I beg to introduce to your kind regards one of my best respected friends, Mr. Dugald Stewart, who though as yet little known out of Scotland, is one of the best known men in it. He stands in the very first class of their mathematicians and literary men. He has twice at a day’s warning taken up Dr. Adam Ferguson’s lectures in Moral Philosophy, and twice completely excelled him in the opinion of every one, as was proved in particular by the attendance he had while he lectured. Perhaps you may remember his father who lectured at Edinburgh in Mathematics, and wrote a treatise on the sun’s distance from us as deducible from the theory of gravity. It is very poor compliment to Mr. Stewart, to say that in science it is the father who is really the child.

My friend travels with Lord Ancram, the son of the Marquis of Lothian, whom he represents to me as a pretty and very amiable young man. I beg you would extend your notice to him also.

I have extreme confidence in begging your attention to Mr. Stewart, because I am sure it is in his power to repay you by the information he can give you of the literary characters in his country, and the objects they are pursuing. He is however very diffident, and is very fearful of betraying himself upon subjects which he is not master of, in which list for the present he reckons mathematics, and is therefore averse to meeting M D’Alembert on the subject, though he wants to see him. He is not strong in Natural Philosophy, but he understand every thing in it. He burns to see you as its present father; and as at least half the time I spent alone with him in Scotland was employed in conversing about you, I believe he would not think he had been out of his country unless he was allowed to see you at Paris.

I have no news which I have the courage to write you. The way things go on will have sufficiently explained some of the reasons of my past silence. At present however there is no news which you are not at least as well acquainted with as myself, were I inclined to go into it. I think the nation would in time open its eyes about improvements in commerce and peace, if pains were taken with them and the ministry as much in earnest as the last on this point.

Please to remember me very affectionately to Mr. Franklin And for yourself, believe me my dearest sir, your ever respectful, (devoted, grateful,) and affectionate humble servant Benjn. Vaughan