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OBITUARIES, FOREIGN. (SCHMITZ THOMSON.) 



always coincident with his own theories, showed that 

 the evidence of tradition was more trustworthy than 

 it had been believed to be under the new school of 

 historic criticism. They offered new materials and 

 a new problem to nineteenth century scholarship. 

 Whatever the critics of Dr. Schlicmann may have to 

 say as to the specific theories of the Homeric period 

 which he deduced from his researches, the consensus 

 of judgment will assuredly credit him with having 

 been one of the most powerful factors in stimulating 

 the scholarship of the age in which he lived and 

 having set a grand model for men of wealthy and 

 cultivated leisure to follow. Dr. Schliemann's re- 

 mains were carried to Athens and interred on the 

 mound of Colonos by the side of the German archae- 

 ologist Ottfried Miiller. 



Sohmitz, Leonhard, a German educator, born in 

 Eupen, March 6, 1807 ; died in London, May 28, 

 1890. He was educated at Bonn, where he was the 

 tutor of Prince Albert and afterward a teacher in the 

 gymnasium. Marrying an English woman, he settled 

 in England in 1836, and wrote on historical and edu- 

 cational subjects. In 1844 he published notes that 

 he had taken at Bonn of Niebuhr's lectures on Ro- 

 man history in continuation of the u History of Rome." 

 From 1846 till 1866 he was rector of the Royal High 

 School at Edinburgh, attaining a high reputation by 

 his success as a teacher and by his learned works on 

 classical subjects. He was principal of the Inter- 

 national College at Isleworth from 1836 till 1874, and 

 afterward classical examiner to the University of Lon- 

 don till 1884. Besides making important contribu- 

 tions to Dr. William Smith's classical dictionaries 

 and to the "Penny Cyclopaedia " and the eighth 

 edition of the " Encyclopedia Britannica," Dr. 

 Schmitz edited translations of Niebuhr's lectures on 

 "Ancient History" and "Ancient Geography and 

 Ethnology" (1853); projected and edited the " Clas- 

 sical Museum " from 1844 till 1850 ; and published a 

 " Popular History of Rome," a " Popular History of 

 Greece," Grammars of the Greek and Latin lan- 

 guages, a "Manual of Ancient History" (1855) : a 

 ' Manual of Ancient Geography" (1857) ; a " Manu- 

 al of the History of the Middle Ages" (1859) ; a 

 " Grammar of the German Language" (1876) ; and 

 a "History of Latin Literature'* (1877). 



Sellar, Alexander Craig, a Scottish politician, born in 

 Morvich, Sutherlandsnire, in 1835; died in Sussex, 

 Jan. 16, 1890. He was educated at Oxford, taking a 

 first-class in classics, in 1856, and was admitted to the 

 bar in 1862. In 1864 he was appointed assistant 

 commissioner on the Education Commission for Scot- 

 land, and as legal secretary to the Lord Advocate, in 

 1870-'74, he assisted in arranging the details of the 

 board school system for Scotland. He was also a 

 commissioner on the working of the truck acts, and 

 was on the commission to investigate Scottish endowed 

 institutions. He became an active party manager, and 

 contributed greatly to the Liberal success in 1880 by 

 his work in the Central Liberal Association, but 

 failed to secure a seat for himself. He entered Parlia- 

 ment in 1882 for Haddington, and in 1885 was elected 

 in one of the divisions of Lanarkshire. He followed 

 Lord Hartington when the Liberal Unionists seceded 

 on the introduction of Mr. Gladstone's home-rule 

 scheme, and became one of the most active of the 

 allies of the Conservatives, but was nevertheless re- 

 turned in 1886. In Parliament he was a ready debater, 

 though his reputation was founded mainly on his 

 work as Liberal-Unionist whip down to 1888 and on 

 his share in the preparation of legislation. 



Sellar, William Young, a Scottish author, a brother of 

 the preceding, born in Morvich in 1825 ; died near 

 Dairy, Galloway, Oct. 12, 1890. He was educated at 

 Edinburgh Academy, the University of Glasgow, and 

 Balliol College. Oxford, became a fellow of Oriel 

 College, served as assistant professor at Durham, 

 Glasgow, and St. Andrew's, became Professor of 

 Greek at the last-named university ^ and in 1863 was 

 transferred to the chair of Humanity at Edinburgh. 

 Prof. Sellar was a contributor to "Eraser's Maga- 



zine" and the "North British Review" and the 

 author of "Roman Poets of the Augustan Age" 

 and " Roman Poets of the Republic." He also 

 prepared the articles on Catullus, Plautus, Horace, 

 Virgil, Ovid, and others for the last edition of the 

 " Encyclopaedia Britannica." 



Simonides, a Greek literary impostor, born about 

 1815 ; died in Albania in October, 1890. He had a 

 remarkable knowledge of the ancient languages, 

 history, and antiquities, which he used only for pur- 

 poses of forgery and cheating. He offered a manu- 

 script of Homer written on lotus leaves, which was 

 examined by a committee of Greek scholars at Athens, 

 one of whom, before the bargain was concluded, 

 chanced to discover that the text was the same as 

 Wolff's edition, including even the typographical 

 blunders. Mmonides swindled Ismail Pasha out of a 

 large sum bv selling him a forged manuscript of 

 Aristotle, ana deceived the authorities of the British 

 Museum with a false letter from Belisarius to Justin- 

 ian. He sold two fabricated letters purporting to 

 have passed between Pericles and Alcibiades to the 

 Duke of Sutherland. The Turkish Vizier was in- 

 duced to dig up an apocryphal document, and was de- 

 lighted with his find until the gardener undeceived 

 him. Many more were the exploits of the cunning 

 Greek, who succeeded in imposing on some of the 

 best scholars of Europe and the Orient. 



Smyth, Sir Warington W., an English mineralogist, 

 born in Naples, Italy, in 1817 ; died in London, June 

 19, 1890. He was the eldest son of Admiral W. H. 

 Smyth, and was educated at Trinity College, Cam- 

 bridge, winning, in 1839, a traveling scholarship that 

 enabled him to spend four years in studying the 

 mineral products and mines of Germany, Austria, 

 Hungary, and European and Asiatic Turkey. On his 

 return he was employed on the Geological Survey till 

 1851, when he was appointed lecturer on mineralogy 

 and on mining in the newly founded Royal School of 

 Mines. $ He was made at the same time inspector of 

 mines in Cornwall and soon afterward chief mineral 

 inspector under the Government. He was honorary 

 secretary and afterward foreign secretary of the 

 Geological Survey and in 1866-67 its president. In 

 1879 he was _ appointed chairman of the commission 

 on accidents in coal mines, and for seven years he de- 

 voted much labor to the investigation, for which be 

 was knighted in 1887. He contnbuted many reports 

 and memoirs to technical and scientific literature and 

 was the author of " A Year with the Turks" (1856) 

 and of a standard work entitled "A Rudimentary 

 Treatise on Coal and Coal Mining" (1867), which 

 has been translated into the principal European lan- 

 guages and into Chinese. 



Thomson, William, an English prelate, born in White- 

 haven, Feb. 11, 1819 ; died in York, Dec. 25, 1890. 

 He was the son of a merchant. His early education 

 he received at Shrewsbury School when Samuel 

 Butler, afterward Bishop of Lichfield, was head 

 master, from which he went up to Queen's College, 

 Oxford, and in 1840 took his degree, obtaining only a 

 third-class in classics, but nevertheless being elected 

 a fellow of his college. The Oxford movement did 

 not disturb his orthodoxy. He was ordained deacon 

 in 1842 and priest in the following year, preached at 

 Cuddcsdon and Guildford, and returned in 1847 to 

 Oxford as tutor and dean in Queen's College, and in 

 1848 was made select preacher. In 1853 he delivered 

 the Bampton Lectures, his subject being " The Aton- 

 ing Work of Christ." In the same year he published 

 a book on logic entitled " Outlines of the Necessary 

 Laws of Thought," in which intellectual philosophy 

 based on religion, as taught by Sir William Hamilton, 

 was clearly and succinctly elucidated. This volume 

 obtained wide recognition in orthodox circles and was 

 used as a text- book. Having married in 1855, he was 

 given the living of All Souls, Marylebone, but re- 

 turned to Oxford a few months afterward as provost 

 of Queen's College, to which post was added in 1858 

 the preachership of Lincoln's Inn and in 1859 that of 

 chaplain iu ordinary to the Queen. When the see of 



