OF ROBERT ANGUS SMITH. 101 



some stronger some weaker^ which, in their totality, gave 

 him a sense of relationship to humanity at large. This 

 wide toleration may serve to explain the fact which may 

 sometimes have been observed, that two men mutually 

 repellent and unwilling to associate together might both 

 have been warm friends of his. He appeared, indeed, to 

 be the centre of a system or constellation, the individual 

 members of which knew little of each other, but were all 

 united to him by bonds of sympathy. His extreme con- 

 scientiousness and high sense of honour appear even in 

 his works, leading him scrupulously to weigh all that could 

 be said on either side of an argument, and to give every 

 man his proper share of merit, refusing sometimes even 

 to credit himself with what was manifestly his due. This 

 great conscientiousness was occasionally even injurious to 

 himself by preventiog his arriving at positive and precise 

 conclusions, such as the world requires even when there is 

 no thorough conviction. 



Of the charms of Dr. Smith's conversation, only those 

 are able to form an idea who had the pleasure of his per- 

 sonal acquaintance, for it was not of a kind to be literally 

 reproduced. Without being at all eloquent or indulging 

 in harangue, and always giving due weight to everything 

 his hearers had to say, he was able, from the fulness of 

 his knowledge and the originality of his views, to throw 

 a new light on almost every subject he touched on, and 

 thus he would sometimes continue to instruct without 

 dogmatizing, and entertain without wearying, until it Avas 

 found that not minutes but hours had slipped away in 

 listening. 



One trait in Smith's character must not be passed over, 

 though to mention it in this age of materialism may 

 seem to require some apology— he was a firm believer in 

 a spiritual world, that is of a world above and beyond the 



