tion. You will find
him a man of true merit, though perhaps his sedentary recluse life may
have hurt his air and appearance as a man of the world." The Comtesse
writes Hume on the 6th of May: "I think I told you that I have made
the acquaintance of Mr. Smith, and that for the love of you I had
given him a very hearty welcome. I am now reading his _Theory of Moral
Sentiments_. I am not very far advanced with it yet, but I believe it
will please me." And again on the 25th of July, in the same year, when
Hume's quarrel with Rousseau was raging, she appends to a letter to
Hume on that subject a few words about Smith, who had apparently
called upon her just as she had finished it: "I entreated your friend
Mr. Smith to call upon me. He has just this moment left me. I have
read my letter to him. He, like myself, is apprehensive that you have
been deceived in the warmth of so just a resentment. He begs of you to
read over again the letter to Mr. Conway. It does not appear that he
(Rousseau) refuses the pension, nor that he desires it to be made
public."[161] The _Theory of Moral Sentiments_, which she had then
begun to read, grew more and more in favour with her, and a few years
after this--in 1770--when the two sons of Smith's friend, Sir Gilbert
Elliot, visited her, they found her at her studies in her bedroom, and
talking of translating the book, if she had time, because it contained
such just ideas about sympathy. She added that the book had come into
great vogue in France, and that Smith's doctrine of sympathy bade fair
to supplant David Hume's immaterialism as the fashionable opinion,
especially with the ladies.[162] The vogue would probably be aided by
Smith's personal introduction into French literary circles, but
evidence of its extent is found in the fact that although one French
translation of the work had already appeared, three different persons
were then preparing or contemplating another--the Abbe Blavet, who
actually published his; the Due de la Rochefoucauld, who discontinued
his labour when he found himself forestalled by the Abbe; and the
Comtesse de Boufflers who perhaps did little more than entertain the
design. The best translation was published some years after by another
lady, the widow of Condorcet.

The Baron d'Holbach's weekly or bi-weekly dinners, at one of which it
has been mentioned Smith had a conversation with Turgot, were, as L.
Blanc has said, the regular states-general of philosophy. The usual