college entered his apartment one day without any previous notice, and unluckily found the young philosopher engaged in reading Hume's Treatise of
Human Nature. The offender was of course severely reprimanded, and the objectionable work seized and carried off.
Dr Smith, having found that the ecclesiastical profession was not suitable to liis taste, resolved at last to renounce every prospect of rising to eminence by church preferment He accordingly returned, in 1747, against the wishes of his friends, to Kirkaldy, and without having determined on any fixed plan of life, resided there nearly two years with his mother. In the end of the year 1748, Dr Smith fixed his residence in Edinburgh, and, under the patronage of lord Kames, delivered lectures during three years on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. These lectures were never published, but it appears that the substance of them was communicated to Dr Blair, who began his celebrated course on the same subject in 1755, and that that gentleman had a high opinion of their merits. In a note to ins eighteenth lecture, Dr Blair thus notices them: "On this head, of the general character of style, particularly the plain and the simple, and the characters of those English authors who are classed under them in this and the following lecture, several ideas have been taken from a manuscript treatise on Rhetoric, part of which was shown to me many years ago, by the learned and ingenious author, Dr Adam Smith; and which, it is hoped, will be given by him to the public."
It appears to have been during the residence of Mr Smith at this time in Edinburgh that his acquaintance with Mr David Hume commenced, which lasted without the slightest interruption till the death of the latter in 1776. It was a friendship, Mr Stewart remarks, on both sides founded on the admiration of genius, and the love of simplicity; and which forms an interesting circumstance in the history of each of these eminent men from the ambition which both have shown to record it to posterity.
The literary reputation of Dr Smith being now well established, he was elected, in 1751, professor of logic in the university of Glasgow, and in the year following he was removed to the chair of moral philosophy in the same university, vacant by the death of Mr Thomas Craigie, who was the immediate successor of Dr Hutcheson. In this situation he remained during thirteen years, a period which he used to consider as the happiest of his life, the studies and inquiries in which his academical duties led him to engage being those which were most agreeable to his taste. It is highly probable that his appointment to the professorship of moral philosophy was the means of inducing him to mature his speculations in ethics and political economy, and to undertake those great works which have immortalized his name in the literature of Scotland.
No part of the lectures which Dr Smith delivered either as professor of logic or of moral philosophy, has been preserved, except what has been published in the "Theory of Moral Sentiments," arid the "Wealth of Nations." The following account of them, however, has been given by Mr Miller, the celebrated author of the Historical View of the English Government, and professor of law in the university of Glasgow, who had the advantage of being one of Mr Smith's pupils.
"In the professorship of logic, to which Mr Smith was appointed on his first introduction into this university, he soon saw the necessity of departing widely from the plan that had been followed by his predecessors, and of directing the attention of his pupils to studies of a more interesting and useful nature than the logic and metaphysics of the schools. Accordingly, after exhibiting a general view of the powers of the mind, and explaining as much of the ancient
