fragmentary manner among more modern surroundings or preserved in contemporary records, are brought into line, often with singular felicity, to establish and illustrate the normal process of development in legal and political ideas. In 1877 the mastership of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where Maine had formerly been tutor, became vacant. There were two strong candidates whose claims were so nearly equal that it was difficult to elect either; the difficulty was solved by a unanimous invitation to Maine to accept the post. His acceptance entailed the resignation of the Oxford chair, though not continuous residence at Cambridge. Ten years later considerations of a somewhat similar kind led to his election to succeed Sir William Harcourt as Whewell professor of international law at Cambridge. His all too short performance in this office is represented by a posthumous volume which had not received his own final revision, _International Law_ (1888). Meanwhile Maine had published in 1885 his one work of speculative politics, a volume of essays on _Popular Government_, designed to show that democracy is not in itself more stable than any other form of government, and that there is no necessary connexion between democracy and progress. The book was deliberately unpopular in tone; it excited much controversial comment and some serious and useful discussion. In 1886 there appeared in the _Quarterly Review_ (clxii. 181) an article on the posthumous work of J. F. M'Lennan, edited and completed by his brother, entitled "The Patriarchal Theory." The article, though necessarily unsigned (in accordance with the rule of the _Quarterly_ as it then stood), was Maine's reply to the M'Lennan brothers' attack on the historical reconstruction of the Indo-European family system put forward in _Ancient Law_ and supplemented in _Early Law and Custom_. Maine was generally averse from controversy, but showed on this occasion that it was not for want of controversial power. He carried the war back into the invader's country, and charged J. F. M'Lennan's theory of primitive society with owing its plausible appearance of universal validity to general neglect of the Indo-European evidence and misapprehension of such portions of it as M'Lennan did attempt to handle. Maine's health, which had never been strong, gave way towards the end of 1887. He went to the Riviera under medical advice, and died at Cannes on the 3rd of February 1888. He left a wife and two sons, of whom the elder died soon afterwards.