made to supersede it. It is not unlikely that an edition of the 'Ethics' may be produced more critically exact than that which now occupies the field; but unless it is written at the same time with as much speculative power, as penetrating insight, as large a feeling and comprehension of human nature, it will not easily displace its older rival.
During a Christmas vacation, while he was still resident at Oxford, he had come to visit a college friend then living at St Andrews, and became intimate with Professor Ferrier, to whose second daughter he became soon after engaged. He and his future father-in-law were strongly drawn to one another by their common interest in philosophy and literature, and by the humour, social gifts, and manliness of character which characterised each of them. Under this influence he came to study the metaphysical side of philosophy more than he had done; and one can remember their half-serious, half-humorous discussions about their readings of Hegel, which they carried on simultaneously. But to Sir A. Grant the human and ethical side of philosophy had always greater attraction than the abstract; and though, as his latest Address shows, he retained to the last his belief in the value of metaphysics, this was due rather to his feeling that in the higher philosophy was to be found the answer to materialism, than to the interest in the "quest for the absolute" in which Ferrier delighted.
About this time he became a candidate for the Professorship of Moral Philosophy in the University of Oxford, but the claims of an older and better known candidate were preferred to his. As there appeared to be no opening for him in England which would enable him to marry, he accepted the offer of Sir Charles Trevelyan – who saw in him the very qualifications needed for the carrying out of his plans for the spread of Vernacular education – to accompany him to Madras; and with cheerful courage he began his career in India, in what, for a man of his powers and attainments, might seem the comparatively humble post of Inspector of Native Schools in the Presidency. His friends regretted not only the loss to him of a position which he desired, and for themselves the loss of his society, but the loss to Oxford of a man who, by his teaching and writing, was sure to add distinction even to that University. The result proved not only that what was a loss to Oxford was a gain to India, but that it was also a gain to himself, – on the ground which he himself lays down in his last Address to the students, that "the chief good for a man in this world is the consciousness of having developed and employed the faculties allotted to him, and of having done his duty." The work in India to which he devoted himself, heart and soul, from the very first, called forth in him latent powers, of which he himself had probably been unconscious, and for the first time afforded a field in which his greatest and most original gifts might exercise themselves. His services and capacity were immediately recognised, and from the Presidency of Madras he was soon called to that of Bombay, where in rapid succession he filled the posts of Professor of History and Political Economy in the Elphinstone College, of Principal of the College, of Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bombay, of Director of Public Instruction, and of Member of the Legislative Council in the Presi-
