We greatly regret to observe the death in Madeira from
con- sumption, at the very early age of thirty-four, of Professor W. K. Clifford, a great mathematician, and a brilliant though pain- fully drastic writer on religious and speculative matters. Pro- fessor Clifford to some extent, no doubt, confounded courage with combativeness, and often said things which were as violent as they were absurd,—as when, for instance, he said that within a few years the existence of God would be as completely disproved as the existence of any planet as large as the Earth between Mercury and the Sun, or something very nearly to that effect. As a metaphysical writer on mathematical subjects, he was not always either clear or skilful ; but he had great wit, and also great cordiality and kindliness of nature, beneath the brusquerie of his strange and to us quite unintelligible passion for striking at religious belief. No doubt he would have softened as he grew older. To some extent, his violent unbelief appears to have been a reaction against a youthful Ritualism, which led him to the very border of Roman Catholicism. No one who knew him could doubt that his unbelief, harsh as it was, was not that of a cynic.
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