Before following our hero to London with the fateful manuscript, we must repeat a local tradition belonging to this period which is recorded in Dr. Charles Rogers’s _Social Life in Scotland_. One Sunday morning Smith, falling into an unusually profound reverie (brought on perhaps by thought upon the disorders of the Bengal currency), walked into his garden in an old dressing-gown. Instead of returning to the house, he made his way by a small path into the turnpike road, and eventually marched into the town of Dunfermline, fifteen miles from his home. The people there were flocking to church, and the bustle restored the philosopher to his wits. In April 1773, after six years of seclusion, he at last left home with his manuscript, intending no doubt to have it printed and published in the course of a few months. He broke his journey at Edinburgh, and there wrote a formal letter constituting Hume his executor:— “As I have left the care of all my literary papers to you, I must tell you that except those which I carry along with me, there are none worth the publishing but a fragment of a great work which contains a history of the astronomical systems that were successively in fashion down to the time of Descartes. Whether that might not be published as a fragment of an intended juvenile work I leave entirely to your judgment, tho’ I begin to suspect myself that there is more refinement than solidity in some parts of it. This little work you will find in a thin folio paper book in my writing-desk in my book-room. All the other loose paper which you will find either in that desk or within the glass folding-doors of a bureau which stands in my bedroom, together with about eighteen thin paper folio books, which you will likewise find within the same glass folding-doors, I desire may be destroyed without any examination. Unless I die very suddenly, I shall take care that the Papers I carry with me shall be carefully sent to you.” He reached London in May, and seems to have remained there until after the publication of the _Wealth of Nations_ in March 1776. But the records of his stay are of the slightest. There is left but one important letter, a long and earnest plea against the principle of monopoly in medical education. It was to his friend Dr. Cullen. Some of the Scottish universities had been conferring medical degrees without examination on incompetent men. The Duke of Buccleuch was willing to join in a petition to Parliament to stop the mischief. Smith’s views upon the subject are highly characteristic. He considers that the Scotch universities, though of course capable of amendment, are “without exception the best seminaries of learning that are to be found anywhere in Europe.” A visitation (that is, a Royal Commission) would be the only proper means of reforming them:—