James Boswell, was “happily possessed of a facility of manners."[48] After the publication of the Theory of Moral Sentiments, students came even from a greater distance.  Lord Shelburne, who was an enthusiastic admirer of that work, sent his younger brother, the Honourable Thomas Fitzmaurice, for a year or two to study under Smith, before sending him to Oxford in 1761 to read law with Sir William Blackstone.  Mr. Fitzmaurice, who married the Countess of Orkney, and is the progenitor of the present Orkney family, rose to a considerable political position, and would have risen higher but for falling into ill health in the prime of life and remaining a complete invalid till his death in 1793, but he never forgot the years he spent as a student in Smith’s class and a boarder in Smith’s house.  Dr. Currie, the well-known author of the Life of Burns, was his medical attendant in his latter years, and Dr. Currie says his conversation always turned back to his early life, and particularly to the pleasant period he had spent under Smith’s roof in Glasgow.  Currie has not, however, recorded any reminiscences of those conversations.[49] Two Russian students came in 1762, and Smith had twice to give them an advance of L20 apiece from the College funds, because their remittances had got stopped by the war.  Tronchin, the eminent physician of Geneva, the friend of Voltaire, the enemy of Rousseau, sent his son to Glasgow in 1761 purposely “to study under Mr. Smith,” as we learn from a letter of introduction to Baron Mure which the young man received before starting from Colonel Edmonston of Newton, who was at the time resident in Geneva.  It was of Tronchin Voltaire said, “He is a great physician, he knows the mind,” and he must have formed a high idea of the Theory of Moral Sentiments to send his son so far to attend the lectures of its author.  It was this young man who, on his way back from Glasgow, played a certain undesigned part in originating the famous quarrel between Rousseau and Hume, of which we shall have more to hear anon.  He was living with Professor Rouet of Glasgow, at Miss Elliot’s lodging-house in London, when Hume brought Rousseau there in January 1866, and the moment Rousseau saw the son of his old enemy established in the house to which he was conducted, he flew to the conclusion that young Tronchin was there as a spy, and that the good and benevolent Hume was weaving some infernal web about him.

Smith’s popularity as a lecturer grew year by year.  It was felt that another and perhaps greater Hutcheson had risen in the College.  Reid, when he came to Glasgow to succeed him in 1764, wrote his friend Dr. Skene in Aberdeen that there was a great spirit of inquiry abroad among the young people in Glasgow—­the best testimony that could be rendered of the effect of Smith’s teaching.  It had taught the young people to think.  His opinions became the subjects of general discussion, the branches he lectured on became fashionable in the