him a visit at Beaconsfield after his
retirement from public life, that he then spoke with the warmest
admiration of Smith's vast learning, his profound understanding, and
the great importance of his writings, and added that his heart was as
good and rare as his head, and that his manners were "peculiarly
pleasing."[327] Smith on his part was drawn to Burke by no less
powerful an attraction. He once paid him a compliment with which the
latter appears to have been particularly gratified, for he repeated it
to his literary friend on this same occasion. "Burke," said the
economist, "is the only man I ever knew who thinks on economic
subjects exactly as I do, without any previous communications having
passed between us."[328]

The installation of Lord Rector was to take place on Saturday the 10th
of April, and Burke arrived in Edinburgh on Tuesday or Wednesday
previous. Whether he was Smith's guest while there I am unable to say,
but at any rate it was Smith who did the honours of the town to him,
and accompanied him wherever he went. Dalzel, the Greek professor,
gives an account of the statesman's visit, to his old friend and
class-fellow, Sir Robert Liston, and states that "Lord Maitland
attended him constantly and Mr. Adam Smith. They brought him," he
adds, "to my house the day after he arrived." Lord Maitland was the
eldest son of the Earl of Lauderdale, and became a well-known figure
both in politics and in scientific economics after he succeeded to the
peerage himself. I have already mentioned him for his admiration of
Smith, and his defence of him from the disparaging remarks of Fox,
though he was himself no blind follower of the _Wealth of Nations_,
but one of the earliest and not the least acute of the critics of that
work. He was at this time one of the rising hopes of the Whigs in the
House of Commons, which he had entered as representative of a Cornish
borough in 1780. Dalzel had been his tutor, and had accompanied him in
that capacity to Oxford; and being also a great favourite with Smith,
whom he respected above all things for his knowledge of Greek, he was
naturally among the first of the eminent citizens to whom they
introduced their distinguished guest.

On Thursday morning Burke and Smith went out with Lord Maitland to
Hatton, the Lauderdale seat in Midlothian, to dine and stay the night
there on their way to Glasgow, and Dugald Stewart and Dalzel joined
them later in the day after they had finished the