Sir George Grove, who died on Monday evening at Lower
Sydenham, began life as a civil engineer, and worked under Stephenson on the Britannia Tubular Bridge over the Menai Straits. An account of this bridge which he sent to the Spectator led, as he once told the present writer, to his first appearance in print. He was in succession Secretary to the Society of Arts, Secretary to the Crystal Palace Company, and editor of Macmillan's Magaiine before his appointment in 1883 as Director of the newly founded Royal College of Music, which he held until failing health obliged him to resign in 1894. He had also been one of the chief promoters of the Palestine Exploration Fund, and a prominent contributor to Smith's Dictionary of the Bible. Genial, vivacious, and accessible, with a quite exceptional talent for befriending and encouraging the young, it was as an expositor of, or commentator on, the classical musical masterpieces that he achieved a peculiar dis- tinction. Of his life and labours, and of the charm of his personality, we hope to say something in another column next week; for the moment it must suffice to note the removal of a singularly bright and stimulating personality.
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