Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/234

198 1 98 JOHN MURRA Y. Gumming, Layard, Murchison, and Sir Robert Peel, to see how much we owe him. On Lockhart's death, in 1854, the Reverend Whit- well Elwin was selected to fill the editorial chair of the Quarterly, and since that date the political opinions of the periodical have been considerably modified ; at any rate, men of all parties have been allowed to write conscientiously in its pages, and it is even rumoured, that before this, its old opponent, Lord Brougham, contributed at least one article (that on Chesterfield, in vol. Ixxvi.). Among the most successful library books that Mr. Murray has recently published, we must instance those by Mr. Smiles and Dr. Livingstone, and, more especially, those by Mr. Darwin. Mr. Murray's name is, however, most familiar to us now as the publisher of the famous Handbooks for travellers, the series now extending, not only through the outer world, but embracing our English counties ; these latter, it is said, owing much to Mr. Murray's personal editorship. In closing our short sketch of the " House of Mur- ray," we cannot refrain from re-echoing a wish that has been often uttered before, that the present repre- sentative may find time amidst his professional labours, to edit the letters and to write a worthy life of the great John Murray. No book that has ever been issued from Albemarle Street could be more popular or more welcome.