AFTER Mr Christison and Mr Dunbar are supposed to have given their pupils as much Latin and Greek as people of sense ought to be troubled with, they are transferred to the Professor of Logic, and recorded in the books of the University, as students of philosophy. The style used by their new professor would, however, convey to a stranger a very erroneous notion of the duties in reality allotted to him. Logic, according to our acceptation of the word, is one of the least and last of the things which this gentleman (who is said to be a person of great shrewdness and masculine judgment) is supposed to teach. The true business of Dr Ritchie is to inform the minds of his pupils with some first faint ideas of the Scotch systems of metaphysics and morals—to explain to them the rudiments of the great vocabulary of Reid and Stewart, and fit them, in some measure, for plunging next year into the midst of all the light and all the darkness scattered over the favourite science of this country, by the Professor of Moral Philosophy, Dr Thomas Brown.

I could not find leisure for attending the prælections of all the Edinburgh professors; but I was resolved to hear, at least, one discourse of the last mentioned celebrated person. So I went one morning in good time, and took my place in a convenient corner of that class-room, to which the rising metaphysicians of the north resort with so much eagerness. Before the professor arrived, I amused myself with surveying the well-covered rows of benches with which the area of the large room was occupied. I thought I could distinguish the various descriptions of speculative young men come thither from the different quarters of Scotland, fresh from the first zealous study of Hume, Berkeley, and Locke, and quite sceptical whether the timber upon which they sat had any real existence, or whether there was such a thing as heat in the grate which was blazing before them. On one side might be seen, perhaps, a Pyrrhonist from Inverness-shire, deeply marked with the small-pox, and ruminating upon our not seeing double with two eyes.