KIRKALDY, 7th June 1767.

MY DEAREST FRIEND—­The Principal design of this Letter is to Recommend to your particular attention the Count de Sarsfield, the best and most agreeable friend I had in France.  Introduce him, if you find it proper, to all the friends of yr. absent friend, to Oswald and to Elliot in particular.  I cannot express to you how anxious I am that his stay in London should be rendered agreeable to him.  You know him, and must know what a plain, worthy, honourable man he is.  I enclose a letter for him, which you may either send to him, or rather, if the weighty affairs of State will permit it, deliver it to him yourself.  The letter to Dr. Morton[203] you may send by the Penny Post.

My Business here is study, in which I have been very deeply engaged for about a month past.  My amusements are long solitary walks by the seaside.  You may judge how I spend my time.  I feel myself, however, extremely happy, comfortable, and contented.  I never was perhaps more so in all my life.

You will give me great comfort by writing to me now and then, and by letting me know what is passing among my friends at London.  Remember me to them all, particularly to Mr. Adams’s family and to Mrs. Montagu.[204]

     What has become of Rousseau?  Has he gone abroad because he
     cannot contrive to get himself sufficiently persecuted in
     Great Britain?

     What is the meaning of the bargain that your ministry have
     made with the India Company?  They have not, I see, prolonged
     their charter, which is a good circumstance.[205]

The rest of the sheet is torn.

Hume replies on the 13th that Sarsfield was a very good friend of his own, whom he had always great pleasure in meeting, as he was a man of merit; but that he did not introduce him, as Smith desired, to Sir Gilbert Elliot, because “this gentleman’s reserve and indolence would make him neglect the acquaintance”; nor to Oswald, because he found his intimacy with Oswald, which had lasted more than a quarter of a century, was broken for ever.  He goes on to describe his quarrel with Oswald’s brother the bishop; and concludes:  “If I were sure, dear Smith, that you and I should not some day quarrel in some such manner, I should tell you that I am yours affectionately and sincerely."[206] Count de Sarsfield seems to have gone on to Scotland to pay Smith a visit, for on the 14th of July Hume writes Smith, enclosing a packet, which he desires to be delivered to the Count.

Smith did not reply to either of these letters till the 13th of September, when he writes from Dalkeith House, where he has gone for the home-coming of the Duke and Duchess of Buccleugh.  After expressing his mind in the plainest terms about the bishop with whom Hume had the tussle—­“He is a brute and a beast,” says Smith—­he goes on to bespeak Hume’s favour for a young cousin of his who happened to be living in the same house with Hume in London, Captain David Skene, afterwards of Pitlour, who was in 1787 made inspector of military roads in Scotland.