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 attending to the duties of his Rectorship.  He was accompanied this time by Windham, who was the most attached and the most beloved of his political disciples, and who had been a student at Glasgow himself in 1766.  If Dalzel was delighted with Burke, he was enchanted with Windham, for, says he to Liston, “besides his being a polite man and a man of the world, he is perhaps the very best Greek scholar I ever met with.  He did me the honour of breakfasting with me one morning, and sat for three hours talking about Greek.  When we were at Hatton he and I stole away as often as we could from the rest of the company to read and talk about Greek....  You may judge how I would delight in him.”  Smith was not at Hatton with them this time, but he saw much of them in Edinburgh.

Smith had probably known Windham already, but at any rate, as soon as Burke and he arrived in Edinburgh on the 24th of August and took their quarters in Dun’s Hotel, they paid a visit to Smith, and next day they dined with him at his house.  Among the guests mentioned by Windham as being present were Robertson; Henry Erskine, who had recently been Burke’s colleague in the Coalition Ministry as Lord Advocate; and Mr. Cullen, probably the doctor, though it may have been his son (afterwards a judge), who lives in fame chiefly for his feats as a mimic.  Windham gives us no scrap of their conversation except a few remarks of Robertson about Holyrood; and though he says he recollected no one else of the company except those he has mentioned, there was at least one other guest whose presence there that evening he was shortly afterwards to have somewhat romantic occasion to recall.  This was Sir John Sinclair, who had just re-entered Parliament for a constituency at the Land’s End, after having been defeated in the Wick burghs by Fox.  Burke and Windham proposed making a tour in the Highlands, and Sir John advised them strongly, when they came to the beautiful district between Blair-Athole and Dunkeld, to leave their post-chaise for that stage and walk through the woods and glens on foot.  They took the advice, and about ten miles from Dunkeld came upon a young lady, the daughter of a neighbouring proprietor, reading a novel under a tree.  They entered into conversation with her, and Windham was so much struck with her smartness and talent that though he was obliged at the time, as he said, most reluctantly to leave her, he, three years afterwards, came to Sinclair in the 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.