Page:Thomas Reid (Fraser 1898).djvu/90

 have done me in naming me to be one of the examinators, that I will not decline it, though I confess I like the honour better than the office.'

In the autumn of 1766 Reid exchanged the house in the Drygate for an official residence in the Professors' Court of the Old College. This appears in a letter to Dr. Andrew Skene on December 17th:—

'I live now in the College, and have no distance to walk to my class in dark mornings, as I had before. I enjoy this ease, though I am not sure whether the necessity of walking up and down a steep hill three or four times a day was not of use. I have of late had a little of your distemper, finding a giddiness in my head when I lie down, or rise, or turn myself in my bed. Our College is very well peopled this session. My public class is above three score, besides the private class. Dr. Smith never had so many in one year. There is nothing so uneasy to me here as our factions in the College.'

In February 1767, along with other local news, we find this in a letter to David Skene:—

'We are now resolved to have a canal from Carron to this place, if the Parliament allows it. £40,000 was subscribed last week by the merchants of the Carron Company for this purpose. Our medical college has fallen off greatly this session, most of the students of medicine having followed Dr. Black to Edinburgh. The natural and moral philosophy classes are more numerous than they have ever been; but I expect a great falling off, if I see another session. I was just now seeing your furnace along with Dr. Irvine.… If I could find a machine as proper for analysing ideas, moral sentiments, and other materials belonging to the fourth kingdom, I believe I should find in my heart to bestow the money first. I have the more use for a machine of this kind, because my alembic for performing these operations—I mean my cranium—has been a little out of order this winter, by a vertigo, which has made