er-in-law of Lord Bute. He
says--

My Lord Stonefield is an old attached and faithful friend of
A. Stuart. The papers relative to the County of Lanark may
safely be communicated to him. He is perfectly convinced of
the propriety of what you and I agreed upon, that the
subject ought to be talked of as little as possible, and
never but among his most intimate and cordial friends.

A. SMITH.

_Friday, 7th May_.[334]

After being brightened by the agreeable visit of Burke, Smith was
presently cast into the deepest sadness by what seems to have been the
first trouble of his singularly serene and smooth life--the death of
his mother. She died on the 23rd of May, in her ninetieth year. The
three avenues to Smith, says the Earl of Buchan, were always his
mother, his books, and his political opinions--his mother apparently
first of all. They had lived together, off and on, for sixty years,
and being most tenderly attached to her, he is said, after her death,
never to have seemed the same again. According to Ramsay of
Ochtertyre, he was so disconsolate that people in general could find
no explanation except in his supposed unbelief in the resurrection. He
sorrowed, they said, as those who have no hope. People in general
would seem to have little belief in the natural affections; but while
they extracted from Smith's filial love a proof of his infidelity,
Archdeacon John Sinclair seeks to extract from it a demonstration of
his religious faith. It appears that when Mrs. Smith was visited on
her deathbed by her minister, her famous son always remained in the
room and joined in the prayers, though they were made in the name and
for the sake of Christ; and the worthy Archdeacon thinks no infidel
would have done that.

The depression Smith showed after his mother's death, however, was
unfortunately due in part to the fact that his own health was
beginning to fail. He was now sixty-one; as Stewart tells us, he aged
very rapidly, and in two years more he was in the toils of the malady
that carried him off. The shock of his mother's death could not help
therefore telling severely upon him in his declining bodily condition.

Burke was--no doubt at Smith's instance--elected Fellow of the Royal
Society of Edinburgh in June 1784, in spite of several black balls;
for, as Dalzel observes, "it would seem that there are some violent
politicians among us"; and in August 1785 he was again in Scotland