to celebrate the completion of twenty years of the Review. Bryce was to take the chair. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman was forming a ministry; he had asked Bryce to become Irish secretary; and he was forced to pay a flying visit to Ireland two days before the date fixed for the dinner. Just as he was about to leave England he wrote a postcard from Holyhead: 'I have had to cross over to Ireland, but hope to return on Thursday night and to be at the dinner on Friday. Should anything occur to prevent my arriving, I will telegraph; but I have done everything in my power to secure my being free to come.' He came.
Sixty years of unflagging and versatile work lay between the date at which he took his Oxford degree, in 1862, and the date of his death. He was called to the bar in 1867, and practised for the next fifteen years. Occupied as he was in London, he still maintained a close connexion with Oxford. He had been scholar of Trinity and fellow of Oriel; in 1870 he became regius professor of civil law, and he held the chair, though without residing in Oxford, till 1893. But by 1880, when he became member of parliament for Tower Hamlets, he had already turned to politics. He was under-secretary of state for foreign affairs in Mr. Gladstone's brief ministry in 1886: he was successively chancellor for the duchy of Lancaster and president of the board of trade in the liberal ministry of 1892–5; he was chief secretary for Ireland under Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman from 1905 to 1907. A new epoch of his life began in 1907. Recognized as a foremost authority on the affairs of the United States after 1888, when he published his American Commonwealth, he was appointed ambassador at Washington; and he held that office, with unqualified success and universal approbation, till 1913. The last nine years of his life he divided between his house at Forest Row and his flat in Buckingham Gate. They were in no sense years of retirement. He served as chairman of the committee on Belgian atrocities; he advocated the cause of Armenia; he played no small part in the thinking and the discussions which helped to bring into life the League of Nations. He was often to be seen, and he often spoke, at public gatherings in London—at the opening of the Institute of Historical Research, at the unveiling of the bust of George Washington in St. Paul's; at any gathering which touched the many interests he cherished. Only a fortnight before he died he delivered the inaugural address at the annual meeting of the Historical Association in King's College, London.
It was a busy life of action; but he found abundant time for the life of contemplation also. The list of his published works embraces some fifteen different items. He ranged from the
