Mr. Meredith
Townsend who sold a half share to the late Richard Holt Hutton with the
understanding that they should act as political and literary editors
respectively. During the four years of the American Civil War, the
_Spectator_ espoused the cause of the North and was consequently
unpopular; but the outcome turned the sentiment in England and likewise
the fortunes of the _Spectator_. Hutton's contributions included his
most memorable utterances upon theological and literary subjects. In the
midst of religious controversy he was able to discuss delicate questions
without giving offense, to enlist all parties by refraining from
expressed allegiance to one. The _Spectator_ of Hutton's day was, in
Mrs. Oliphant's opinion, "specially distinguished by the thoughtful tone
of its writing, the almost Quixotic fairness of its judgments, and the
profoundly religious spirit which pervades its more serious articles."
Hutton retired shortly before his death in 1897. The present editor is
Mr. J. St. Loe Strachey.

The _Saturday Review_ was established in November, 1855, by A.J.
Beresford Hope. Its first editor was John Douglass Cook, who had indexed
the early volumes of the _Quarterly_ for Murray and had gained his
journalistic experience with the _Times_ and the _Morning Chronicle_.
Though possessed of no great personal ability, Cook had the useful
editorial faculty of recognizing talent, and consequently gathered about
himself the most promising writers of the younger generation, including,
among others, Robert Talbot Cecil, the late Lord Salisbury. The
_Saturday Review_ at once became the most influential and most energetic
of the weekly papers. Its politics, independent at first, later assumed
a pronounced Conservative complexion. Cook remained editor until his
death (1868) when he was succeeded by his assistant, Philip Harwood.
Since the latter's retirement in 1883 the more recent editors include
Mr. Walter H. Pollock, Mr. Frank Harris and the present incumbent, Mr.
Harold Hodge. Professor Saintsbury wrote of the _Saturday Review_:

"Its staff was, as a rule, recruited from the two Universities
(though there was no kind of exclusion for the unmatriculated; as a
matter of fact, neither of its first two editors was a son either
of Oxford or Cambridge), and it always insisted on the necessity of
classical culture.... It observed, for perhaps a longer time than
any other paper, the salutary princip