r the arches of
the Pont du Gard--the monument of antiquity which of all, excepting
only the Maison Carree at Nimes, most excited his enthusiastic
admiration, all contributed to put him into an abnormally cheerful and
convalescent humour. . . .

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. Antiquaries and philosophers went
to moralise on the spectacle in the spirit in which Freeman went to
Andorra, Byron to the site of Troy, or De Tocqueville to America. It
was there that the great economist met Horne Tooke.

Smollett's more practical and immediate object in making this
pilgrimage was to interview the great lung specialist, known locally to
his admiring compatriots as the Boerhaave of Montpellier, Dr. Fizes.
The medical school of Montpellier was much in evidence during the third
quarter of the eighteenth century, and for the history of its various
branches there are extant numerous Memoires pour Servir, by Prunelle,
Astruc,