but thinks that was due less to the efficiency of
the tutor than to the natural excellence of the pupil. And there is no
doubt that Smith was exceptionally fortunate in his pupil. In his
after life this Duke Henry took little part in politics, but he made
himself singularly beloved among his countrymen by a long career
filled with works of beneficence and patriotism, and brightened by
that love of science which has for generations distinguished the house
of Buccleuch. It may be true that with such a pupil Smith's natural
defects would find little opportunity of causing trouble, but it seems
certain, as I have before said, that these defects were habitually
exaggerated by Smith's contemporaries, and Carlyle himself
acknowledges that Smith's travels with the Duke cured him considerably
of his fits of abstraction. This is confirmed by Ramsay of Ochtertyre,
who says that Smith grew smarter during his stay abroad, and lost much
of the awkwardness of manner he previously exhibited.

Stewart is disposed to think, however, that the public have not the
same reason to be satisfied with Smith's acceptance of this tutorship
as either he himself or his pupil had, and that the world at large has
been seriously the loser for it, because "it interrupted that studious
leisure for which nature seemed to have designed him, and in which
alone he could have hoped to accomplish those literary projects which
had flattered the ambition of his youthful genius." Now it is, of
course, idle to speculate on the things that might have been. Kant was
never forty miles from Konigsberg, and had Smith remained in Glasgow
all his days there is no reason to doubt he could have produced works
of lasting importance. But it is a truism to say that the works would
have been other and different from what we have. To a political
philosopher foreign travel is an immense advantage, and there never
was a country where graver or more interesting problems, both economic
and constitutional, offered themselves for study than France in the
latter half of last century, nor any political philosopher who enjoyed
better opportunities than Smith of discussing such problems with the
ablest and best-informed minds on the spot. Smith's residence in
France, whatever it was to his pupil, must have been an invaluable
education to himself, supplying him day after day with constant
materials for fresh comparison and thought. Samuel Rogers was greatly
struck with the difference bet