Professor Goldwin Smith died at Toronto on Tuesday in his
eighty-seventh year. Four months ago he met with a severe accident, breaking his thigh by a fall, and though he rallied to the extent of seeing his friends and resuming his correspondence, recovery was impossible at his advanced age. With Lim we lose almost the last of the great Victorians, for he was a great scholar, a great Oxford man, and a great writer. However much one might differ from his views, it was impossible not to admire the splendid lucidity and vigour with which they were set forth. In an age of lax and extrava- gant expression, he used the written word with unerring precision and unfailing dignity. His historical writings have been described as brilliant pamphleteering, but be was no mere intellectual gladiator. He espoused unpopular causes from con- viction, not from caprice or partisanship. He was one of the few public men of note who championed the cause of the North in the American Civil War, and though a life-long Liberal, be could no more swallow Home-rule than the Asquith-Lloyd- George finance. Nearly forty years have passed since he went to live in Canada, but he never lost his affection for Oxford, or his deep interest in the politics of his native land, and letters from his pen on the Constitutional crisis have appeared in our columns within the last few weeks.
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