of Descartes. Although complete in itself, this masterly essay was plainly meant by its author to form only one book in a great history of philosophy. It begins with three short introductory sections, the first on surprise, the second on wonder, and the third on the origin of philosophy. It is the function of philosophy, he says, to discover the connecting principles of nature, and to explain those portents which astonish or affright mankind. He then shows that celestial appearances have always excited the greatest curiosity, and describes with extraordinary learning and vivacity the long series of attempts that had been made to account for “the ways of the sky and the stars”— “How winter suns in ocean plunge so soon, And what delays the timid nights of June.” _The History of Ancient Physics_, a much shorter fragment, is placed in his collected works immediately after the _History of Astronomy_. It evidently belongs to the same early period, but is of little interest. Upon _The History of Ancient Logics and Metaphysics_ we shall have something to say in our next chapter. After two years of waiting, Adam Smith got his opportunity. His neighbour, James Oswald of Dunnikier, had become Kirkcaldy’s representative in Parliament, and was now a Commissioner of the Navy. Through Oswald Smith seems to have been introduced to Henry Home (Lord Kames), a leader of the Edinburgh Bar, and arbiter of Scottish elegancies. Home was a warm patron of English literature, and was busily importing it along with English ploughs and other Southern improvements into his native land. What a contrast between this typical Scotch patriot of 1750 and grim old Fletcher of Saltoun, the corresponding type of 1700, whose remedy for Scottish ills was to restore slavery, and place all labourers in the situation of salters and colliers! Finding that Smith had acquired the accent and was well read in the prose and poetry of England, Home encouraged him to give what we should now call extension lectures in Edinburgh. Accordingly the young Oxford graduate delivered a course of lectures on English literature in the winter of 1748-9, adding in the following year a course on political economy in which he preached the doctrines of natural liberty and free trade. The English lectures were attended by Henry Home, Alexander Wedderburn, and William Johnstone (Sir William Pulteney), and proved no mere success of esteem; for they brought in a clear £100, and were so popular that they were repeated in the two following winters. The manuscript of these lectures was burnt shortly before his death, and the world is probably not much the poorer. Smith shared the opinions of his age, and set up Dryden, Pope, and Gray on pedestals from which they were soon to be thrown down by the children of nature and romance. He gave these lectures afterwards at Glasgow, and Boswell, who attended them in 1759, told Johnson that Smith had condemned blank verse. Johnson was