The ice, which Smith is thus blamed for not being able to break on this first meeting of his pupil with his Scotch neighbours, was not long in melting naturally away under the warmth of the Duke’s own kindness of heart.  He almost settled among them, for on Townshend’s death he gave up the idea on which that statesman had set his heart, and which was one of his reasons for committing the training of the young Duke to the care of a political philosopher,—­the idea of going into politics as an active career; and he lived largely on his Scotch estates; becoming a father to his numerous tenantry, and a powerful and enlightened promoter of all sound agricultural improvement.  Dr. Carlyle says the family were always kind to their tenants, but Duke Henry “surpassed them all, as much in justice and humanity as he did in superiority of understanding and good sense.”  Without claiming for Smith’s teaching what must in any case have been largely the result of a fine natural character, it is certain that no young man could live for three years in daily intimacy with Adam Smith without being powerfully influenced by that deep love of justice and humanity which animated Smith beyond his fellows, and ran as warmly through his conversation in private life as we see it still runs through his published writings.  Smith was always vigorous and weighty in his denunciation of wrong, and so impatient of anything in the nature of indifference or palliation towards it, that he could scarce feel at ease in the presence of the palliator.  “We can breathe more freely now,” he once said when a person of that sort had just left the company; “that man has no indignation in him."[209]

Smith remained the mentor of his pupil all his life.  At “Dalkeith, which all the virtues love,” he was always a most honoured guest, and Dugald Stewart says he always spoke with much satisfaction and gratitude of his relations with the family of Buccleugh.  Several of the traditional anecdotes of Smith’s absence of mind are localised at Dalkeith House.  Lord Brougham, for example, has preserved a story of Smith breaking out at dinner into a strong condemnation of the public conduct of some leading statesman of the day, then suddenly stopping short on perceiving that statesman’s nearest relation on the opposite side of the table, and presently losing self-recollection again and muttering to himself, “Deil care, deil care, it’s all true.”  Or there is the less pointed story told by Archdeacon Sinclair of another occasion when Smith was dining at Dalkeith, and two sons of Lord Dorchester were of the company.  The conversation all turned on Lord Dorchester’s estates and Lord Dorchester’s affairs, and at last Smith interposed and said, “Pray, who is Lord Dorchester?  I have never heard so much of him before.”  The former anecdote shows at once that Smith was in the habit of speaking his mind with considerable plainness, and that he shrank at the same time from everything like personal discourtesy; and the latter, like other stories of his absence of mind, is hardly worth repeating, except for showing that he continued to possess a redeeming infirmity.