MY DEAR FRIEND—­As I have left the care of all my literary papers to you, I must tell you that except those which I carry along with me, there are none worth the publishing but a fragment of a great work which contains a history of the astronomical systems that were successively in fashion down to the time of Descartes.  Whether that might not be published as a fragment of an intended juvenile work I leave entirely to your judgment, tho’ I begin to suspect myself that there is more refinement than solidity in some parts of it.  This little work you will find in a thin folio paper book in my writing-desk in my book-room.  All the other loose paper which you will find either in that desk or within the glass folding-doors of a bureau which stands in my bedroom, together with about eighteen thin paper folio books, which you will likewise find within the same glass folding-doors, I desire may be destroyed without any examination.  Unless I die very suddenly, I shall take care that the Papers I carry with me shall be carefully sent to you.—­I ever am, my dear friend, most faithfully yours,

     ADAM SMITH.

     EDINBURGH, 16th April 1773.

     To DAVID HUME, Esq., 9 St. Andrew’s Square,
     Edinburgh.[229]

Smith went to London shortly after writing this letter, and spent most of the next four years there.  We find him there in May 1773, for he is admitted to the Royal Society on the 27th of that month; he is there in September, for Ferguson then writes to him as if he were still there.  He is there in February 1774, for Hume writes him in that month, “Pray what accounts are these we hear of Franklyn’s conduct?”—­a question he would hardly have addressed except to one in a better position for hearing the truth about Franklin than he was himself.  He is there in September 1774, for he writes Cullen from town in that month, and speaks of having been for some time in it.  He is there in January 1775, for on the 11th Bishop Percy met him at dinner at Sir Joshua Reynolds’, along with Johnson, Burke, Gibbon, and others.[230] He is there in February, for a young friend, Patrick Clason, addresses a letter to him during that month to the care of Cadell, the bookseller, in the Strand.  He is there in December, for on the 27th Horace Walpole writes the Countess of Ossory that “Adam Smith told us t’other night at Beauclerk’s that Major Preston—­one of two, but he is not sure which—­would have been an excellent commander some years hence if he had seen any service.  I said it was a pity that the war had not been put off till the Major should be some years older."[231] He returned to Scotland in April 1776, about a month after his book was issued, but we find him back again in London in January 1777, for his letter to Governor Pownall in that month is dated from Suffolk Street.  Whether the first three years of his stay in London was continuous I cannot say, but it would almost appear so from the circumstance that nothing remains to indicate the contrary.