his mission to France, and possessed the amplest means of verifying his statements by reference to the original papers.

ADAM SMITH was born June 5, 1723, at Kirkaldy, in the county of Fife, where his father held the place of comptroller of the customs. Being a posthumous and only child, he became the sole object of his widowed mother's tenderness and solicitude; and this was increased by the delicacy of his constitution. Upon her devolved the sole charge of his education; and the value of her care may be estimated from the uninterrupted harmony and deep mutual affection which united them, unchilled, to the end of life. He was remarkable for his love of reading and the excellence of his memory, even at the early age when she first placed him at the grammar-school of Kirkaldy, where he won the affection of his companions by his amiable disposition, though the weakness of his frame hindered him from joining in their sports.

At the age of fourteen he was sent to the Uni

versity of Glasgow, from which, at the end of three years, he was removed to Baliol College, Oxford, in order to qualify himself for taking orders in the English Church. Mathematics and natural philosophy seem to have been his favourite pursuits at Glasgow; but at Oxford he devoted all his leisure hours to belles-lettres, and the moral and political sciences. Among these political economy cannot be reckoned; for at that period it was unknown even in name: still, in such studies, and by the sedulous improvement of his understanding, he was laying the foundations of his immortal work. He remained seven years at Oxford, without conceiving, as may be inferred from some passages in the "Wealth of Nations,' any high respect for the system of education then pursued in the University; and, having given up all thoughts of taking orders, he returned to his mother's house at Kirkaldy, and devoted himself entirely to literature and science. In 1748 he removed to Edinburgh, where, under Lord Kames's patronage, he delivered a course of lectures on rhetoric and belles-lettres. These were never published; and, with other papers, were destroyed by Smith a short time before his death. Dr. Blair, in the well-known course which he delilivered ten years afterwards on the same subject, acknowledges how greatly he was indebted to his predecessor, and how largely he had borrowed from

him.

In 1751 Mr. Smith was elected Professor of Logic in the University of Glasgow, and in the following year he was transferred to the chair of Moral Philosophy, which he filled during thirteen years. The following account of his lectures is given by Professor Millar. "His course of lectures on this subject was divided into four parts. The first contained natural theology, in which he con

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sidered the proofs of the being and attributes of God, and those principles of the human mind upon which religion is founded. The second comprehended ethics, strictly so called, and consisted chiefly of the doctrines which he afterwards published in his Theory of Moral Sentiments.' In the third part he treated more at length of that branch of morality which relates to justice, and which, being susceptible of precise and accurate rules, is for that reason capable of a full and particular explanation. In the last part of his lectures he examined those political regulations which are founded, not on the principle of justice, but on that of expediency, and which are calculated to increase the riches, the power, and the prosperity of a state. Under this view, he considered the political institutions relating to commerce, to finances, to ecclesiastical and military establishments. What he delivered on these subjects contained the substance of the work he afterwards published under the title of 'An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.'

"There was no situation in which the abilities of Dr. Smith appeared to greater advantage than as a professor. In delivering his lectures, he trusted almost entirely to extemporary elocution. His manner, though not graceful, was plain and unaffected; and as he seemed to be always interested in the subject, he never failed to interest his hearers. Each discourse consisted of several distinct propositions, which he successively endeavoured to prove and to illustrate. These propositions, when announced in general terms, had, from their extent, not unfrequently something of the air of a paradox. In his attempts to explain them, he often appeared at first not to be sufficiently possessed of the subject, and spoke with some hesitation. As he advanced,

however, the matter seemed to crowd upon him, his manner became warm and animated, and his expression easy and fluent. In points susceptible of controversy, you could easily discern that he secretly conceived an opposition to his opinions, and that he was led upon this account to support them with greater energy and vehemence. By the fulness and variety of his illustrations, the subject gradually swelled in his hands, and acquired a dimension which, without a tedious repetition of the same views, was calculated to seize the attention of his audience, and to afford them pleasure as well as instruction in following the same object through all the diversity of shades and aspects in which it was presented, and afterwards in tracing it backwards to that original proposition or general truth from which this beautiful train of speculation had pro

ceeded."

"His reputation as a professor was accordingly raised very high, and a multitude of students from a great distance resorted to the University merely upon his account. Those branches of science which he taught became fashionable at this place, and his opinions were the chief topics of discussion in clubs and literary societies. Even the small peculiarities in his pronunciation or manner of speaking became frequently the objects of imitation."

Smith published his 'Theory of Moral Sentiments' in 1759. The fundamental principle of this work, we use the summary of Mr. Macculloch, is that "sympathy forms the real foundation of morals; that we do not immediately approve or disapprove of any given action, when we have become acquainted with the intention of the agent and the consequences of what he has done, but that we previously enter, by means of that sympathetic affection which is natural to us, into the feelings of the agent, and