Few lives represent more splendidly than that of Adam Smith the speculative ideal of a dispassionate study of philosophy. He was fortunate in his teachers and his friends. At Glasgow he was the pupil of Francis Hutcheson; and even if he was taught nothing at Oxford, at least six years of leisure gave him ample opportunity to learn. His professorship at Glasgow not only brought him into contact with men like Hume, but also admitted him to intercourse with a group of business men whose liberal sentiments on commerce undoubtedly strengthened, if they did not originate, his own liberal views. At Glasgow, too, in 1759, he published his _Theory of Moral Sentiments_, written with sufficient power of style to obscure its inner poverty of thought. The book brought him immediately a distinguished reputation from a public which exalted elegance of diction beyond all literary virtues. The volatile Charles Townshend made him tutor to the Duke of Buccleuch, through whom Smith not only secured comparative affluence for the rest of his days, but also a French tour in which he met at its best the most brilliant society in Europe. The germ of his _Wealth of Nations_ already lay hidden in those Glasgow lectures which Mr. Cannan has so happily recovered for us; and it was in a moment of leisure in France that he set to work to put them together in systematic fashion. Not, indeed, that the Frenchmen whom he met, Turgot, Quesnay and Dupont de Nemours, can be said to have done more than confirm the truths he had already been teaching. When he returned to Scotland and a competence ten years of constant labor were necessary before the _Wealth of Nations_ was complete. After its publication, in 1776, Adam Smith did little save attend to the administrative duties of a minor, but lucrative office in the Customs. Until the end, indeed, he never quite gave up the hope, foreshadowed first in the _Moral Sentiments_ of completing a gigantic survey of civilized institutions. But he was a slow worker, and his health was never robust. It was enough that he should have written his book and cherished friendships such as it is given to few men to possess. Hume and Burke, Millar the jurist, James Watt, Foulis the printer, Black the chemist and Hutton of geological fame--it is an enviable circle. He had known Turgot on intimate terms and visited Voltaire on Lake Geneva. Hume had told him that his book had "depth and solidity and acuteness"; the younger Pitt had consulted him on public affairs. Few men have moved amid such happy peace within the very centre of what was most illustrious in their age.