In the fifties Smith and Black helped Foulis to start an institution called the Academy of Design, said to have been the first of its kind in Great Britain. The authorities of the University found rooms for the purpose in the college, and they may therefore claim to have been the fathers, not only of the University extension movement, but also of technical instruction. Painting, sculpture, and engraving were the principal arts taught in this Academy. Tassie and David Allan were among the students; and Lord Buchan, who boasted of walking “after the manner of the ancients in the porticoes of Glasgow with Smith and with Millar,” learned to etch in Foulis’s studio. A shop was started in Edinburgh for the sale of works of art produced in the Academy, and Sir John Dalrymple, writing to Foulis in 1757, begs him to take the advice of Mr. Smith and Dr. Black, who are the best judges of what will sell. He also advises Foulis to have a circular drafted showing the advantages of the Academy. “Mr. Smith is too busy or too indolent, but I flatter myself Dr. Black will be happy to make out this memorial for you.” He invites Foulis and Smith to visit him in the Christmas vacance. There is no doubt, from the amount of business they laid on his shoulders, and their choice of him as “Præses” in 1762, that Smith’s colleagues had a high opinion of his practical abilities. His public spirit and loyalty to the University were unbounded. The warmest and most generous of friends, he was also one of those rare spirits, especially rare in the reign of George the Third, who never let private interests turn the scale against the common good. He made three protests against a professor exercising the legal right of voting for himself in an election to an office of profit. When Rouet, the professor of History, asked for leave of absence, so that he might travel abroad as Lord Hope’s tutor without relinquishing his professorship, Smith voted with a majority for refusing the leave, and on a later occasion for depriving him of office. This led to a quarrel with the Lord Rector, but the pressure of college opinion eventually forced Rouet to resign. We shall see that Smith on a similar occasion was careful to practise as he had preached.