"My lectures are gone to the dogs, and are utterly forgotten. I knew nothing of Moral Philosophy, but I was thoroughly aware that I wanted £200 to furnish my house. The success, however, was prodigious; all Albemarle Street blocked up with carriages, and such an uproar as I never remember to have seen excited by any other literary imposture. Every week I had a new theory about Conception and Perception, and supported it by a natural manner, a torrent of words, and an impudence scarcely credible in this prudent age. Still, in justice to myself, I must say there were some good things in them. But good and bad are all gone." As a matter of fact, however, they were not "all gone." Mrs. Smith had rescued the manuscripts, a good deal damaged, from the flames, and after her husband's death she published the three courses in one volume under the title, _Elementary Sketches of Moral Philosophy_. Was it worth while to publish them? The answer must depend on the object of publication. If the book was meant to be considered as a serious contribution to mental science, the manuscripts might as well have remained where their author threw them. If, on the other hand, it was intended only to show the versatility, adroitness, and plausibility of a young man in need of money, nothing could have better illustrated those aspects of Sydney Smith's character and career. He is thirty-three years old, married, with an increasing family, and no means of subsistence beyond periodical journalism and odd jobs of clerical duty. "Two or three random sermons," he says, "I have discharged, and thought I perceived that the greater part of the congregation thought me mad. The clerk was as pale as death in helping me off with my gown, for fear I should bite him." He wants money to furnish his house. A benevolent friend obtains him the opportunity of lecturing. It is not uncharitable to suppose that he chooses a subject in which accurate knowledge and close argument will be less requisite than fluency, fancy, bold statement, and extraordinarily felicitous illustration. The five years spent in Edinburgh can now be turned to profitable account. Dugald Stewards lectures can be exhumed, decorated, and reproduced. The whole book reeks of Scotland. The lecturer sets out by declaring that Moral Philosophy is taught in the Scotch Universities alone. England knows nothing about it. At Edinburgh Moral Philosophy means Mental Philosophy, and is concerned with "the faculties of the mind and the effects which our reasoning powers and our passions produce upon the actions of our lives." It has nothing to do with ethics or duty. And the definition used in Edinburgh is also used in Albemarle Street. Dugald Stewart and Thomas Brown[30] and Adam Smith, Hume and Reid and Oswald and Beattie and Ferguson, are names which meet us on every page. The lecturer has learnt from Scotsmen, and reproduces what the Scotsmen taught him.