ds.

CHAPTER XII

TOULOUSE

Smith joined his pupil in London in the end of January 1764, and they
set out together for France in the beginning of February. They
remained abroad two years and a half--ten days in Paris, eighteen
months in Toulouse, two months travelling in the South of France, two
months in Geneva, and ten months in Paris again. Smith kept no journal
and wrote as few letters as possible, but we are able from various
sources to fill in some of the outlines of their course of travel.

At Dover they were joined by Sir James Macdonald of Sleat, a young
baronet who had been at Eton College with the Duke of Buccleugh, and
who had been living in France almost right on since the
re-establishment of peace. Sir James was heir of the old Lords of the
Isles, and son of the lady who, with her factor Kingsburgh, harboured
Prince Charlie and Flora Macdonald in Skye; and he was himself then
filling the world of letters in Paris and London alike with
astonishment at the extent of his knowledge and the variety of his
intellectual gifts. Walpole, indeed, said that when he grew older he
would choose to know less, but to Grimm he seemed the same marvel of
parts as he seemed to Hume. He accompanied Smith and the Duke to
Paris, where they arrived (as we know from Smith's letter to the
Rector of Glasgow University) on the 13th of February.

In Paris they did not remain long--not more than ten days at most,
for it took at that period six days to go from Paris to Toulouse, and
they were in Toulouse on the 4th of March. Smith does not appear
during this short stay in Paris to have made the personal acquaintance
of any of the eminent men of letters whom he afterwards knew so well,
for he never mentions any of them in his subsequent letters to Hume
from Toulouse, though he occasionally mentions Englishmen whose
acquaintance he first made at that time. He probably could not as yet
speak French, for even to the last he could only speak it very
imperfectly. Most of their time in Paris seems, therefore, to have
been spent with Hume and Sir James Macdonald and Lord Beauchamp, who
was Hume's pupil and Sir James's chief friend. Paris, moreover, was
merely a halting-place for the present; their immediate destination
was Toulouse, at that time a favourite resort of the English. It was
the second city of the kingdom, and wore still much of the style of an
ancient capital. It was the seat of an archbishopric, of a university,
of