The Gregories, then, were inclined to an academic life. Their portraits appear oddly and unexpectedly in the public buildings of this country, their names equally unexpectedly in many books; but their teaching which was the greatest gift they had to offer to their fellowmen can of course no longer be adequately appreciated. The very greatness of a teacher, which leads him to speak directly to the body of men before him with the needs, the ignorance, the prejudices, and the fancies of their age, makes his teaching unintelligible to any time but his own, to a preceding age, if it were possible, darkness, to a succeeding, platitude. Going back to the beginning, how many times should we wish to thank one or other of the Gregories for their hard hitting at the shams and insincerities of their day! The Rev. John Gregorie, the founder of the family, began by withstanding Cant in the body, and overlooking the upturned sand-glass which that divine had set for him, taught his own views even though they were not accepted by his self-complacent opponent as the ‘orthodox doctrein.’ He after all, uninteresting as he perhaps appeared to be, is still the forerunner of the family greatness, and that not only as their first father, but because he showed an example of independence in opinion to his own children and to theirs—when the time should come that their grandfather’s history would be told them by the fire of a winter’s night. One of his sons, David of Kinairdy, possessed the first barometer in Scotland, an innovation for which he nearly paid with his life. Another, Professor James Gregorie (the first), because he too rapidly realised the greatness of Newton’s philosophy, and taught it, came under the ban of his fellow-professors at St Andrews, and was glad when the opportunity presented itself to receive the approbation of a sister university, more ready for his teaching. He, too, invented the first reflecting telescope, through which things are seen as they appear to one’s eyes, and not upside down as had been the case with earlier telescopes. This also in its way was a parable of what the Gregories were to do in the world of science in making things as plain as possible, so that the wayfaring men though fools, might not err therein. David the son and David the grandson both did most of their work at Oxford, the first teaching mathematics, and endeavouring to bring Newton’s _Principia_ down to the level of ordinary mathematicians, while the second, who was Professor of Modern History and Modern Languages, having been much abroad, arranged to have the assistance of foreign teachers, whom he supported, not only with his influence, but with his purse. There were other mathematicians descended from David of Kinairdy, who, it may be remembered, had three sons professors of mathematics at one time, and of this branch of the family also were Alexander Innes and Thomas Reid, both professors of philosophy.