His letters show that he was very regular in attending to his duties at the Customs, which indeed were important in themselves, and not unattractive to one who took so deep an interest in the art of revenue and the growth of wealth. The duties of the Commissioners were administrative and judicial. Sometimes they had to despatch soldiers to guard part of the coast against smugglers, or to put down an illegal still. They heard merchants’ appeals from assessments; they appointed and controlled the local officers, and every year they prepared returns of customs’ revenue and expenditure. There is good reason to think that he found his work congenial, though Dugald Stewart, who always grows morbid at the thought of any check to the output of philosophic literature, laments that these duties, “though they required little exertion of thought, were yet sufficient to waste his spirits and dissipate his attention,” and that the time they consumed was not employed in labours more profitable to the world and more equal to his mind. During the first years of his residence in Edinburgh “his studies seemed to be entirely suspended, and his passion for letters served only to amuse his leisure and to animate his conversation.” This young mentor often caught our misguided veteran wasting precious time in his library with Sophocles or Euripides, and would be told that re-acquaintance with the favourites of one’s youth is the most grateful and soothing diversion of old age. Let us forgive, and more than forgive, the tired economist, who disapproved that care, though wise in show, “That with superfluous burden loads the day, And, when God sends a cheerful hour, refrains.” It is indeed to be wished that the notes on Jurisprudence could have been worked up into an ample study after the manner of Montesquieu’s _Spirit of the Laws_; but probably all that would have been gained by retirement would have been the publication of his lectures on _belles lettres_; and it is certain that some of the most instructive additions to the _Wealth of Nations_ could never have been written, had Smith declined the office of Commissioner.