House of Commons and said to
him, "I have never been able to get this beautiful mountain nymph out
of my mind, and I wish you to ascertain whether she is married or
single." Windham was too late. She was already married to Dr.
Dick--afterwards a much-trusted medical adviser of Sir Walter
Scott--and had gone with her husband to the East Indies.

They returned to Edinburgh on the 13th of September, and, says
Windham, "after dinner walked to Adam Smith's. Felt strongly the
impression of a family completely Scotch. House magnificent and place
fine.... Found there Colonels Balfour and Ross, the former late
aide-de-camp to General Howe, the latter to Lord Cornwallis. Felt
strongly the impression of a company completely Scotch."

Colonel Nesbit Balfour, who won great distinction in the American war,
was the son of one of Smith's old Fifeshire neighbours, a proprietor
in that county, and became afterwards well known in Parliament, where
he sat from 1790 to 1812. Colonel (afterwards General) Alexander Ross
had also taken a distinguished part in the American war, and was
Cornwallis's most intimate friend and correspondent. He was at this
time Deputy-Adjutant-General of the Forces in Scotland. Whether he was
a relation of the Colonel Patrick Ross of whom Smith speaks in one of
his letters as a kinsman of his own,[335] I cannot say.

Next day, the 14th, Burke and Windham dined with Smith. There was no
other guest except a Mr. Skene, no doubt one of Smith's cousins from
Pitlour, probably the Inspector-General of Scotch Roads already
mentioned.[336] On the following morning the two statesmen proceeded
on their way southward.

One of the visits Burke paid in Edinburgh was to a charming poet, to
whom fortune has been singularly unkind, not only treating him cruelly
when alive, but instead of granting the usual posthumous reparation,
treating him even more cruelly after his death. I mean John Logan, the
author of the _Ode to the Cuckoo_, which Burke thought the most
beautiful lyric in the language. Logan was at the moment in the thick
of his troubles. He had written a tragedy called _Runnymede_, which,
though accepted by the management of Covent Garden, was prohibited by
the Lord Chamberlain, who scented current politics in the bold
speeches of the Barons of King John, but it was eventually produced in
the Edinburgh theatre in 1783. Its production immediately involved the
author, as one of the ministers of Leith, in difficulties wi