ofessor and friend. On taking leave of him the Earl said, "My
dear Doctor, I hope to see you oftener when I come to town next
February," but Smith squeezed his lordship's hand and replied, "My
dear Lord Buchan,[365] I may be alive then and perhaps half a dozen
Februaries, but you never will see your old friend any more. I find
that the machine is breaking down, so that I shall be little better
than a mummy"--with a by-thought possibly to the mummies of Toulouse.
"I found a great inclination," adds the Earl, "to visit the Doctor in
his last illness, but the mummy stared me in the face and I was
intimidated."[366]

During the spring months Smith got worse and weaker, and though he
seemed to rally somewhat at the first approach of the warm weather, he
at length sank again in June, and his condition seemed to his friends
to be already hopeless. Long and painful as his illness was, he bore
it throughout not with patience merely but with a serene and even
cheerful resignation. On the 21st of June Henry Mackenzie wrote his
brother-in-law, Sir J. Grant, that Edinburgh had just lost its finest
woman, and in a few weeks it would in all probability lose its
greatest man. The finest woman was the beautiful Miss Burnet of
Monboddo, whom Burns called "the most heavenly of all God's works,"
and the greatest man was Adam Smith. "He is now," says Mackenzie,
"past all hopes of recovery, with which about three weeks ago we had
flattered ourselves."

A week later Smellie, the printer, wrote Smith's young friend, Patrick
Clason, in London: "Poor Smith! we must soon lose him, and the moment
in which he departs will give a heart-pang to thousands. Mr. Smith's
spirits are flat, and I am afraid the exertions he sometimes makes to
please his friends do him no good. His intellect as well as his senses
are clear and distinct. He wishes to be cheerful, but nature is
omnipotent. His body is extremely emaciated, and his stomach cannot
admit of sufficient nourishment; but, like a man, he is perfectly
patient and resigned."[367]

In all his own weakness he was still thoughtful of the care of his
friends, and one of his last acts was to commend to the good offices
of the Duke of Buccleugh the children of his old friend and physician,
Cullen, who died only a few months before himself. "In many respects,"
says Lord Buchan, "Adam Smith was a chaste disciple of Epicurus as
that philosopher is properly understood, and Smith's last act
resembled that of E