r and better than its fruit; and greater and better yet than
the works themselves are the lofty aims and conceptions, the large
heart, the independent, manful mind, the pure and noble career, which in
this Biography have disclosed to us the true figure of the man who wrote
them.

EDWIN LAWRENCE GODKIN

(1831-)

[Illustration: EDWIN L. GODKIN]

Among the men in the United States who through the agency of the press
have molded intelligent public opinion, Edwin Lawrence Godkin deserves
an honorable place. In the columns of the New York Nation and the New
York Evening Post, he has for a generation given editorial utterance to
his views upon economic, civic, political, and international questions,
this work being supplemented by occasional incisive and scholarly
articles in the best periodicals. His clientele has been drawn mainly
from that powerful minority which is made up of the educated, thoughtful
men and women of the country. To this high function Mr. Godkin has
contributed exceptional gifts and qualifications; and that in its
exercise he has been a force for good, is beyond dispute.

Born in Moyne, Ireland, in 1831, he was educated at Queen's College,
Belfast. Then came the more practical education derived from a
familiarity with men and things, for in early manhood he began newspaper
work as war correspondent, in Turkey and the Crimea, of the London Daily
News. As correspondent of this paper he came to the United States and
settled here, being admitted to the New York bar in 1858. But journalism
was to be his life work; and in 1865 he became the editor of The Nation,
a weekly,--succeeding the Round Table, but at once taking a much more
important place as a journal of political and literary discussion,--and
the next year its proprietor. In 1881 he also became one of the owners
and the controlling editor of the New York Evening Post, a daily, and
his contributions since then have appeared in both papers, which bear to
each other the relation of a daily and weekly edition. Thus he has been
in active journalistic service for more than thirty years.

From this slight biographical outline it may be seen that Mr. Godkin
brought to the pursuit of his profession and to the study of American
institutions some valuable qualifications. A college-bred man of wide
experience, an adoptive American able to judge by the comparative
method, a careful student of the philosophy of government, from
Aristotle to Sir Henry M