horough kindness of
a manly heart than this picture of the great philosopher sitting day
after day by the bedside of his pupil, watching eagerly every
indication of change, and only consenting to leave the room for a time
at night out of consideration for the silly jealousy of the valet, who
thought the tutor's presence an invasion of his own rights?

The Duke recovered and they returned to Paris. But while still at
Compiegne they heard of a sad event that could not fail to shock them
greatly, the death of their greatly esteemed young friend and
fellow-traveller, Sir James Macdonald. "Were you and I together, dear
Smith," writes Hume at this time, "we should shed tears at present for
the death of poor Sir James Macdonald. We could not possibly have
suffered a greater loss than in that valuable young man."[185]

In this letter Hume had dropped a remark showing that he was still
clinging to the idea which he had repeatedly mentioned to Smith of
returning and making his home for the remainder of his days somewhere
in France--in Paris, or "Toulouse, or Montauban, or some provincial
town in the South of France, where"--to quote his words to Sir G.
Elliot--"I shall spend contentedly the rest of my life with more
money, under a finer sky and in better company than I was born to
enjoy." Of this idea Smith strongly disapproved. He thought that Hume
would find himself too old to transplant, and that he was being
carried away by the great kindness and flatteries he had received in
Paris into entertaining a plan which could never promote his
happiness, because, in the first place, it would probably prove fatal
to work, and in the next, it would certainly deprive him of the
support of those old and rooted friendships which could not be
replaced by the incense of an hour. For his own part, and with a view
to his own future, Smith was of an entirely opposite mind. The
contrast between the two friends in natural character stands out very
strongly here. Smith had enjoyed his stay in France almost as much as
Hume, and had been welcomed everywhere by the best men and women in
the country with high respect, but now that the term of his tutorship
is approaching its end, he longs passionately for home, feels that he
has had his fill of travel, and says if he once gets among his old
friends again, he will never wander more. This appears from a letter
he wrote Millar, the bookseller, probably after his return from
Compiegne, of which Millar