. . .
Smollett Now Bent His Steps Southwards To Montpellier.
His
baggage had gone in advance.
He was uncertain as yet whether to
make Montpellier or Nice his headquarters in the South. Like
Toulouse and Tours, and Turin, Montpellier was for a period a
Mecca to English health and pleasure seekers abroad. A city of no
great antiquity, but celebrated from the twelfth century for its
schools of Law and Physic, it had been incorporated definitely
with France since 1382, and its name recurs in French history
both as the home of famous men in great number and as, before and
after the brief pre-eminence of La Rochelle, the rival of Nimes
as capital of Protestantism in the South. Evelyn, Burnet, the two
Youngs, Edward and Arthur, and Sterne have all left us an
impression of the city. Prevented by snow from crossing the Mont
Cenis, John Locke spent two winters there in the days of Charles
II. (1675-77), and may have pondered a good many of the problems
of Toleration on a soil under which the heated lava of religious
strife was still unmistakeable. And Smollett must almost have
jostled en route against the celebrated author of The Wealth of
Nations, who set out with his pupil for Toulouse in February
1764. A letter to Hume speaks of the number of English in the
neighbourhood just a month later. Lomenie de Brienne was then in
residence as archbishop. In the following November, Adam Smith
and his charge paid a visit to Montpellier to witness a pageant
and memorial, as it was supposed, of a freedom that was gone for
ever, the opening of the States of Languedoc.
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