"A quiet body of readers are aware that in his time Walter Bagehot decently occupied a prominent position in the financial world, that he made money unobtrusively, that he gravely edited a grave journal and wielded a powerful influence in the 'City,' that he published a few sedate tomes in later years and a few dashing essays in youth, and that in middle life he wrote dignified love letters to his future wife."
-- from Walter Bagehot, by William Irvine (1939)
