Sir H. S. Maine’s Quarterly Review articles, published in a volume under the title of Popular Government, come nearest to being a literary presentation of the case against democracy, but they are, with all their ingenuity and grace of style, so provokingly vague and loosely expressed that there can seldom be found in them a proposition with which one can agree, or from which one can differ. E. de Laveleye’s well-known book is not much more substantial, but instruction may (as respects France) be found in the late Edmond Schérer’s De la Démocratie, and (as respects England and the United States) in M. Ostrogorski’s recent book, Democracy and the Organisation of Political Parties.
No life of Robertson Smith has yet been written, but it is hoped that one may be prepared by his intimate friend, Mr. J. Sutherland Black. A portrait of him (by his friend Sir George Reid, late President of the Royal Scottish Academy) hangs in the library of Christ’s College, Cambridge, to which Smith’s collection of Oriental books was presented by his friends, and another has been placed in the Divinity College of the United Free Presbyterian Church at Aberdeen. A memorial window has been set up in the chapel of the University of Aberdeen, where he won his first distinctions. I have to thank my friend Mr. Black for some suggestions he has kindly made after perusing this sketch.
There was an aged Jewish scholar who came now and then to Cambridge in those days, and who, as sometimes happens, disliked other scholars labouring in the same field. He was (so it used to be said) one of the few who knew exactly how the word which we write Jehovah or Iahve ought to be pronounced, and it was believed that he had solemnly cursed Wright, Smith, and a third Semitic scholar in the Sacred Name. All three died soon afterwards.
What would have been thought of this in the Middle Ages!
Parad. x. 136, of Sigier, “Sillogizzó invidiosi veri.”
It is hoped that a life of Sidgwick, together with a selection from his letters, may before long be published.