while the Germans had never written a piece of either in their lives. But if he was unpopular in certain circles, he had many attached friends, for he was generous and warm-hearted, and his judgements of men were never tainted by jealousy or bitterness.
Mahaffy played hardly any part in politics until the meeting of the Convention in 1917. He was both by temperament and conviction an aristocrat, and the Ireland for which he cared and to which he belonged was the nation of Burke and Goldsmith, of Grattan and Charles Lever. He never tired of decrying the cultural pretensions of Celtic Ireland, and he was contemptuous of the provincial note of Irish nationalism. In the Convention he recommended a federal scheme on the Swiss model with provincial autonomy for Ulster.
Portraits: by Sir W. Orpen in the Modern Art Gallery, Dublin; by Walter Osborne, 1900 (Royal Academy Pictures, 1900); and by James Wilcox in the Provost's House, Trinity College; a bas-relief by Carre in the chapel, and a bronze bust by Miss Shaw in the rooms of the Philosophical Society, Trinity College.
[Obituary notices in the newspapers, especially The Times, the Irish Times, and the Spectator; Hermathena, No. XLII, 1920 (with complete bibliography); A. H. Sayce, Reminiscences, 1923; A. S. Hunt in Aegyptus, i, 2, 1920 (of firstrate importance for Mahaffy's papyrological work); private information; personal knowledge.]
MAIR, WILLIAM (1830–1920), Scottish divine, the eldest son and fifth child in a family of twelve, was born at Savoch, Aberdeenshire, 1 April 1830. His father, the Rev. James Mair, was the parochial schoolmaster, a licentiate of the Church of Scotland; his mother, Christian Johnston, a cousin, was a member of a farming family long established there. From Aberdeen grammar school he passed to King's College and to Marischal College, Aberdeen, graduating with honours in 1849, and specially distinguished in mathematics.
‘I had never thought’, Mair writes in his autobiography, ‘of any other life-work than the ministry.’ But indifferent health kept him back for seven years; he was thirty-one at the time of his ordination to the mission church of Lochgelly, Fifeshire (October 1861). In 1864 he was translated to Ardoch, and in 1869 to Earlston, Berwickshire. He retired to Edinburgh in 1903, spending his remaining years in church work generally—constant committees, daily interviews, and correspondence on church law—but particularly in the cause of church union. He died in his sleep 26 January 1920, having lived over seventy years in fragile health by an extreme carefulness in diet, clothing, temperature, and exercise. He married in 1866 Isabella, daughter of David Edward, of Balruddery, Dundee.
Mair's remarkable vitality in the midst of bodily weakness, his wisdom in counsel, and his forthrightness in speech, his legal knowledge, his evangelical zeal, and, above all, his spiritual-mindedness, made him for many years a prominent figure in the Church of Scotland and in its General Assembly, of which he was moderator in 1897. His Digest of Laws and Decisions, Ecclesiastical and Civil, relating to the Constitution, Practice, and Affairs of the Church of Scotland, published in 1887, became at once, and remains, the standard authority on Scottish ecclesiastical law.
It is, however, as a pioneer in the cause of church reunion that Mair will be best remembered. A series of articles in Blackwood's Magazine and of pamphlets from 1904 onwards, prepared the way for ‘unrestricted conference’ between committees of his Church and the United Free Church. In 1907 Dr. Archibald Scott [q.v.] made the first public proposal for such conference; but Mair's had been the clear vision and the moving spirit from the beginning. His labours in connexion with the enlargement of the Assembly Hall in Edinburgh (1893–1894) are commemorated on a tablet in the vestibule, and were further acknowledged by the presentation of his portrait, painted by Sir George Reid, in 1896.
Of Mair's other writings the more important are: Speaking (1900), The Truth about the Scottish Churches (1891), Jurisdiction in Matters Ecclesiastical (1896), and My Life (1911).
[The Times, 28 January 1920; Scotsman, 19 November 1896 and 27 January 1920; Dr. W. Mair, My Life, 1911; personal knowledge.]
MARKHAM, Sir ALBERT HASTINGS (1841–1918), admiral and Arctic explorer, was born at Bagnères-de-Bigorre, Hautes Pyrénées, 11 November 1841, the fourth son of Captain John Markham, R.N., by his wife, Marianne, daughter of John Brock Wood. After being educated at home and at Eastman's Royal Naval Academy, Southsea, he entered the navy in 1856 and served eight years on the China station, being promoted lieutenant in 1862. He took part in the advance on
366
