system, in quarto, containing about eighty pages. Dr. Browne long and regularly kept up a correspondence with the celebrated Linnæus, which continued to his death. In Exshaw's Gentleman's and London Magazine for June, 1774, he published "A Catalogue of the Birds of Ireland," and in Exshaw's August Magazine following, "A Catalogue of its Fish." In 1788, he got ready for the press a very curious and useful Catalogue of the Plants of the northwest counties of Ireland, classed with great care and accuracy according to the Linnæan system, containing above seven hundred plants, mostly observed by himself, having trusted very few to the descriptions of others. This little tract, written in Latin with the English and Irish, names, might be of considerable use in assisting to compile a flora Hibernica, a work every botanist will allow to be much wanting. The doctor was a tall, comely man, of good address and gentle manners, naturally cheerful, very temperate, and in general healthy; but of late years had violent periodical fits of the gout, by which he suffered greatly: in the intervals of these unwelcome fits, he formed the Catalogue of Plants, and was always, when in health, doing something in natural history, or mathematics. At a very early period he married in Antigua a native of that island, but had no issue. His circumstances were moderate but easy, and the poor found ample benefit from bis liberality as well as professional skill. This worthy member of society paid the debt of nature at Rushbrook, county of Mayo, on Sunday, August 29, 1790, and was interred in the family burialplace at Crossboyne. In his will he desired the following inscription to be placed on his monument, viz. "Hanc opponi jussit Patri Matri Fratribusque Piissimis & sibi; Patricius Browne olim Medicus Jamaicensis, qui nunc insita humiliter pro tum inter mortuos enumerandum deprecetur præcis fidelium pro se illisque offerri; ut cum Domino Dee Requiescant in pace. Amen." His publications are, "The Civil and Natural History of Jamaica, containing, 1. An accurate Description of that Island, its Situation and Soil; with a brief Account of its former and present State, Government, Revenues, Produce, and Trade. 2. A History of the Natural Productions, including the various Sorts of Native Fossils; Perfect and Imperfect Vegetables; Quadrupeds, Birds, Fishes, Reptiles, and Insects; with their Properties and Uses in Mechanics, Diet, and Physic. "By Patrick Browne, M. D. "Illustrated with forty-nine copperplates, in which the most curious productions are represented of their natural sizes, and delineated immediately from the objects, by George Dionysius Ehret." In this work, Dr. Browne observes "Sir Hans Sloane hath not collected above 800 species of plants in all his travels: in Jamaica alone I have examined and described about 1200, besides fossils, insects, and other productions, many of which he makes no mention of. It must be owned, nevertheless, to his praise, that his works, inaccurate as they are, upon the whole, DAM Smith, author of the Causes of the Wealth of Nations, was the son of Adam Smith, comptroller of the customs at Kirkaldy, and of Margaret Douglas, daughter of Mr. Douglas, of Strathenry. He was the only child of the marriage, and was born at Kirkaldy on the 5th of June, 1723, a few months after the death of his father. His constitution during infancy was infirm and sickly, and required all the tender solicitude of his surviving parent. She was blamed for treating him with an unlimited indulgence: but it produced no unfavourable effects on his temper or his dispositions: and he enjoyed the rare satisfaction of being able to repay her affection, by every attention that filial gratitude could dictate, during the long period of sixty years. An accident, which happened to him when he was about three years old, is of too interesting a nature to be omitted in the account of so valuable a life. He had been carried by his mother to Strathenry on a visit to his uncle, Mr. Douglas, and was one day amusing himself "Fasciculus Plantarum Hiberniæ: or, a Catalogue of such Irish Plants as have been observed by the Author, chiefly those of the Counties of Mayo and Galway; to which he has added such as have been men-alone at the door of the house, when tioned by other Authors worthy of credit, the produce of any other parts of the kingdom. By Patrick Browne, M. D. Author of the History of Jamaica." This contains 110 pages 8vo. - written in Latin, with the English and Irish names. Particulars of the Life and Character of Adam Smith, LL. D.; from the Third Volume of the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. he was stolen by a party of that set of vagrants who are known in Scotland by the name of tinkers. Luckily he was soon missed by his uncle, who hearing that some vagrants had passed, pursued them, with what assistance he could find, till he overtook them in Leslie wood; and was the happy instrument of preserving to the world a genius, which was destined, not only to extend the boundaries of science, but to enlighten and reform the commercial policy of Europe. The school of Kirkaldy, where Mr. Smith received the first rudi[*C3] ments ments of his education, was then was a fellow-student of Mr. Smith's, taught by Mr. David Miller, a teacher, in his day, of considerable reputation, and whose name deserves to be recorded, on account of the eminent men whom that very obscure seminary produced, while under his direction. Mr. Oswald, of Dunikeir, whose profound know ledge of Anances raised him afterwards to important employments in the state, and to a distinguished rank as a parliamentary speaker; his brother, Dr. John Oswald, afterwards bishop of Raphoe; and Dr. John Drysdale, whose talents and worth are well known to this society, were among the number of Mr. Smith's contemporaries. - One of his schoolfellows is still alive; and to his kindness I am principally indebted for the scanty materials, which form the first part of this narrative. Among these companions of his earliest years, Mr. Smith soon attracted notice, by his passion for books, and by the extraordinary powers of his memory. The weak, ness of his bodily constitution prevented him from partaking in their more active amusements; but he was much beloved by them, on account of his temper, which, though warm, was to an uncommon de. gree friendly and generous. Even then he was remarkable for those habits which remained with him through life, of speaking to himselt when alone, and, of absence in company. From the grammar-school of Kirkaldy he was sent, in 1737, to the university of Glasgow, where he remained till 1740, when he went to Baliol College, Oxford, as an exhibitioner on Shell's foundation. Dr. Maclaine, of the Hague, who at Glasgow, told me, some years ago, that his favourite pursuits, while at that university, were mathematics and natural philosophy; and I remember to have heard my fa. ther remind him of a geometrical problem of considerable difficulty, about which he was occupied at the time when their acquaintance commenced, and which had been proposed to him as an exercise by the celebrated Dr. Simpson. These, however, were certainly not the sciences in which he was formed to excel; nor did they long divert him from pursuits more congenial to his mind. What lord Bacon says of Plato may te justly applied to him: "Illum, licet ad rempublicam non accessisset, tamen naturâ et inclinatione omnino ad res civiles propensum, vires eo præcipue intendisse; neque de phiJosophia naturali admodum sollicitum esse; nisi quatenus ad philosophia nomen et celibritatem tuendam, et ad majestatem quandam moralibus et civilibus doctrinis ad dendam et aspergendam sufficeret." The study of human nature in all its branches, more particularly of the political history of mankind, opened a boundless field to his curiosity and ambition; and, while it afforded scope to all the various powers of his versatile and comprehensive genius, gratified his ruling passion, of contributing to the happiness and the improvement of society. To this study, diversified at his leisure hours by the less severe occupations of polite literature, he seems to have devoted himself almost entirely from the time of his removal to Oxford; but he still retained, and retained even in advanced years, a recollection of his early * early acquisitions, which not only 3 added to the splendor of his conversation, but enabled him to exemplify some of his favourite theo⚫ries concerning the natural progress # of the mind in the investigation of truth, by the history of those sciences in which the connection and succession of discoveries may be traced with the greatest advantage. If I am not mistaken too, the influence of his early taste for the Greek geometry may be remarked ✔ in the elementary clearness and fulness, bordering sometimes upon prolixity, with which he frequently states his political reasonings. - The lectures of the profound and eloquent Dr. Hutcheson, which he had attended previous to his departure from Glasgow, and of which he always spoke in terms of the warmest admiration, had, it may be reasonably presumed, a considerable effect in directing his talents to their proper objects. 4 I have not been able to collect any information with respect to that part of his youth which was spent in England. I have heard him say, that he employed himself frequently in the practice of translation, (particularly from the French), with a view to the improvement of his own style: and he used often to express a favourable opinion of the utility ✓ of such exercises, to all who cultivate the art of composition. It is much to be regretted, that none of his juvenile attempts in this way have been preserved; as the few specimens, which his writings contain of his skill as a translator, are sufficient to shew the eminence he had attained in a walk of literature, which, in our country, has been so little frequented by men of genius. It was probably also at this period of his life, that he cultivated with the greatest care the study of languages. The knowledge he possessed of these, both ancient and modern, was uncommonly extensive and accurate; and, in him, was subservient, not to a vain parade of tasteless erudition, but to a familiar acquaintance with every thing that could illustrate the institutions, the manners, and the ideas of differ ent ages and nations. How inti mately he had once been conversant with the more ornamental branches of learning; in particular, with the works of the Roman, Greek, French, and Italian poets, appeared sufficiently from the hold which they kept of his memory, after all the different occupations and enquiries in which his maturer faculties had been employed. In the English language, the variety of poetical passages which he was not only accustomed to refer to occasionally, but which he was able to repeat with correctness, appeared surpris-, ing even to those, whose attention. had never been directed to more. important acquisitions. After a residence at Oxford of seven years, he returned to Kirkaldy, and lived two years with his mother; engaged in study, but with out any fixed plan for his future life. He had been originally destined for the Church of England, and with that view had been sent. to Oxford; but not finding the ec. clesiastical profession suitable to his taste, he chose to consult, in this instance, his own inclination, in preference to the wishes of his friends; and abandoning at once.. all the schemes which their pru dence had formed for him, he re solved solved to return to his own country, and to limit his ambition to the uncertain prospect of obtaining, in time, some one of those moderate preferments, to which literary attainments lead in Scotland. In the year 1748, he fixed his residence at Edinburgh, and, during that and the following years, read lectures on thetoric and belles lettres, under the patronage of lord Kaimes. About this time, too, he contracted a very intimate friendship, which continued, without interruption, till his death, with Mr. Alexander Wedderburn, now lord Loughborough, and with Mr. William Johnstone, now Mr. Pulteney. At what particular period his acquaintance with Mr. David Hume commenced, does not appear from any information that I have received; but fromso me papers, now in the possession of Mr. Hume's nephew, and which he has been so obliging as to allow me to peruse, their acquaintance seems to have grown into friendship before the year 1752. It was a friendship on both sides founded on the admiration of genius, and the love of simplicity; and which forms an interesting circumstancei n the history of each of these eminent men, from the ambition which both have shewn to record it to posterity. In 1751, he was elected professor of logic in the university of Glasgow; and, the year following, he was removed to the professorship of moral philosophy in the same university, upon the death of Mr. Thomas Craigie, the immediate süccessor of Dr. Hutcheson. In this situation, he remained thirteen years; a period he used frequently to look back to, as the most useful and hap bama かいい py of his life. It was indeed a situ ation in which he was eminently fitted to excel, and in which the daily labours of his profession were constantly recalling his attention to his favourite pursuits, and familiarising his mind to those important speculations he was afterwards to communicate to the world. In this view, though it afforded, in the mean time, but a very narrow scene for his ambition, it was probably instrumental, in no inconsiderable de gree, to the future eminence of his literary character. Of Mr. Smith's lectures, while a professor at Glasgow, no part has been preserved, excepting what he himself published in the Theory of Moral Sentiments and in the Wealth of Nations. The society therefore, I am persuaded, will listen with pleasure to the following short account of them, for which I am indebted to a gentleman who was formerly one of Mr. Smith's pupils, and whe continued to his death to be one of his most intimate and valued friends. In the professorship of logic, to which Mr. Smith was appointed on his first introduction into this university, he soon saw the necessity of departing widely from the plan that had been followed by his predecessors, and of directing the attention of his pupils to studies of a more interesting and useful nature than the logic and metaphysics of the schools. Accordingly, after exhibiting a general view of the powers of the mind, and explaining so much of the ancient logic as was requisite to gratify curiosity, with respect to an artificial method of reasoning, which had once occu pied the universal attention of the learned, he dedicated all the rest of his |