ed by accident to hang dead and dry from the rafter of a barn.
This owl, with the nest on its wings, and with eggs in the nest, was
brought as a curiosity worthy of the most elegant private museum in
Great Britain.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 45: From "The Natural History of Selborne," being a letter
to the Hon. Daines Barrington.]

ADAM SMITH

Born in 1723, died in 1790; educated at Glasgow and Oxford;
lecturer in Edinburgh in 1748; professor in Glasgow in 1751;
became tutor to the Duke of Buccleuch in 1763; traveled on
the Continent in 1764-66; lived afterwards in retirement at
Kirkcaldy; became Commissioner of Customs in Edinburgh in
1778; elected Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow in
1787; his "Moral Sentiments" published in 1759; his "Wealth
of Nations" in 1776.

I

OF AMBITION MISDIRECTED[46]

To attain to this envied situation, the candidates for fortune too
frequently abandon the paths of virtue; for unhappily, the road which
leads to the one, and that which leads to the other, lie sometimes in
very opposite directions. But the ambitious man flatters himself that,
in the splendid situation to which he advances, he will have so many
means of commanding the respect and admiration of mankind, and will be
enabled to act with such superior propriety and grace, that the luster
of his future conduct will entirely cover or efface the foulness of
the steps by which he arrived at that elevation. In many governments
the candidates for the highest stations are above the law, and if they
can attain the object of their ambition, they have no fear of being
called to account for the means by which they acquired it. They often
endeavor, therefore, not only by fraud and falsehood, the ordinary and
vulgar arts of intrigue and cabal, but sometimes by the perpetration
of the most enormous crimes, by murder and assassination, by rebellion
and civil war, to supplant and destroy those who oppose or stand in
the way of their greatness. They more frequently miscarry than
succeed, and commonly gain nothing but the disgraceful punishment
which is due to their crimes.

But tho they should be so lucky as to attain that wished-for
greatness, they are always most miserably disappointed in the
happiness which they expect to enjoy in it. It is not ease or
pleasure, but always honor, of one kind or another, tho frequently an
honor very ill understood, that the ambitious man really