We regret to record the death of Mr. Alexander Macmillan,.
the head of the great publishing firm which bore his name. He had been failing for years from a kind of paralysis, and on Saturday he passed painlessly away. Possessed of unusual business capacity, he added to the business which he inherited from his brother Daniel, until it became one of the largest as well as best-known in the English-speaking world, the one to which of late years authors of a certain type, definable per- haps as the Ilaurician type, have first applied. Without being precisely what is called an intellectual man, Mr. Macmillan was a well-informed _one, with an instinct for discerning .ability, and great courage in giving it a fair chance. He did not often make mistakes—we cannot recall an instance—while a, whole generation of irriters owe to him all that authors can win from the genuine appreciation and liking of a great pub- lisher. Scotch by birth and training, though his manhood was passed in England, he remained through life a Scotchman in feeling and in ways of thought, and was never so happy as when he could open. the gate of literature, often also the gate of prosperity, to a countryman. He had, besides many virtues, one of which was his devotion to his brother, tIP founder of the firm, many of what we should call the Galt qualities, pawiriness, keenness, and humour, which strongly attached to him a large group of whom he would probably have confessed most to be intellectually his superiors. He had been almost dead to the world for the last five years, but his death, nevertheless, creates in a wide circle the sense of a gap.
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