Gregory used to say that while physic had been the business, metaphysics had been the amusement of his life. Reid dedicated jointly to him and to Dugald Stewart his “Essays on the Intellectual Powers;” and he was an attached friend of Thomas Brown, and interested himself greatly in securing his succession to Dugald Stewart in the chair of Moral Philosophy. He went so far in philology as to publish a Theory of the Moods of Verbs in the “Edinburgh Philosophical Transactions” for 1787. His “Literary and Philosophical Essays,” in two volumes, (1792), dealt mainly with the old controversy as to Liberty and Necessity. However, since he had a strong opinion that metaphysics admits of no discoveries, it is not surprising that his contribution to the science failed to secure a permanent place. His fourth son, William Gregory, became a distinguished chemist, the friend of Liebig and translator of his “Familiar Letters on Chemistry,” and Professor of Chemistry in the University of Edinburgh. * * * * * JOHN BELL, who comes last to be mentioned in the list of great Edinburgh men of the eighteenth century, is linked with the nineteenth in part by his surgical career and posthumous “Observations on Italy,” and still more by his relationship to his great brother, Sir Charles Bell. Every one who reads the scattered memorials of John Bell will be filled with regret that his career should have been blighted by controversy and what appears even malignant opposition, led by Dr. James Gregory. His artistic tastes and acquirements, combined with his original views on anatomy and surgery, made him a specimen of a new genus in Edinburgh, and it is certain that Edinburgh did not adequately appreciate him.