Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/349

 he gave addresses, and he placed in ’Goldwin Smith Hall' a copy of Bacon's bust of Alfred the Great, which adorned the common room of University College, Oxford.

Goldwin Smith's wife died at The Grange on 9 Sept. 1909. He continued writing letters to the press on current politics, but a mellowing tolerance for opponents seemed to be at length accompanied by some diminution of vigour. In March 1910 he accidentally broke his thigh, and after some three months of enforced inactivity he died at The Grange on 7 June 1910. He was buried in St. James's cemetery, Toronto. Smith held The Grange, his wife's residence, for life under her will; in accordance with her direction it passed on his death to the city of Toronto to form an art museum there. Smith inherited none of his wife's property, which mainly consisted of real estate in the United States, stocks, and valuable mortgages, and was all distributed among members of her own family. But by prudent investments in Canada and the United States Smith greatly increased his comparatively small inheritance of some 20,000l. from his father, and he left an estate valued at §832,859, of which he disposed by a will dated 5 May 1910. His pictures and statuary went to the art museum at Toronto; S5000 was left to a nursing mission in the city, and §1000 each to the labour temple and a baptist church, in both of which he had been interested in his lifetime. Although Toronto University only inherited under the will Smith's library, the succession duty, amounting to $83,285, passed to the university by the law of the state. Save for modest sums to members of his household and to a few relatives and friends, the residue of Smith's fortune, amounting to §689,074, passed to Cornell University. The money was to be applied at Cornell to the promotion of liberal studies, languages ancient and modern, literature, philosophy, history, and political science. The bequest marked (Smith wrote) his devotion to the university in the foundation of which he took part, his respect for Ezra Cornell's memory, and his 'attachment as an Englishman to the union of the two branches of our race on this continent with each other and with their common mother' (Ann. Report of the President and Treasurer, Cornell Univ., 1909-10, pp. 43-5. For full text of wills of both Smith and his wife see the Evening Telegram, Toronto, 13 Sept. 1910).

Smith's tracts and pamphlets, some privately printed, are very numerous. The chief of his scattered writings are collected in the volumes 'Lectures and Essays' (New York, 1881), and in 'Essays on Questions of the Dav: Political and Social' (New York, 1893).' There he embodied his dominant convictions.

Smith was a masterly interpreter of the liberal principles of the Manchester school and of the philosophical radicalism which embodied what seemed to him to be the highest political enlightenment of his youth. His views never developed. He claimed with pride in his latest years to be 'the very last survivor of the Manchester school and circle.' The evils of slavery, of war, and of clerical domination were the main articles of his creed through life, and he looked to a free growth of democracy for their lasting cure. The spread, despite his warnings, of the imperialist sentiment in his later years, not only in Great Britain but in Canada and the United States, was a bitter disappointment. But he stood by his doctrine without flinching, and faced with indifference the unpopularity in which it involved him. A burning hatred of injustice and cruelty lay at the root of his faith, and he followed stoically wherever it led. With his keen intellect there went a puritanic fervour and exaltation of spirit which tended to fanaticism and to the fostering of some unreasoning and ungenerous prejudices. But his intellectual strength combined with his moral earnestness gave a telling force to all expression of his views. His incisive style, which Conington in undergraduate days likeness to that of Burke, owed, according to his own account, much to David Hume. The depth of his convictions and his melancholy and sensitive temper made controversy habitual to him, and as a disputant he had in his day few rivals. He devoted most of his energies to polemics, and poured forth with amazing rapidity controversial pamphlets of rare distinction. That detachment of mind which is essential to great history or philosophy was denied him. His historical work is little more than first-rate pamphleteering. For original research he had no aptitude, and he failed to make any addition to historical knowledge. The abandonment of his English career in the full tide of its prosperity, which is the most striking feature of his biography, is very partially explained by the change in his private circumstances due to his father's illness and death. Although he shared his progressive views with many EngUshmen of his generation, he was exasperated by the