400 Mr. Leonard Huxley [June 3, 



"When Thackeray resigned, the editorship was put in commission 

 for a time. With G. H. Lewes, first Frederick Greenwood, then 

 Dutton Cook successively joined George Smith on an editorial 

 committee, with a four years' interlude of sole editorship by the hard- 

 working Greenwood, until he turned to editing George Smith's new 

 venture, the " Pall Mall Gazette." Finally, in 1871, Leslie Stephen 

 was appointed editor, and George Smith was content to rest from 

 active participation in the work, leaving the entire management to 

 Stephen. 



But although George Smith in his reminiscences speaks modestly 

 of a " commission " of managers daring this period, he seems to have 

 been the main directing power himself, " the Carnot of our Recent 

 Great Victories," as Thackeray had called him, and it was through 

 him that many of the important contributions were secured, from 

 Anthony Trollnpe and Mrs. Gaskell to Charles Lever and George 

 Meredith. 



To this period belong two great names which stirred the " Cornhill " 

 circle deeply, Ruskin and Matthew Arnold. Ruskin in 1860 contri- 

 buted the opening chapters of " Unto this Last," with its inversion of 

 the current political economy, saying that the end of science is not 

 the production of wealth, but its distribution. So loud was the 

 clamour raised against these heretical doctrines, often obscured as 

 they were by paradox, that the " Cornhill " was constrained to stop 

 the series after the fourth number, and Ruskin wrote no more for 

 the " Cornhill." 



Far more fruitful in intellectual results and in the prestige 

 brought to the magazine were Matthew Arnold's contributions, which 

 extended from 1860 to 1879. Arnold gave nearly all his important 

 work to the public in the pages of the " Cornhill," for there, as he 

 sagely remarked, he gained not only the best pay, but the widest 

 audience. 



Leslie Stephen was editor from 1871 to 1883, when, just as Green- 

 wood had gone to edit the " Pall Mall Gazette," so Stephen went to 

 edit Smith's other great undertaking, the " Dictionary of National 

 Biography." Leslie Stephen, who was an old contributor to the 

 magazine, helped largely by his own pen, especially in his " Hours in 

 a Library," to make his editorship the palmiest period of the literary 

 essay, though, fearing, perhaps, to give his audience " too much 

 Stephen," his own essays were mostly unsigned. And while the 

 fiction kept up its quality, Stephen gathered round him a company of 

 other brilliant essayists to join his greater contemporary, Matthew 

 Arnold, who remained an occasional contributor, from John Addington 

 Symons to Robert Louis Stevenson, whose new blazon of R.L.S., 

 following the familiar initials L.S., did not stand for " the Real 

 Leslie Stephen " — so the editor confided to a friend — but for " a young- 

 Scot whom Colvin has discovered." And although one essay at least 

 of R.L.S. was rejected, L.S. deserved well of his readers and of the 



