Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/343

 effort within the category of brilliant pamphleteering. With other philosophical radicals he co-operated in 'Essays on Reform' (1867), writing on 'Experience of the American Commonwealth.' Robert Lowe taxed Smith with an extravagant faith in democracy when he criticised the volume in the 'Quarterly Review' (July 1867).

Private anxieties unsettled Smith's plans. His father during 1866 had been injured in a railway accident ; his mind was permanently affected, and he found relief only in his son's society. Smith was constantly at Mortimer House, and the frequency of his enforced absences from Oxford led him to resign his professorship in the summer of 1866. While he was away from home during the autumn of 1867 his father died by his own hand (7 Oct. 1867). Gold win and his step-mother were executors of the will, which was proved on 30 Oct. by Goldwin for mder 30,000l. and gave him a moderate competence. The shock powerfully affected Smith's nerves. The increase of private fortune again changed his position at Oxford ; it disquaUfied him for his fellowship at University College, which was only tenable by men of smaller means. At Easter 1867 he had been chosen honorary fellow of Oriel — the college which, under the new statutes of 1857, had contributed 250l. a year to his professional salary — but no closer tie with the university remained.

Uncertain as to his prospects, Smith determined to revisit America. A rumour that he was leaving England for good quickly spread. Dean Church communicated it to Asa Gray on 17 Jan. 1868 (Life of Church, p. 24). In a letter to the 'New York Tribune' of the same date Smith explained that he had resolved on 'a prolonged residence in America in order to study American history.' His place of settlement was as yet undetermined. He had no intention of becoming an American citizen (cf. reprint in The Times, 11 Feb. 1868). In the spring of 1868 Andrew Dickson White, who had been appointed president of the newly projected Cornell University in Ithaca, New York State, arrived in England with a view to securing the aid of English teachers in the new venture. Smith had met Ezra Cornell, the founder of the institution, in 1864, and he strongly approved Cornell's design of endowing a university for comparatively poor men which should be free of all religious restrictions. Dickson's offer to Smith of a chair on the new foundation was accepted. Smith agreed to become first professor of English and constitutional history at Cornell University. As he desired to be wholly untrammelled by conditions of service, he declined remuneration. His political friends who had urged him to enter the House of Commons at the imminent general election lamented his decision. Chelsea was vainly pressed on him as a safe seat. There was talk of his candidature for the city of Oxford, where he had lately helped to found an Oxford Reform League (17 July 1866). He promised to stay in England and help the party till the coming general election was over. At the Manchester Reform Club he made (10 April 1868) a long speech on current political questions, which drew the censure of a leader writer in 'The Times' (13 April). He declared he would remain a good Englishman wherever he was. To Samuel Morley [q. v.], an organiser of the party, who again pressed him to stay at home, he replied that 'a student's duty' called him elsewhere. Later in the year he actively promoted the candidature of A. J. Mundella at Sheffield.

Smith's resolve of exile, to which many motives contributed, was doubtless influenced to some extent by disappointment at the slow advance of the cause of reform in the university. Amid other political distractions he had always found time for an active share in the current agitation for the complete abolition of tests at both universities. At an influential meeting in support of legislation on the subject held in the Freemasons' Tavern in Great Queen Street, London, on 10 June 1864 he was a chief speaker, and he published a powerful pamphlet on the question in the same year. There he seems for the first time to have applied the term 'the Free churches' to the dissenting persuasions. No legislation for the aboUtion of tests was passed till 1871 (, On the Nationalisation of the Old English Universities, 1901).

Goldwin Smith's farewell to Oxford took the form of a pamphlet on the 'Reorganisation of the University' (1868). After regretting the limited character of the reforms of 1854, he pleaded for university extension, for the raising of the standard of pass examinations, for the separation of prize and teaching fellowships, for the marriage of fellows, and for various changes of administration. He dissociated himself from the cry for the endowment of research. But he privately urged on the University Press the preparation of a standard English Dictionary, and he recommended that new provincial universities, the creation of which he foresaw, should