James II., though the book is only a fragment, and, it must be
confessed, is rather a disappointing work.

One of the most able and laborious of our recent statesmen--with whom
literature was a hobby as well as a pursuit--was the late Sir George
Cornewall Lewis. He was an excellent man of business--diligent, exact,
and painstaking. He filled by turns the offices of President of the
Poor Law Board--the machinery of which he created,--Chancellor of the
Exchequer, Home Secretary, and Secretary at War; and in each he
achieved the reputation of a thoroughly successful administrator. In the
intervals of his official labours, he occupied himself with inquiries
into a wide range of subjects--history, politics, philology,
anthropology, and antiquarianism. His works on 'The Astronomy of the
Ancients,' and 'Essays on the Formation of the Romanic Languages,' might
have been written by the profoundest of German SAVANS. He took especial
delight in pursuing the abstruser branches of learning, and found
in them his chief pleasure and recreation. Lord Palmerston sometimes
remonstrated with him, telling him he was "taking too much out of
himself" by laying aside official papers after office-hours in order to
study books; Palmerston himself declaring that he had no time to read
books--that the reading of manuscript was quite enough for him.

Doubtless Sir George Lewis rode his hobby too hard, and but for his
devotion to study, his useful life would probably have been prolonged.
Whether in or out of office, he read, wrote, and studied. He
relinquished the editorship of the 'Edinburgh Review' to become
Chancellor of the Exchequer; and when no longer occupied in preparing
budgets, he proceeded to copy out a mass of Greek manuscripts at the
British Museum. He took particular delight in pursuing any difficult
inquiry in classical antiquity. One of the odd subjects with which he
occupied himself was an examination into the truth of reported cases of
longevity, which, according to his custom, he doubted or disbelieved.
This subject was uppermost in his mind while pursuing his canvass of
Herefordshire in 1852. On applying to a voter one day for his support,
he was met by a decided refusal. "I am sorry," was the candidate's
reply, "that you can't give me your vote; but perhaps you can tell me
whether anybody in your parish has died at an extraordinary age!"

The contemporaries of Sir George Lewis also furnish many striking
instances of the cons