Scotch professors at that time often continued to hold their chairs during a temporary appointment like a travelling tutorship, and paid their salaries to a substitute until they returned. But Smith was no friend of absenteeism. The interest of the College was his chief anxiety, and accordingly in the following month he sent his formal letter of resignation to the Lord Rector, immediately on his arrival in Paris. “I never was,” he writes, “more anxious for the good of the College than at this moment; and I sincerely wish that whoever is my successor may not only do credit to the office by his abilities, but be a comfort to the very excellent men with whom he is likely to spend his life, by the probity of his heart and the goodness of his temper.” (February 14, 1764.) In accepting his resignation the Senate added a few words which may fittingly conclude our account of what Smith always regarded as the most fruitful and honourable period of his life:—“The University cannot help at the same time expressing their sincere regret at the removal of Dr. Smith, whose distinguished probity and amiable qualities procured him the esteem and affection of his colleagues; whose uncommon genius, great abilities, and extensive learning did so much honour to this society; his elegant and ingenious _Theory of Moral Sentiments_ having recommended him to the esteem of men of taste and literature throughout Europe. His happy talents in illustrating abstracted subjects, and faithful assiduity in communicating useful knowledge, distinguished him as a professor, and at once afforded the greatest pleasure and the most important instruction to the youth under his care.” CHAPTER VII THE TOUR IN FRANCE, 1764-66 “Everything I see appears the throwing broadcast of the seed of a revolution,” wrote Voltaire to Chauvelin, a few weeks after Smith landed in France. While the poor grew poorer, administration worse, taxes more oppressive, that thick cloud of conventional darkness which had so long shrouded misgovernment was dispersing, irradiated by the fierce glare of an intellectual illumination such as the world had never seen before. Already the mind of France was undimmed. Voltaire’s search-light had shown the nakedness of Church and State. Diderot’s great lamp was fixed; Rousseau waved his fiery torch, beaconing oppressed civilisation back to the freedom of its cradle. Quesnai was at his patient calculations in the Royal Palace. The great _Encyclopædia_ itself was on the eve of completion. This gigantic work—in thirty-five folio volumes, of which the first appeared in 1751—was doubly English; for it was inspired by Lord Bacon’s plan for a universal dictionary of sciences and arts, and it began as a mere translation of the Cyclopædia which Ephraim Chambers had published in 1727.