42 MEMOIR OF DR. WALKER. 



were not filled with the sons and the grandsons 

 of baillies and deacons : 



" but there's a Providence 



That shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will," 



and to this is to be attributed the elevated station 

 which the university of Edinburgh, in her scientific 

 classes, still bears among the institutions of Europe, 

 sustained, however, in no small degree, by the ex- 

 cellence of many of the private lecturers, and the 

 salaries of the professors being in general too small 

 to allow them to disregard the number or estimation 

 of the students. We hope now a better morn begins 

 to dawn, whether it shall produce a more brilliant 

 day we venture not to prognosticate ; in the words 

 of our old reformer, " time will try ;" meanwhile it 

 may not be amiss to recal a little of the manoeuvring 

 which took place upon the present occasion, as a 

 picture of former days. 



Dr. Ramsay, the Professor of Natural History, 

 having been prevented from lecturing regularly for 

 some time before his death, Lord Kames, who was 

 well acquainted with Mr. William Smellie, then 

 in the prime of life and expectation, and to whose 

 attainments in the study of natural history he was 

 no stranger, proposed to him, in the year 1774, 

 to deliver a series of lectures on the philosophy and 

 general economy of nature, leaving the regular 

 scientific treatment of the subject to the public 

 professor. This plan met with Dr. Ramsay's entire 

 concurrence, who afforded every assistance in books 

 and advice, and it would have been carried into 



