to illuminate the ages that followed him with the light of his great doctrines, and his exquisite adaptations to philosophical purposes of the “winged words” of common language have helped to waft his philosophy down the stream of time.
We must now, however, refer more particularly to the materials proper to philosophy itself, that are contained in the book that has suggested the preceding remarks.
Though somewhat an excrescence upon the discussion of metaphysical topics, we cannot dismiss without some notice the ninety pages of the “Life and Letters of Reid,” which occupy the opening part of the volume, and which, introducing us as they do to the genius and peculiarities of an individual man, and associating these with the exercise of abstract speculation, may prove to many readers not the least interesting section of its contents.
The letters addressed by Reid to several of his distinguished contemporaries, form the most important supplementary matter appended by Sir William Hamilton to the biography by Stewart. Nearly all of this correspondence may be included in three parcels—(1.) Thirteen letters, written by Reid during the first six years after his removal from Aberdeen to Glasgow, to Drs. A. and D. Skene, physicians in Aberdeen. These interesting documents were furnished by Mr. Thomson of Banchory, and have not before been published. They contain some amusing pictures of Glasgow College in the last century, and “afford what was perhaps wanting to Mr. Stewart’s portraiture of Reid—they shew us the philosopher
