We regret to notice the death of Sir John William
Kaye, for fifteen years permanent head of the Political Department in the India Office. Originally an artillery officer, Sir J. W. Kaye -quitted the Army for literature in 1841, founded the Calcutta Review, the only quarterly in India which ever lived, and with the assistance of Dr. Duff, Dr. Mackay, and Dr. Thomas Smith, maintained it for years in the position of the most authoritative periodical in India, and this without ever paying a shilling to a contributor. He himself was a writer of very considerable mark, and even of genius, as his only perfect piece of work, the -" History of the War in Afghanistan," shows ; and had he given himself fair-play, he might have been a great historian. He over- loaded himself with work, however, till some of it was mere look-making, and he yielded very often to a partiality for the officers or families who placed documents at his disposal. None of his books, except "The War in Afghanistan," will, we think, live in public estimation, but all will greatly aid future and less fluent historians. His departmental work remains secret, though he obviously satisfied his superiors ; but it was always understood that he belonged, in Indian politics, to Sir Henry Lawrence's school, and pleaded for sympathetic rather than sternly just government in India.
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