brought a letter of introduction to the famous Dr. Farr.

Dr. William Farr was Superintendent of the Statistical Department of the Registrar General's office at Somerset House, had studied medicine in Paris, and was a corresponding member of the Institute of France. He was the greatest living authority on the statistics of disease and life. The life tables, with values of annuities and premiums for single and joint lives, in use by the British insurance companies, in fact, were drawn up by him.

He was a short, dark man, not unlike the late Henry Labouchère. When I first knew him, he was in his seventieth year. Professor Hildebrand considered him as the creator of accurate statistics.

Dr. Farr advised me to take up the subject of comparative criminology, and examine our tables of criminal statistics, which he regarded as trivial and misleading, in minute detail. I did so, and published a long article of several columns on them in The Times. On the strength of this article he proposed me as a Fellow of the Statistical Society, and introduced me to the leading statisticians as one of the fraternity.

The above-mentioned article was followed by another, showing the fallacy of the current statistics of drink, and then by a third, analysing the wealth of England, in connection with the Income Tax returns, which had been the subject of my "dissertation" for the Doctorate at Jena.

Through Dr. Farr I made the acquaintance of that most illuminating of books, Descartes' "Discours sur la Méthode," which he always had at hand, to dip into for a mental bath, whenever his mind was getting fagged. In those days, by the by, the organization of Somer

set House was very different from what it is now. When I called on Dr. Farr, I had to apply at the office of the head clerk, a Mr. Williams, who danced attendance on his chief as no civil servant of to-day would be expected to do. Dr. Farr had a long room looking out into the yard, reached through Williams' room, and without access except through it. Those were feudal days, in which democracy had not yet asserted its right to a liveried attendant.

Dr. Farr was just then keen on his theory of value, and most anxious that I should bring it to Hildebrand's notice, which I did. It was set out in a paper printed in the Journal of the Statistical Society (September, 1876), on " the valuation of railways, telegraphs, water companies, canals and other commercial concerns, with prospective, deferred, increasing, decreasing or terminating profits." I commend it, in spite of its not very thrilling title, to the attention of those who think, as Dr. Farr did, that railways must eventually be taken over by the State. The object of his paper was to establish a scientific basis of valuation in view of such an emergency.

Another good friend of those days was my father's colleague, A. J. Wilson, at that time the assistant financial editor of The Times and already a distinguished economist, who introduced me as a brother economist to R. H. Hutton, the editor of the Spectator, for which for a time I wrote reviews of books on economics.

My first review in the Spectator was on a book by H. Dunning Macleod, "demolishing for good" John Stuart Mill's economic fallacies! It brought me a letter from the dearest friend of my boyhood, Alexander

Lonie, who was assistant to T. Spencer Baynes, editor of the then appearing ninth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. He reproached me roundly for a severity which, he said, showed I did not yet appreciate the labour of producing a book on any serious subject, and beseeching me to look out rather for the merit, than the weakness, of the authors I criticised. Alec Lonie died of consumption before he reached his thirtieth year, but he had written a short article on "Animism" in the Britannica which was regarded by competent judges as a masterpiece. I wrote a good many criticisms of books for the Spectator, and a great many more afterwards for Literature, when edited by Dr. Traill, but I never forgot Alec Lonie's humane admonition.

My decision to accept the Paris post was not a little influenced by the fact that an important statistical post in Egypt, for which I had been recommended by Dr. Farr, had been given to someone else on account of my youth and without reference to our respective qualifications, an unpardonable offence in the eyes of a young man of twenty-two not yet experienced in the ways of Governments.

Anyhow I came to France with joy. Here new ideas got a hearing, here all the leaders—the very institutions were young. The country was still a vast political Seminar-and I was enthusiastic about everything that resembled in freedom of discussion the Seminar in which my mind had learnt how to use its limbs.

I spoke French fairly well, having passed a year in the Collège Jean-Bart at Dunkirk in 1867-8,1 and any 1 In 1912 I had the privilege of distributing the prizes and delivering

little diffidence I still had was soon lost in the intellectual omniscience The Times correspondents in those days affected to possess and were credited with possessing whether they possessed it or not.

Young as I was I soon got into touch with the problems which were agitating France.

With a sort of feverish desire to miss nothing, I went off almost daily to Versailles to listen to the debates in parliament, although my department was rather the economic, commercial, and financial side of things in France than her politics.

Dr. Farr had given me letters of introduction to all the great French economists of that time-Levasseur, Michel Chevalier, Maurice Block, Joseph Garnier, Wolowski, etc. Of all these distinguished men I made the acquaintance except Wolowski, who was then already on his death-bed.

M. Levasseur gave me an appointment for 7.45 in the morning. This distinguished economist was an indefatigable, nay, inexorable worker, and allowed no one to disturb him after 8.30 a.m., when he began his daily toil in earnest. Professor Levasseur confined

the annual oration at the famous old college. I chose as the subject Moral education in school," one of the greatest problems of modern France.

Two of my fellow pupils of the "Jean-Bart" were the brothers Furby. Alcide died a few years ago, but the other brother, Charles, is now AvocatGénéral of the Court of Cassation. We met again some thirty years ago through journalism, which he abandoned like myself for the law. Furby père had been a political refugee in Edinburgh under the Empire. Though amnestied he remained in Scotland, and was French tutor to the Duke of Edinburgh in his time. Another Jean-Bartois is Dr. Dundas Grant, the well-known laryngologist. Furby, Grant and I meet from time to time and talk of old days as "old boys" are wont to do.

Dunkirk is also the headquarters of an active branch of the F.I.G., under the active and sympathetic chairmanship of Juge de Paix Lebel (see p. 301).

his conversation with me to some great atlas, I think it was, on which he was engaged, and when the clock struck eight he rose, shook hands and told me he would always be glad to see me at the same hour. I often saw this exceedingly busy man again, but only at evening parties, and even then he seemed to subject himself to time limits, such as, I imagine, five minutes for a member of the Académie française, three minutes for a fellow member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences; for the rest, a scale of conversation of which he carefully took charge to prevent any overstepping of a precise and well-considered proportion, descending to a courtly shake of the hand to the simple man in the street.

Michel Chevalier received me at his house in the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, where his distinguished son-in-law, Professor Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, still lives, within the heures ouvrables it is true, but, like Professor Levasseur, he gave me a rapid exposé of his views on certain current matters economic, and then rising, shook hands. He at any rate returned my call, and I called on him again to obtain his views on some pending measure, but he was too full of his views on something else to give me any enlightenment on any topic of any interest to The Times.

With this first experience of eminent Frenchmen I was disappointed, and it was some time before I presented another letter of introduction. One day, however, I received from my late friend, Mr. Richard Heath, who was then writing his life of Edgar Quinet, a letter to Professor Garcin de Tassy, the Oriental scholar, a fine old gentleman with the grand manners