other doctors. He added to his income by lecturing on chemistry and by writing for the press, and, finally abandoning the medical profession, he confined himself to journalism, and from 1838 till 1844 edited the weekly Leeds Times. Though he gave up regular journalism in 1844, he continued to be a frequent contributor to periodicals. From 1845 till 1854 he was secretary of the Leeds and Thirsk railway, and from 1854 till 1866 of the South Eastern railway. During his residence in Leeds he had opportunities of studying the characters of the remarkable men whose biographies he afterwards wrote. Here he came in contact with George Stephenson, whose Life by him, published in 1857, passed through five editions in its first year and was the precursor of a series of biographies of leaders in the world of industry, such as Lives of the Engineers (3 vols., 1861–1862), Industrial Biography (1863), James Brindley and the Early Engineers (1864), Lives of Boulton and Watt (1865), Life of Thomas Telford (1867), The Life of a Scotch Naturalist (Thomas Edward) (1876), Robert Dick (1878), George Moore (1878), Men of Invention and Industry (1884), Life and Labour (1887), A Publisher and his Friends (a history of the house of John Murray) (1801), Jasmin (1891), Josiah Wedgwood (1894). In 1859 had appeared his most successful book, Self -Help, a volume of popular ethics; 20,000 copies were sold the first year, and by 1889 the sales had reached 150,000 copies, while the book had been translated into 17 languages. Its success suggested others of similar purpose, like Character (1871), Thrift (1875), Duty (1880). Smiles also published two works dealing with the history of the Huguenots and a History of Ireland. His works are not only admirable for their simple and yet forcible style, but for the many useful and practical lessons which they enforce. Wholesome and stimulating, their whole tendency is to inculcate sound principles of life and the building up of manly and upright character. Dr Smiles was made hon. LL.D. of Edinburgh University in 1878, and in 1897 received from the king of Servia the Cross of Knight Commander of the Order of St Sava, He died in Kensington in his ninety-second year, on the 16th of April 1904.
His Autobiography was edited (1905) by T. Mackay.
SMILLIE, JAMES DAVID (1833–1909), American artist, was born in New York City on the 16th of January 1833. His father, James Smillie (1807–1885), a Scottish engraver, emigrated to New York in 1829, was elected to the National Academy of Design in 1851, did much, with his brother William Cumming (1813–1908), to develop the engraving of bank-notes, and was an excellent landscape-engraver. The son studied with him and in the National Academy of Design; engraved on steel vignettes for bank-notes and some illustrations, notably F. O. C. Darley’s pictures for Cooper’s novels; was elected an associate of the National Academy in 1865—the year after he first began painting—and an academician in 1876; and was a founder (1866) of the American Water Color Society, of which he was treasurer in 1866–1873 and president in 1873–1878, and of the New York Etching Club. Among his paintings, in oils, are " Evening among the Sierras " (1876) and " The Cliffs of Normandy " (1885), and in water colour, "A Scrub Race" (1876) and " The Passing Herd" (1888). He wrote and illustrated the article on the Yosemite in Picturesque America. He died on the 14th of September 1909. His brother, George Henry Smillie (1840–), studied under his father and under James M. Hart, became a member of the National Academy of Design in 1882, and, like his brother, painted both in oils and in water colour. His favourite subjects were scenes along the New England coast. In 1881 he married Nellie Sheldon Jacobs (b. 1854), a painter of genre pictures in oils and water colour.
SMIRKE, ROBERT (1752–1845), English painter, was born at Wigton near Carlisle in 1752. In his thirteenth year he was apprenticed in London with an heraldic painter, and at the age of twenty he began to study in the schools of the Royal Academy, to whose exhibition he contributed in 1786 a “Narcissus” and a “Sabrina,” which were followed by many works, usually small in size, illustrative of the English poets, especially Thomson. In 1791 Smirke was elected an associate of the Royal Academy, and two years later a full member. In 1814 he was nominated keeper to the Academy, but the king refused to sanction the appointment on account of the artist’s revolutionary opinions. He was engaged upon the Shakespeare gallery, for which he painted “Katharina and Petruchio,” “Prince Henry and Falstaff” and other subjects. He also executed many clever and popular book-illustrations. His works, which are frequently humorous, are pleasing and graceful, accomplished in draughtsmanship and handled with considerable spirit. He died in London on the 5th of January 1845.
SMITH, ADAM (1723–1790), English economist, was the only child of Adam Smith, comptroller of the customs at Kirkcaldy in Fifeshire, Scotland, and of Margaret Douglas, daughter of Mr Douglas of Strathendry, near Leslie. He was born at Kirkcaldy on the 5th of June 1723, some months after the death of his father. When he was three years old he was taken on a visit to his uncle at Strathendry, and when playing alone was carried off by a party of " tinkers." He was at once missed, and the vagrants pursued and overtaken in Leslie wood. He received his early education in the school of Kirkcaldy under David Miller, amongst whose pupils were many who were afterwards distinguished men. Smith showed great fondness for books and remarkable powers of memory; and he was popular among his schoolfellows. He was sent in 1737 to the university of Glasgow, where he attended the lectures of Dr Hutcheson; and in 1740 he went to Balliol College, Oxford, as exhibitioner on SnelPs foundation. He remained at that university for seven years. At Glasgow his favourite studies had been mathematics and natural philosophy; but at Oxford he appears to have devoted himself almost entirely to moral and political science and to ancient and modern languages. He also laboured to improve his English style by translation, particularly from the French. After his return to Kirkcaldy he resided there two years with his mother, continuing his studies, not having yet adopted any plan for his future life. In 1748 he removed to Edinburgh, and there, under the patronage of Lord Karnes, gave lectures on rhetoric and belles-lettres. About this time began his acquaintance with David Hume, which afterwards ripened into friendship. In 1751 he was elected professor of logic at Glasgow, and in 1752 was transferred to the chair of moral philosophy, which had become vacant by the death of Thomas Craigie, the successor of Hutcheson. This position he occupied for nearly twelve years, which he long afterwards declared to have been " by far the most useful, and therefore by far the happiest and most honourable period of his life." His course of lectures was divided into four parts—(1) natural theology; (2) ethics; (3) a treatment of that branch of morality which relates to justice, a subject which he handled historically after the manner of Montesquieu; (4) a study of those political regulations which are founded, not upon the principle of justice, but that of expediency, and which are calculated to increase the riches, the power and the prosperity of a state. Under this view he considered the political institutions relating to commerce, to finances, to ecclesiastical and military establishments. He first appeared as an author by contributing two articles to the Edinburgh Review (an earlier journal than the present, which was commenced in 1755, but of which only two numbers[1] were published),—one on Johnson’s Dictionary and the other a letter to the editors on the state of literature in the different countries of Europe. In 1759 appeared his Theory of Moral Sentiments, embodying the second portion of his university course, to which was added in the 2nd edition an appendix with the title, “Considerations concerning the first Formation of Languages.” After the publication of this work his ethical doctrines occupied less space in his lectures, and a larger development was given to the subjects of jurisprudence and political economy. Stewart gives us to understand that he had, as early as 1752, adopted the liberal views of commercial policy which he afterwards preached; and this we should have been inclined to believe independently from the fact that such views
- ↑ These two numbers were reprinted in 1818. Smith’s letter to the editors is specially interesting for its account of the Encyclopédie and its criticism of Rousseau's pictures of savage life.
