for hundreds of the younger sons of ancient and honorable families were glad if they could, without having their gentility openly impeached, gain a livelihood as merchants in the provinces, or even as tradesmen in the Canongate. Nor was it on younger sons only that Fortune bestowed such merciless kicks. Caledonian noblemen of long pedigrees, high names, and sounding titles, were found in situations aught but dignified. One peer kept a glove shop in Cornhill. Another, still less fortunate, employed each day in contriving how he was to fall in with a dinner. A third, on being arrested, was so dirty in his person, and so shabby in his dress, that the officer of justice stubbornly refused to credit the possibility of his being a man of rank. Even “females of quality” were not exempt from the miseries of the period; for one Scottish baroness was hostess of a tavern whose character was not the highest, and pleaded the privilege of her order when sued for keeping a disorderly house. What prospect was there in a state of society thus overcast for a youth, whom his plebeian name would all but disqualify for the position of a traveling tutor, and whom absorption in intellectual contemplation rendered utterly unfit to figure as a man of business? We shall soon see. Among the cadets of patrician houses who in the Scottish capital had sought a way of escape from the horrors which attend the union of pride and poverty, none had struggled with greater perseverance and success than that very distant kinsman, but close friend, of the great philosophic historian of England, since known to fame as Lord Kames. Having been educated by a tutor under the roof of his father, a Border gentleman of Jacobite leanings, and studied law at the University of Edinburgh, he was placed as apprentice in the office of a writer. But feeling, like Lord Mansfield, a real calling for the bar, he deserted the attorney’s desk before completing the term agreed on, and not only distinguished himself in his professional exhibitions, but by his deep learning and acute genius won a very extensive reputation as an author on various subjects. Smith had the advantage of being appreciated by this eminent jurist, philosopher, and agriculturist; and he prudently availed himself of the circumstance. In 1748, the Economist came forth under his patronage to lecture, in the Scottish metropolis, on rhetoric and the belles lettres, the professorship for which had not then been founded. This Smith continued to do for two years, at the end of which he was sufficiently recognized as a man of talent and erudition to be elected to the Logic Chair in the University of Glasgow, where he discharged the duties with much ability. He departed widely from the course that had been pursued by his predecessors, and directed the minds of the students to subjects of a more useful and interesting nature than they had been accustomed to.