y of Edinburgh. From this
year until 1790 his name appears regularly upon the class lists kept by
its professors. The 'grey metropolis of the North' was at this period
pre-eminent among the literary and academic centres of Great Britain.
The principal of the university was William Robertson, the {7}
celebrated historian. Professor Dugald Stewart, who held the chair of
philosophy, had gained a reputation extending to the continent of
Europe. Adam Smith, the epoch-making economist, was spending the
closing years of his life at his home near the Canongate churchyard.
During his stay in Edinburgh, Thomas Douglas interested himself in the
work of the literary societies, which were among the leading features
of academic life. At the meetings essays were read upon various themes
and lengthy debates were held. In 1788 a group of nineteen young men
at Edinburgh formed a new society known as 'The Club.' Two of the
original members were Thomas Douglas and Walter Scott, the latter an
Edinburgh lad a few weeks younger than Douglas. These two formed an
intimate friendship which did not wane when one had become a peer of
the realm, his mind occupied by a great social problem, and the other a
baronet and the greatest novelist of his generation.

When the French Revolution stirred Europe to its depths, Thomas Douglas
was attracted by the doctrines of the revolutionists, and went to
France that he might study the new movement. But Douglas, like so many
of his {8} contemporaries in Great Britain, was filled with disgust at
the blind carnage of the Revolution. He returned to Scotland and began
a series of tours in the Highlands, studying the conditions of life
among his Celtic countrymen and becoming proficient in the use of the
Gaelic tongue. Not France but Scotland was to be the scene of his
reforming efforts.

{9}

CHAPTER II

SELKIRK, THE COLONIZER

From the north and west of Scotland have come two types of men with
whom every schoolboy is now familiar. One of these has been on many a
battlefield. He is the brawny Highland warrior, with buckled tartan
flung across his shoulder, gay in pointed plume and filibeg. The other
is seen in many a famous picture of the hill-country--the Highland
shepherd, wrapped in his plaid, with staff in hand and long-haired dog
by his side, guarding his flock in silent glen, by still-running burn,
or out upon the lonely brae.

But in Thomas Douglas's day such types of Highland li