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tached. The engagement seemed to give satisfaction to both parties, and he entered upon his duties in the following November. The only thing doubtful was whether he had that sort of handicraft skill required in an assistant who had to take part in experimental work, and that, of course, remained to be tested. The engagement, however, came to an abrupt termination in December, the occasion being Minto's refusal to take part in the experiment of subjecting himself to an electric shock, so as to excite the laughter of the students, which he considered derogatory to his position as an assistant. It is unnecessary to discuss the details of this unfortunate affair further than to say that he objected, and rightly, "to be made part and parcel of the class apparatus." When released from this post he was appointed temporarily by Professor Bain as his English class assistant, and to give various aid in connection with certain books which he then had in hand. With this occupation Minto began his volume on "English Prose Composition," which he wrote exclusively in Aberdeen during the course of the next three years, having the resources of the University library at his command for the purpose. The work appeared in 1872.

During the four years which he now spent at Aberdeen Minto was active in a variety of ways in connection with the University, although not one of its recognized officials. He took a noteworthy part in the work of the University Literary Society, which was founded in 1871, and of which he was elected president in 1872. He was also an active organizer in rectorial contests, although he had not himself a vote. The election

which occurred during his stay in Aberdeen resulted in the return of Mountstuart Grant Duff for the second time in 1869. There was a close contest. The majority was a very narrow one,only twelve,-indeed, it was found that there was a tie of Nations, and the Duke of Richmond and Gordon gave the casting vote in favor of Sir William Maxwell, who, seeing there was dissatisfaction with the mode in which the election had been made, magnanimously declined to accept office, and allowed Mr. Grant Duff to be elected. Minto's influence was very marked and powerful, so much so that but for him Mr. Grant Duff would have failed.

In 1872 there was a vacancy in the representation of the University Council in the Court, and it was again due to his untiring energy that the Rev. John Christie, minister of Kildrummy, was elected.

In 1872 the examinership in Mental Philosophy at Aberdeen became vacant, and Minto became a candidate. His friends in the Court were the Rector, the Rector's Assessor, and the Assessor to the General Council, all of whom may be said to have owed their standing to his exertions in their behalf at the different elections. His securing the appointment as Examiner was an important step in his future career, being the beginning of his systematic studies in Philosophy, while his other work was more exclusively in connection with English Literature.

In the following year (1873) he left Aberdeen, and went up to London to engage in literary work. He obtained a post on The Examiner newspaper, and in its columns he wrote, with

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special force and clearness, on John Stuart Mill, on the occasion of his death in May, 1873. His article was one of a series of character-sketches on Mill, to which Herbert Spencer, Mr. Frederick Harrison, Professors Henry Fawcett and Cairns also contributed. Later in that year The Examiner was purchased by Mr. Peter Taylor, the Radical Member of Parliament for Leicester. Mr. Minto was selected as literary editor, and in 1874 as editor-in-chief. The Examiner had been started by Leigh Hunt in the earlier years of the present century. To it Charles Lamb, Shelley, Hazlitt, Haydon, and John Forster had contributed. It was edited for some time by M. Albany Fonblanque; but it had almost failed about the year 1870, when it was revived as the organ of philosophical Radicalism. It was, however, a literary as well as a political journal; and Mr. Minto had very able coadjutors in both departments, such men as Mr. John MacDonnell and Mr. William A. Hunter being among them. With all its ability, however, The Examiner did not succeed. It had a very formidable rival in the ablest of all the weekly papers of Great BritainThe Spectator. Mr. Taylor sold the property to Lord Rosebery, Mr. Minto remaining co-editor along with Mr. Robert Williams until 1878. When the paper was finally discontinued in 1880, Minto turned to purely political writing in The Daily News. He afterward wrote in The Pall Mall Gazette (under the editorship of Mr. John Morley), to which newspaper he was a regular contributor until he left London. While living as a journalist in London Minto took a prominent part in political controversy, especially in con

nection with England's relations to the East, and the war in Afghanistan. He was the first to use a term which soon became a current coin in political writing-the term "jingo." As he once told his students: "I am under the impression that I was the first to give the currency of respectable print to the chorus of the song, 'We don't want to fight, but, by Jingo, if we do,' and so forth," which was first made use of in an editorial article in The Daily News.

During his seven years in the metropolis his literary, other than newspaper, work resulted in the publication of "Characteristics of English Poets" in 1874, and "Defoe," in the English Men of Letters Series, in 1879, besides miscellaneous contributions to various periodicals, such as The Nineteenth Century, The Fortnightly Review, Macmillan, Blackwood, and The English Illustrated Magazine. It may be noted that Mr. Edmund Gosse was, for a time, the subeditor of The Examiner, and that Minto was the first to persuade Mr. Theodore Watts to devote himself to literature.

He was early engaged by Professor Thomas Spenser Baynes, the late editor of the "Encyclopædia Britannica," to contribute to its pages, and his contributions are to be found in most of the volumes of that Encyclopædia. In alphabetical order they were as follows: Byron, Chaucer, Dickens, Dryden, Fielding, Lytton, Mandeville, J. S. Mill, Minstrel, Moore, Poe, Pope, Reade, Scott, Sheridan, Sydney Smith, Smollett, Spenser, Steele, Sterne, James Thomson, Waller, Izaak Walton, Warton, and Wordsworth.

In 1880 Professor Bain retired from the Chair

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of Logic and English Literature in the University of Aberdeen, and Minto became his successor. In that year he married Miss Cornelia Griffiths, daughter of the Rector of Swindon, in Gloucestershire. When called to Aberdeen he devoted himself with rare assiduity to both branches of his Chair, although it was evident that the English section was what he liked best, and what he most excelled in. During the thirteen years that he held office in the University his literary activity was great. He published three romances: "The Crack of Doom," which appeared first in Blackwood's Magazine in 1886, and was republished in three volumes in 1886; "The Mediation of Ralph Hardelot,” contributed to The English Illustrated Magazine, and published in book form in 1888; and "Was She Good or Bad?" in 1889. In 1886 he brought out an admirable edition of Scott's "Lay of the Last Minstrel" for the Clarendon Press, with notes, and in 1891 an edition of "The Lady of the Lake." In 1887 he edited a complete edition of Sir Walter's Poems for Messrs. A. & C. Black. During his later years in Aberdeen he was also a frequent contributor to several of the London literary weeklies, notably to The Bookman. The posthumous volume on "Logic," already referred to, contains the best part of his teaching in the Philosophical classroom of the University of Aberdeen.

In the Preface to that work he wrote:

In this little treatise two things are attempted that at first might appear incompatible. One of them is to put the study of logical formulæ on a historical basis. Strangely enough, the scientific evolution of logical