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\hll.~- Biographical Sketch of Adam Ferguson., LL.D., F.R S.E.^ Professor of 

 Moral Philosophy in the JJninersity of Edinburgh. By John Small, M.A., 

 Librarian to the University. 



(Read 18th April 1864.) 



The Memoir now submitted to the Society, while it details the chief events in 

 the life of a man who occupied a distinguished place in the literature of Scot- 

 land, at a period when it had attained a high reputation, cannot claim to be so 

 complete as might be desired. His life was prolonged for several years after 

 nearly all of his early friends had passed away ; and since his death many papers 

 have been destroyed or have fallen aside, which would now be of the greatest 

 interest. 



Whilst in this way much has been lost that might have given greater com- 

 pleteness to these pages, still, the recent publication of the Diary of his friend Dr 

 Carlyle of Inveresk, has furnished many additional details, and afforded further 

 evidence of the estimation in which he was held by his literary associates. 



Several letters selected from the lives of his distinguished friends, and from 

 the Manuscript Collection of the University, in addition to information derived 

 from the short notices of his life already printed, have afforded the materials for 

 preparing this sketch of one, whose career was more varied, while his public 

 labours and literary connections were not less important and extensive, than 

 those of any of his contemporaries. 



Dr Adam Ferguson, son of the Rev. Adam Ferguson, minister of the parish 

 of Logierait, Perthshire, was born in the manse of that parish on the 20th of 

 June 1723. His father was descended from an old and respectable family in 

 Athole, to whom the estate of Dunfallandy yet pertains ; and his mother was the 

 daughter of Mr Gordon of Hallhead, in the county of Aberdeen. In the female 

 line Ferguson traced a connection with the noble family of Argyll, thus referred 

 to in a letter addressed to him by Dr Carlyle of Inveresk : " I am descended 

 from the Queensberry family by two great-grandmothers — much at the same 

 distance as you are from that of Argyll."* 



Adam was the youngest son of a numerous family. His father had been 

 minister of Crathie and Braemar from 1700 to 1714, and was long remembered 

 with gratitude for having sheltered in his manse of Crathie some of the unfortu- 

 nate Macdonalds on their flight from the treacherous massacre of Glencoe. Just 

 before the Rebellion of 1715 he was translated to Logierait, where he passed the 



* MSS., University of Edinburgh. 

 VOL. XXIIl. PART in. 7 Z 



