of Edinburgh, Session 1883 - 84 . 
457 
amounted by the census of 1881 to 230,000, spread over an area 
nearly ten times the former in superficial extent, and furnishing in 
every quarter splendid examples of urban architecture. 
The Eoyal Society itself was the culmination of that signal 
reviviscence of literary enthusiasm and power, which, to her own 
astonishment and that of the world, took place in Scotland in the 
second half of the eighteenth century. Stunned at its commence- 
ment by the removal of the legislature, and all the social prestige 
which the seat of a legislature enjoys, speaking a language which 
ultra-patriotic Scotsmen still think the more classic of the two, 
but still barbarous in Southern ears, the educated Scot set himself 
with the energy of a Border chief to try if he could not invade the 
territory of his neighbour across the Tweed in the world of letters. 
With what measure of rapid success the daring attempt was crowned 
the names of David Hume, Adam Smith, and William Robertson 
attest to this day. How it came that a knot of Scots philosophers, 
who used their own vernacular in familiar intercourse, should have 
become examples, not of thought only, but of style, to Englishmen, 
might admit of more detailed illustration than I can give it here. 
But very soon these literary chiefs from the North became famous and 
popular among London men of letters, as well as with the public. 
I find David Hume writing from London to Adam Smith on the 
publication of his Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1759, “ that he had 
sent a copy of the book to some of his acquaintances, and among 
the rest to Lord Lyttleton and Horace Walpole and to Mr Burke, 
an Irish gentleman, he says, “ who has lately written a very pretty 
treatise on the Sublime.” On the other hand, in Mr Cosmo Innes’ 
pleasant Memoir of Professor Dalzel, who, as we shall see, was a 
member, and one of the secretaries of the Royal Society at its foun- 
dation, he quotes a letter from the Professor to Sir Robert Liston in 
1776, in which he says — “There is published also a first volume, 
quarto, of a History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 
by Edward Gibbon, Esq., a member of Parliament,” an expression 
which may well be placed alongside of Hume’s reference to “ Mr 
Burke as an Irish gentleman.” A month before, in April 1776, 
this same Mr Gibbon wrote to Dr Adam Ferguson from London — 
“ I have always looked up with the most sincere respect towards the 
northern part of our island, whither taste and philosophy seemed to 
