‘I assure you I can rarely find an hour which I am at liberty to dispose of as I please. The most disagreeable thing in the teaching part is to have a great number of stupid Irish teagues, who attend classes for two or three years to qualify them for teaching schools or being dissenting teachers. I preach to them as St. Francis did to the fishes. I don’t know what pleasure he had in his audience; but I should have none in mine, if there were not in it a mixture of reasonable creatures. I confess I think there is a smaller proportion of these in my class this year than there was the last. I have long been of the opinion that, in a right constituted College, there ought to be two professors for each class—one for the dunces, and another for those who have parts. The province of the former would not be the most agreeable, but perhaps it would require the greatest talents, and therefore ought to be accounted the post of honour. There is no part of my time more disagreeably spent than that which is spent in college meetings; and I should have been attending one at this moment if a bad cold I have got had not furnished me with an excuse. These meetings are become more disagreeable by an evil spirit of party that seems to put us in a ferment, and I am afraid will produce bad consequences. The temper of our northern Colonies makes mercantile people here look very grave. It is said that the effects in these colonies belonging to this town amount to above £400,000.[14] The mercantile people are for suspending the Stamp-act, and redressing the grievances of the colonists.... In what light the House of Commons will view this matter I don’t know, but it seems to me one of the most important matters that have come before them. I wish often an evening with you, such as we have enjoyed in the days of former times, to settle the important affairs of Church and State, of Colleges and Corporations. I have found this the best expedient to think of them without melancholy and chagrin. And I think all that a man has to do in the world is to keep his temper and to do his duty. Mrs. Reid is tolerably well just now, but is often ailing.’ In a letter to Dr. David, in March 1766, he refers to the death of his early friend, John Stewart, the Mathematical Professor in Marischal College, and his companion in the English tour thirty years before:—