of the lecture of the day. The ideas with which he had thus stored his mind, he poured forth extempore in the course of the forenoon, with an eloquence and a felicity of illustration surpassing in energy and vivacity (as those who have he heard him have remarked) the more logical and better digested expositions of his philosophical views, which he used to deliver in his maturer years. The difficulty of speaking for an hour extempore every day on a new subject for five or six months, is not small; but, when superadded to the mental exertion of teaching also daily, two classes of mathematics, and of delivering, for the first time, a course of lectures on astronomy, it may justly be considered as a very singular instance of intellectual vigour. To this season he always referred as the most laborious of his life; and such was the exhaustion of the body, from the intense and continued stretch of the mind, that, on his departure for London, at the close of the academical session, it was necessary to lift him into the carriage.
In the year 1780, he began to receive some young noblemen and gentlemen into his house as pupils, under his immediate superintendence, among whom were to be numbered the late lord Belhaven, the late marquis of Lothian, Basil lord Daer,[1] the late lord Powerscourt, Mr Muir Mackenzie of Delviti, and the late Mr Henry Glassford. In the summer of 1783, he visited the continent for the first time, having accompanied the late marquis of Lothian to Paris; on his return iron, whence, in the autumn of the same year, he married Helen Bannatyne, daughter of Neil Bannatyne, Esq., a merchant in Glasgow.
In the year 1785, during which Dr Matthew Stewart's death occurred, the health of Dr Ferguson rendered it expedient for him to discontinue his official labours in the university, and he accordingly effected an exchange of offices with Mr Stewart, who was transferred to the class of moral philosophy, while Dr Ferguson retired on the salary of mathematical professor. In the year 1787, Mr Stewart was deprived of his wife by death; and, the following summer, he again visited the continent, in company with the late Mr Uamsay of Barnton.
These slight indications of the progress of the ordinary occurrences of human life, must suffice to convey to the reader an idea of the connexion of events, up to the period when Mr Stewart entered on that sphere of action in which he laid the foundation of the great reputation which he acquired as a moralist and a metaphysician. His writings are before the world, and from them posterity may be safely left to form an estimate of the excellence of his style of composition of the extent and variety of his learning and scientific attainments of the singular cultivation and refinement of his mind of the purity and elegance of his taste of his warm relish for moral and for natural beauty of his enlightened benevolence to all mankind, and of the generous ardour with which he devoted himself to the improvement of the human species of all of which, while the English language endures, his works will continue to preserve the indelible evidence. But of one part of his fame no memorial will remain but in the recollection of those who have witnessed his exertions. As a public speaker, he was justly entitled to rank among the very first of his day; and, had an adequate sphere been afforded for the display of his oratorical powers, his merit in this line alone would have sufficed to secure him a lasting reputation. Among those who attracted the highest admiration
- ↑ Burns's first interview with Mr Stewart, in the presence of this amiable young nobleman, at Catrine, will be in every reader's remembrance, as well as the philosopher's attentions to the poet during his subsequent residence in Edinburgh. The house occupied by Mr Stewart at Catrine still exists, a small narrow old fashioned building, detached from the village.
