happiest hours. The usual
honours of a distinguished man of letters clustered thickly around
him. He was a trustee of the British Museum; an honorary member of the
Royal Academy; a correspondent of the French Institute. He was also a
member of 'The Club'--the small dining-club which was founded in 1764
by Sir Joshua Reynolds and Dr. Johnson, and which since then has
included in its fortnightly dinners the great majority of those
Englishmen who in many walks of life have been most distinguished by
their genius or their accomplishments. He was elected to it in 1836,
three years before Macaulay, and he became one of its most constant
attendants. In 1841 'The Club' made him its treasurer, and he held
that position for twenty-three years, and presided over the centenary
dinner in 1864. He was also an original member of the Philobiblion
Society, which has brought together many curious and hitherto unknown
documents, and he wrote for it a short paper on Michael Scott the
Wizard, who, as he showed, had been once offered the Archbishopric of
Cashel. He was never a keen politician, but he was intimate with a
long succession of leading statesmen, and he contributed to Sir
Cornewall Lewis's 'Administrations of Great Britain' a full and
valuable letter on the relations of Pitt and Addington, which was
largely based on his own recollections of the latter statesman.

London society in the middle of the nineteenth century was much
smaller and less mixed than at present, and there was then a
distinctively literary or at least intellectual society which can now
hardly be said to exist. The most eminent men of letters came more
frequently together. Criticism was in fewer and perhaps stronger
hands, and was to a larger extent representative of the opinions
expressed in such social gatherings. In this kind of society Milman
was long a foremost figure. He had all the gifts that fit men for
it--not only brilliancy, knowledge, and versatility, but also
unfailing tact, a rare charm of courtesy, a singularly wide tolerance.
He was quick and generous in recognising rising talent, and he had
that sympathetic touch which seldom failed to elicit what was best in
those with whom he came in contact. Few men possessed more eminently
the genius of friendship--the power of attaching others--the power of
attaching himself to others. In the lon