ABSTRACT
Hitherto, the origins and development of the Scottish Enlightenment have been studied through institutions fundamental to Scottish life and history long before the eighteenth century. Like so much else, the new institutions that appeared in the era of the Scottish Enlightenment often developed in the wake of the improving spirit that was evident from the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries. Scottish eighteenth-century clubs and societies have been covered as a whole in three works of Davis McElroy. William Smellie’s being in the Scottish Enlightenment but not of it leads to the consideration of the establishment of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1783. The last convivial club, the Friday, belonged to a different generation since it was founded in 1803 by those who had been educated by the distinguished teachers of the Scottish Enlightenment, Stewart, Millar, Playfair. The Scottish Universities’ opinion of English higher education has already been seen.
