examinations ; but some years later (1868) he had the satisfaction of seeing access given to them on a special footing (which ten years afterwards was changed into regular franchise). Otherwise, so long as life lasted, his chief care was to struggle against less earnest or broad-minded colleagues for maintenance of the character, at once wide and thorough, which there had been a real desire in 1858 to give to the reformed schemes of examination. With the steady increase of untaught candidates, and an ever-changing body of examiners, it became more and more difficult to resist proposals for limiting the scope, if not lowering the standard, of requirement; and that the process was not sooner carried further was due to Grote's influence, exerted with a watchfulness and pertinacity all his own. Before the end he had the other satisfaction of seeing the university at last installed in buildings of its own, with all the circumstances of royal inauguration (1870) that seemed to put seal to the labour of so many years. Nevertheless, it cannot be said that Grote left the question of academic organisation in London as other than a problem which still remains to be solved.
Grote's appointment to a trusteeship of the British Museum (in succession to his friend Hallam) involved him from 1859 in further public work, which he discharged with his wonted assiduity ; he took, in particular, a forward part in bringing about the local separation of the departments of natural history and of antiquities. Academic distinctions began to flow in upon him before the completion of the 'History.' In 1853 he was made D.C.L. of Oxford; the Cambridge degree of LL.D. followed in 1861. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1857, and in 1859 succeeded Hallam as honorary professor of ancient history to the Royal Academy. Besides receiving many other foreign honours, he became in 1857 correspondent of the French Academy of Moral and Political Sciences (section of general history and philosophy), and was taken up into the small number of foreign associates in 1864, the first Englishman thus distinguished after the death of Macaulay in 1859. He was offered a peerage by Mr. Gladstone in 1869 as a tribute to his 'character, services, and attainments.' The heart of the old radical was warmed by the recognition (as he wrote in reply) of 'all useful labours' of his, coming from a minister who had 'entered on the work of reform with a sincerity and energy never hitherto paralleled.' He declined, however, without a moment's hesitation, a position that would increase the burden of public and private labours already too heavy or his declining strength at the age of seventy-five. He continued grappling with all his tasks till long after the hand of death was plainly upon him. It was in the winter of 1870-1, when he was greatly depressed by the fate of war that had overtaken his much-loved France, that unmistakable signs of approaching dissolution declared themselves. From January 1871 his last months, of lingering illness relieved by occasional gleams of hope that work might not yet be over, were spent in London, where he could still do something towards meeting his public engagements. In private he saw his more intimate friends till close upon the end, abating nothing of his intellectual interests, especially in the perennial questions of philosophy which had laid hold of him more and more as life advanced. The end came on 18 June. Six days later he was buried in Westminster Abbey, at the corner of the south transept and aisle, where afterwards was set up a bust (by Bacon) to commemorate his features. A marble profile in high relief, by Miss S. Durant, at University College, comes nearer in some respects to a true likeness. The university of London has a portrait by Millais, taken in 1870; another, painted by Thomas Stewardson in 1824, is in the National Portrait Gallery. By his own express directions, his brain was examined after death. The autopsy (by Professor John Marshall) yielded a weight (49·75 oz.) which was surprisingly small for a man of his stature and size of head.
To courage and tenacity of intellectual purpose, with single-minded devotion to public ends, Grote joined an unfailing courtesy of nature and great dignity of demeanour. A certain shyness of manner was the outward token of an unaffected modesty that was beautiful to see in one whose work of its kind, for quantity and quality taken together, has never been surpassed. Consideration for others, on a full equality with self, was his guiding principle of action. It made him, as he was in private the most conscientious and methodical of workers, a man who could be absolutely relied upon in association, punctual and regular to a proverb in everything that he undertook with others, and scrupulously fairminded in all his judgments. At the same time, under the calm exterior there lay, as those who knew him best were aware, enthusiasms and fires of passion which it took all his strength of reason and will to control.
Except a few 'Papers on Philosophy,’ placed at the end of Professor Bain's collection of the 'Minor Works of George Grote' (1873), and six essays, selected from his
