the late Professor Playfair. 133 



be effectually accomplished, unless the manners of our lead- 

 ing philosophers are agreeable, and their personal habits and 

 dispositions engaging and amiable. From the time of Hume 

 and Robertson, we have been fortunate in Edinburgh in pos- 

 sessing a succession of distinguished men, who have kept up 

 this salutary connexion between the learned and the fashionable 

 world ; but there never, perhaps, was any one who contributed 

 so powerfully to confirm and extend it, and that in times 

 when it was peculiarly difficult, as the lamented individual 

 of whom we are now speaking ; and they who have had 

 the most opportunity to observe how superior the society of 

 Edinburgh is to that of most other places of the same size, 

 and how much of that superiority is owing to the cordial 

 combination of the two aristocracies, of rank and of letters — 

 of both of which it happens to be the chief provincial seat — 

 will be best able to judge of the importance of the service 

 he has thus rendered to its inhabitants, and, through them, and 

 by their example, to all the rest of the country. 



In thus mournfully estimating the magnitude of the loss we 

 have sustained, it is impossible that our thoughts should not be 

 turned to the likelihood of its being partly supplied by the ap- 

 pointment of a suitable successor. That it should be wholly 

 supplied, even with a view to the public, we confess we are not 

 sanguine enough to expect. That our professor of mathematics 

 and natural philosophy should have been for more than 30 years, 

 not only one of the most celebrated mathematicians, but one of 

 the finest writers, and one of the highest-bred gentlemen of his 

 age, is a felicity which it is out of all calculation that we should 

 so soon experience again; but, in an age when — very much by 

 his efforts and example — several men of great and distinguished 

 eminence in science can be found, and, as we understand, have 

 already proposed themselves for the vacancy, we do trust that 

 the chair of Mr. Playfair, or any other chair which his death 

 may ultimately leave vacant, will not be bestowed upon a 

 person of questionable or even ordinary attainments. 



The object of such an appointment is, no doubt, to instruct 

 youth m the elements of knowledge; but it is, notwithstanding. 



