asserting their rights and independence in the face of the king's prerogative, and even at the expense of his power and authority. Should any prince, therefore, be seduced, by evil counsellors, or misled by his own bigotry, to take some arbitrary step that may be extremely disagreable to all those communities, without having spirit to exert the violence of his power for the support of his measures, he will become equally detested and despised, and the influence of the Commons will insensibly encroach upon the pretensions of the crown." (Travels through France and Italy, c. xxxvi. Smollett's Works, vol. v. p. 536.) This presentiment deserves to be classed with that prophecy of Harrington in his Oceana, of which some were fond enough to hope the speedy fulfilment at the beginning of the revolution. Smollett passed the greater part of his time abroad at Nice, but proceeded also to Rome and Florence. About a year after he had returned from the continent (in June, 1766,) he again visited his native country, where he had the satisfaction to find his mother and sister still living. At Edinburgh he met with the two Humes, Robertson, Adam Smith, Blair, and Ferguson; but the bodily ailments, under which he was labouring, left him little power of enjoying the society of men who had newly raised their country to so much eminence in literature. To his friend, Dr. Moore, then a chirurgeon at Glasgow, who accompanied him from that place, to the banks of Loch Lomond, he wrote, in the February following, that his expedition into Scotland had been productive of nothing but misery and disgust, adding, that he was convinced his brain had been in some measure affected; for that he had had a kind of _coma vigil_ upon him from April to November, without intermission. He was at this time at Bath, where two chirurgeons, whom he calls the most eminent in England, and whose names were Middleton and Sharp, had so far relieved him from some of the most painful symptoms of his malady, particularly an inveterate ulcer in the arm, that he pronounced himself to be better in health and spirits than during any part of the seven preceding years. But the flattering appearance which his disorder assumed was not of long continuance. A letter written to him by David Hume, on the 18th of July following, shews that either the state of his health, or the narrowness of his means, or perhaps both these causes together, made him desirous of obtaining the consulship of Nice or Leghorn. But neither the solicitations of Hume, nor those of the Duchess of Hamilton, could prevail on the Minister, Lord Shelburne, to confer on him either of these appointments. In the next year, September 21, 1768, the following paragraph in a letter from Hume convinced him that he had nothing to expect from any consideration for his necessities in that quarter. "What is this you tell me of your perpetual exile and of your never returning to this country? I hope that, as this idea arose from the bad state of