of a family completely Scotch." Smith's house was
noted for its simple and unpretending hospitality. He liked to have
his friends about him without the formality of an invitation, and few
strangers of distinction visited Edinburgh without being entertained
in Panmure House. His Sunday suppers were still remembered and spoken
of in Edinburgh when M'Culloch lived there as a young man. Scotch
Sabbatarianism had not at that time reached the rigour that came in
with the evangelical revival in the beginning of this century, and the
Sunday supper was a regular Edinburgh institution. Even the
Evangelical leaders patronised it. Lord Cockburn and Mrs. Somerville
both speak with very agreeable recollections of the Sunday supper
parties of the Rev. Sir Harry Moncreiff, and Boswell mentions being
invited to one by another Evangelical leader, Dr. Alexander Webster.

His mother, his friends, his books--these were Smith's three great
joys. He had a library of about 3000 volumes, as varied a collection
in point of subject-matter as it would be possible to find. Professor
Shield Nicholson, who saw a large portion of it, says: "I was most
struck by the large number of books of travel and of poetry, of some
of which there were more than one edition, and occasionally _editions
de luxe_. I had hoped to find marginal notes or references which might
have thrown light on the authorities of some passages in the _Wealth
of Nations_ (for Smith gives no references), but even the ingenious
oft-quoted author of the _Tracts on the Corn Laws_ has escaped without
a mark. At the same time pamphlets have been carefully bound together
and indexes prefixed in Smith's own writing."[284]

Mr. James Bonar has been able to collect a list of probably two-thirds
of Smith's books--about 1000 books, or 2200 volumes.[285] Nearly a
third of the whole are in French, another third in Latin, Greek, and
Italian, and a little more than a third in English. According to Mr.
Bonar's analysis, a fifth of them were on Literature and Art; a fifth
were Latin and Greek classics; a fifth on Law, Politics, and
Biography; a fifth on Political Economy and History; and the remaining
fifth on Science and Philosophy. One cannot help remarking, as an
indication of the economist's tastes, the almost complete absence of
works in theology and prose fiction. Hume's _Dialogues on Natural
Religion_ and Pascal's _Pensees_ belong as much to philosophy as
theology; Jeremy Taylor's _Antiquitates