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ick, I have never heard any allusion made to the existence of any books connected with that subject; and I am convinced, that a man who had read through Plato or Aristotle, or even who was entitled to say that he had any tolerable acquaintance with the works of either of these great authors, would be scarcely more of a wonder at Otaheite than in Edinburgh. But this indeed it is extremely unnecessary to explain to to you, who have read and admired so much of the works of Dugald Stewart; for nothing can be more clear to the eyes of the initiated, than that this great and enlightened man has been throughout contented to derive his ideas of the Greek philosophy from very secondary sources. When he dies, there will not, most assuredly, be found among his books, as there was among those of David Hume, an interleaved copy of Duvall's Aristotle.. And if such be his ignorance, (which, I doubt not, he himself would be candid enough to acknowledge without hesitation,) what may we not suppose to be the Cimmerian obscurity which hangs over his worshippers and disciples ?-Without the genius, which often suggests to him much of what kindred genius had suggested to the philosophers of antiquity, and which still more often enables him to

pass, by different steps, to the same point at which these had arrived, the pupils of this illustrious man are destitute of the only qualities which could have procured any pardon for the errors of their master. The darkness is with them" total eclipse."

I have wandered, you will say, even more widely than is my custom. But you must keep in recollection the terms on which I agreed to write to you during this my great northern tour. As for the subject from which I have wandered, viz. the Greek and Latin Muses of the University of Edinburgh, I assure you I feel very easy under the idea of having treated these ladies with slender courtesy. Their reputation is extremely low, and I verily believe they deserve no better. They are of the very worst and most contemptible of all kinds of coquettes; for they give a little to every body, and much to

no one.

The Professors of the two languages here are both, however, very respectable men in their way; that is, they would both of them do admirable things, if they had any call upon their ambition. Mr Ch the Professor of Latin, or, as their style is, of humanity, is a very great reader of all kinds of books, and, what is rather

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singular in one fond of excursive reading, is a very diligent and delighted student of the higher mathematics. I went to hear his prælection the other day, and after the boys were sent away, began to ask him a few questions about the system adopted in their tuition, but in vain. He insisted upon talking of fluxions, and fluxions only; and, as I know nothing of fluxions, I was glad to break up the conference. With him, if a pun may be allowed,

labitur et labetur, in omne volubilis aevum."

bar Mr Dunbar, the Professor of Greek, has published several little things in the Cambridge Classical Researches, and is certainly very much above the common run of scholars. I observe by the way, that in one of his Latin title-pages, he subjoins to his name a set of English initials,

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After Mr Chand Mr Dualar are supposed to have given their pupils as much Latin and Greek as people of sense ought to be troubled with, they are transferred to the Professor of Logic, and recorded in the books of the University, as students of philosophy. The style used by their new professor would, however, convey to a stranger a very erroneous notion of the duties in reality allotted to him. Logic, according to our acceptation of the word, is one of the least and last of the things which he is supposed to teach. His true business is to inform the minds of his pupils with some first faint ideas of the Scotch systems of metaphysics and morals-to explain to them the rudiments of the great vocabulary of Reid and Stewart, and fit them, in

some measure, for plunging next year into the midst of all the light and all the darkness scattered over the favourite science of this country, by the Professor of Moral Philosophy, Dr Tama Brown Brown.

I could not find leisure for attending the prælections of all the Edinburgh professors; but I was resolved to hear, at least, one discourse of the last mentioned celebrated person. So I went one morning in good time, and took my place in a convenient corner of that class-room, to which the rising metaphysicians of the north resort with so much eagerness. Before the professor arrived, I amused myself with surveying the well-covered rows of benches with which the area of the large room was occupied. I thought I could distinguish the various descriptions of speculative young men come thither from the different quarters of Scotland, fresh from the first zealous study of Hume, Berkeley, and Locke, and quite sceptical whether the timber upon which they sat had any real existence, or whether there was such a thing as heat in the grate which was blazing before them. On one side might be seen, perhaps, a Pyrrhonist from Inverness-shire, deeply marked with the small-pox, and ruminating upon our not seeing double with two eyes. The

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