never afterwards troubled himself with doing more than uttering a good-humoured exclamation, or, perhaps, passing a joke at the expense of those who make themselves the tools of others by being the slaves to their own factious prejudices or propensities. But the reception of the History' was not his only disappointment, though it was the most severe. It would not be easy to find any instance of conduct more truly worthy of a philosopher than his bearing up against the repeated failures of the works he most esteemed, and the mortifying neglect which at first all his writings experienced, with but one exception. He looked steadily forward, with a confidence truly surprising and amply justified by the event, to the time when, probably after his course was run, his fame would shine out with surpassing lustre. Even in his latter hours, when he had, in some measure, seen the failure of the injustice under which he originally suffered, he retained a confident belief that his renown had not yet nearly reached its highest pitch; and that most admirable passage above cited from his 'Life,' written a few weeks before his death, makes a touching reference to the prospects which then cheered him, but which he knew were never, while he lived, to be realized. They were the only prospects, unhappily for him, which shed light around his dying couch; yet such was the truly admirable temper of his mind, that no believer could possess his spirit in more tranquil peace, in contemplation of the end which he saw fast approaching, nor meet his last hour with more cheerful resignation.

It is to be observed that the charges made against Mr. Hume for his sceptical writings, and for the irreligious doctrines which he published to the world, are in almost every respect ill-founded. He never had

recourse to ribaldry, hardly ever invoked the aid even of wit to his argument. He had well examined the subject of his inquiries. He had, with some bias in

favour of the singularity or the originality of the conclusions to which they led, been conducted thither by reasoning, and firmly believed all he wrote. It may be a question, whether his duty required him to make public the results of his speculations, when these tended to unsettle established faith, and might destroy one system of belief without putting another in its place. Yet if we suppose him to have been sincerely convinced that men were living in error and in darkness, it is not very easy to deny even the duty of endeavouring to enlighten them, and to reclaim. But it is impossible to doubt that, with his opinions, even if justified in suppressing them, he never would have stood excused had he done anything to countenance and uphold what he firmly believed to be errors on the most important of all questions. Nor is it less. manifest that he was justified in giving his own opinions to the world on those questions if he chose, provided he handled them with decorum, and with the respect due from all good citizens to the religious opinions of the State. There are but one or two passages in them all, chiefly in the Essay on Miracles,' which do not preserve the most unbroken gravity, and all the seriousness befitting the subject.

In his familiar correspondence he was a little less precise, though even here he was very far from resembling the Voltaire school. In his conversation he seldom alluded to the subject, but occasionally his opinions were perceivable. Thus, when one of the University, the late Mr. John Bruce, professor of logic, asked him to revise the syllabus of his lectures, he went over the proof-sheets with him; and on coming to the section entitled 'Proofs of the Existence of the Deity,' Mr. Hume said, "Right; very well." But the next section was entitled Proof of the Unity of the Deity,' and then he cried out, Stop, John, stop; who told you whether there were ane or mair?" The same professor met him one day

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on the staircase of the College Library, where the inscription "Christo et Musis has ædes sacrarunt cives Edinenses" drew from the unbeliever an irreverent observation on the junction which the piety rather than the classical purity of the good town had made between the worship of the heathen and

our own.

That his conversation, however, was habitually free from all irreverent allusion, there can be no more complete proof than his uninterrupted intimacy with a man who never would have tolerated the least deviation from perfect decorum in that particular, Dr. Robertson. The reflection which naturally arises from their friendship is first, that so venerable an authority has pronounced in favour of his friend's conduct; that he never deemed his writings an offence against even the ecclesiastical laws of his country, much less against good morals; that he regarded those speculations which he the least approved and the most lamented, as justified by their author's honest sincerity of purpose; and that he considered the conduct of his argument as liable to no reprobation even from himself, a sincere believer, a pious Christian, a leading Presbyter of a Church whose discipline is peculiarly strict, a man above almost all other men regardful of decorum in his own demeanour, professional and private. It is another reflection, suggested by the same fact, that such bigots as Dr. Johnson are exposed to our reprobation, almost to our contempt, for being unable to bear the presence of a man with whom Robertson deigned, and even loved, to associate. Assuredly the English layman had not a more pious disposition than the Scottish divine; the historian of the Reformation had rendered as valuable service to the cause of religion as the essayist. The man who had passed his nights with Savage in the haunts of dissipation, and whom a dinner could tempt to sit for hours by Wilkes, might well submit to the society of a man through his

whole life as pure in morals, as blameless in conduct, as those others were profligate and abandoned. But Robertson's faith was founded on reason and inquiry, not built upon the blind devotion to established usages; and his piety, while charity tempered it, was warmed at the genial fire of a learned and inquiring philosophy, and proceeded from his reason, not like the dogmatical zeal of Johnson, inspired by fierce passions, matured by hypochondriacal temperament, stimulated by nervous fears. The one could give a reason for the faith that was in him-the other believed upon trust; the one believed because he could argue-the other because he was afraid; the one grounded his religion upon his learning-the other upon his wishes and his temper. The intolerant layman seemed to betray in his demeanour his soreness, in his horror of discussion a lurking suspicion that all was not sound in the groundwork of his system. The tolerant and philosophic divine showed a manly confidence in the solidity of the altar at which he ministered. While Johnson was enraged at the foundations of his illunderstood, unexamined belief being scrutinized for fear they should be shaken, Robertson, who well comprehended on what his faith rested, defied the utmost inquiry and most active efforts of his adversaries, well assured that out of the conflict, however fiercely sustained, the system to which he was attached, because he understood it, must come with new claims to universal acceptation.

APPENDIX.

I HAVE been favoured with some unpublished letters of Mr. Hume by the kindness of my learned kinsman Lord Meadowbank and other friends. By the following part of a letter to Dr. Clephane, we may perceive that he had once, at least, gone out of his line, and attempted something purely fanciful, apparently in verse. From the sample of his imaginative writing in the Essays, the Epicurean' especially, little room is left for lamenting that he did not further pursue this deviation from his appointed walk. The letter is dated 18th February, 1751. His low estimate of Shakspeare breaks out in this letter; but he became convinced in the sequel, that his kinsman's tragedy, 'Douglas,' to which he alludes, deserved the success which he justly predicts; for we find him afterwards, to the same friend, giving his opinion, after reading the tragedy, and he terms it a singular as well as fine performance, steering clear of the spirit of the English theatre, not devoid of Attic and French elegance.' He seems to have formed a very low estimate of the English genius in those days; for, speaking of Lord Lyttelton's Henry III.,' which he hears is to be in three quarto volumes, he exclaims, "O magnum, horrible, et sacrum libellum!-the last epithet probably applicable to it in more senses than one"-and adds, "however, it cannot well fail to be readable, which is a great deal for an English book now-a-days."

"NINEWELLS, near Berwick, 18th February, 1751.

"But since I am in the humour of displaying my wit, I must tell you that lately, at our idle hours, I wrote a sheet called the 'Bellman's Petition,' wherein (if I be not partial, which I certainly am) there was great pleasantry and satire. The printers in Edinburgh refused to print it (a good sign, you'll say, of my prudence and discretion). Mr. Mure, the member, has a copy of it: ask it of him if you meet with him, or bid the Colonel, who sees him every day in the house, ask it; and, if you like it, read it to the