take offence." The next witness is Adam, lord commissioner of the jurycourt, who died in 1839. The chief fact which he states is, that Hume, who was always playful in conversation, when at tea one evening a chair sunk under his weight, said, "Young ladies, you must tell Mr. Adam to keep stronger chairs for heavy philosophers." Boswell, the young gentleman who escorted Rousseau's gouvernante to England, frankly told Hume he thought he ought not to keep company with him, on account of his books. "But, said I to him," adds Bozzy, "how much better you are than your books." A pleasant letter from Lady Anne Lyndesay, authoress of the song of "Auld Robin Gray,” would give some help. It contains Hume's character," from a manuscript said to have been found in the Pope's library at Rome:"

"CHARACTER OF

HIMSELF."

WRITTEN BY

"1. A very good man, the constant purpose of whose life is to do mischief.

2. Fancies he is disinterested, because he substitutes vanity in place of all other passions.

"3. Very industrious, without serving either himself or others.

4. Licentious in his pen, cautious in his words, still more so in his actions. "5. Would have had no enemies, had he not courted them; seems desirous of being hated by the public, but has only attained the being railed at.

"6. Has never been hurt by his enemies, because he never hated any one of them.

"7. Exempt from vulgar prejudices -full of his own.

"8. Very bashful, somewhat modest, no way humble.

9. A fool, capable of performances which few wise men can execute.

"10. A wise man, guilty of indiscretions which the greatest simpletons can perceive.

"11. Sociable, though he lives in solitude.

*12*

"13. An enthusiast, without religion; a philosopher, who despairs to attain truth.

"A moralist, who prefers instinct to

reason.

"A gallant, who gives no offence to husbands and mothers.

"A scholar, without the ostentation of learning."

In this letter, Lady Anne tells us that Hume asked her, did she remember the time when this playful character was written? "I was too young," she replied, " to think of it at the time.""How's this?" said he "have

not you and I grown up together?" I looked surprised. "Yes," added he, you have grown tall, and I have grown broad."

Home, the poet's, evidence is more doubtful. A banker's clerk, a young man of good character, robbed his master. Home accounts for it by the books he was in the habit of reading-" Boston's Fourfold State," and “Hume's Essays.”

It is not easy to examine a subject at all connected with literature, without finding it in some way or other illustrated by Scott. In a letter to Mr. Morrit, dated Abbotsford, October, 1815, he says:-"We visited Corby Castle on our return to Scotland, which remains, in point of situation, as beautiful as when its walks were celebrated by David Hume, in the only rhymes he was ever known to be guilty of. Here they are from a pane of glass at Carlisle :

"Here chicks in eggs for breakfast sprawl;

Here godless boys God's glories squall; Here Scotchmen's heads do guard the wall;

But Corby's walks atone for all.'

"Would it not," he adds, "be a good quiz to advertise The Poetical Works of David Hume,' with notes critical, historical, and soforth, with an historical inquiry into the use of eggs for breakfast, a physical discussion on the causes of their being addled; a history of English church music, and of the choir of Carlisle in particular; a full account of the affair of 1745, with the trials, last speeches, and soforth of the poor plaids who were strapped up at Carlisle; and lastly, a full, true, and particular description of Corby, with the genealogy of every family who ever possessed it? I think even without more than the usual waste of margin, the poems of David would make a decent twelve-shilling volume."

Of the "wine of demons," as a father of the Church calls poetry, Hume drank but moderately, and to the

defect of imagination, which this indicates, may be ascribed his want of sympathy with the higher vir tues, no one of which can exist with out the imaginative power. Wordsworth almost identifies Imagination and Faith. Hume's "History" is that of the progressof society rather than the story of individuals. It would seem that in his view-and we are not prepared to dispute its justness-that condition of society is the happiest in which the individual is lost from sight. If a state of society could be imagined allowing free development to all that is good in man, it would be, no doubt, the best; but the very conception, we fear, implies a contradiction. Civili

zation with its Wilkies, its Blacklocks, and its M'Phersons, is, probably, something better than barbarism with its true Homer.

Whatever Hume's abstract love for High Church may have been, and however opposed to the orthodox doctrines of the Scottish Church, he was in practice no Puseyite-at least he did not fast. Beef and cabbage he calls a charming dish; old mutton, too, he thought well of. He wished the Duke of Nivernois to become apprentice to his "lass," to learn the secret of making sheep's-head broth.

The fat philosopher was fond of children. He was so fat that the little thing who got possession of his knee remembered through all after-life keeping fast hold of his laced waistcoat to save itself from falling; as for more than one climbing at a time, as in Gray's family picture, it was out of the question.

Hume, in walking home from a party, with Ferguson, addressed his friend, pointing to the starry sky— "Oh, Adam, can any one contemplate the wonders of that firmament, and not believe that there is a God?" Men are forgiven anything rather than inconsistency with the character which society forms of them; and we are afraid that we are diminishing Hume's claims to the honour of canonization when we mention that he was a good church-goer. When in France, he appears to have attended the ambassador's chapel pretty regularly; and in Edinburgh he is said to have been fond of Robertson's preaching, and not averse to that of his colleague and opponent, John Erskine. Hume was seriously angry with a servant maid of his who did not attend church, where he had pro

vided seats for all his household. The woman was a dissenter, and attended a different place of worship, which answer satisfied him. A number of stories are told on doubtful authority, all illustrative of Hume's good nature and good sense. They may not be true; but their being believed is some evidence of the character of the man of whom they could be plausibly told. A chandler's wife on one occasion visited him" She had been entrusted," she said, "with a message to him from on high." Hume ordered her a glass of wine; and before she commenced her attack, contrived to divert her mind from theological topics, by fixing it on soap and candles and their price, and giving her an order for some. He is said to have got bogged in some marshy ground at the base of the Castle rock; an old woman finding "Hume the deist" in this slough of despond, refused to assist him out till he became a Christian. He repeated the creed and Lord's prayer, and thus her conscience was satisfied, and the philosopher rescued.

A proof of Hume's good nature was his writing a review of Dr. Henry's History of England. His review was written for the Edinburgh Magazine and Review, a journal conducted by Gilbert Stuart. Stuart, it would appear, detested Henry; and ascribing his own passions to others, thought it good policy to get Henry reviewed by a rival historian. Hume's review was printed, but suppressed. It did not answer Stuart's malignant purpose; for, as might be expected, it was conceived in a spirit of the greatest kindliness to Henry, and contained almost unqualified praise of his work. Stuart's account of it is characteristic, and worth preserving for its insane vehemence. He thus writes to a friend :—

"David Hume wants to review Henry, but that task is so precious that I will undertake it myself. Moses, were he to ask it as a favour, should not have it; yea, not even the man after God's own heart. I wish I could transport myself to London to review it for the Monthly-a fire there, and in the Critical, would perfectly annihilate him. Could you do nothing in the latter? To the former I suppose David Hume has transferred the criticism he intended for us. It is precious, and would divert you. I keep a proof of it in my cabinet for the amusement

of friends. This great philosopher begins to dote."

Mr. Burton quotes another sentence from this letter:

"Strike, by all means; the wretch will tremble, grow pale, and return [?] with a consciousness of his debility. When you have an enemy to attack, I shall, in return, give my best assistance, and aim at him a mortal blow, and rush forward to his overthrow, though the flames of hell should start up to oppose me."

It is almost a relief to know that this scoundrel was absolutely insane.

In the early part of the year 1776, Hume wrote letters of congratulation to his friend Adam Smith, and to Gibbon, on their respective publication of the "Wealth of Nations," and the "Decline and Fall;" of the latter he told Gibbon he could not expect to see the future volumes, as his health was broken. In April of that year he drew up the short sketch of his life, to which he has left little to his biographer to add. In the previous January he had made all arrangements with reference to his pecuniary affairs. The "Dialogues on Natural Religion" he had some reason to think would be suppressed, and he at once took effectual means to secure their publication, though he had withheld them for a period of thirty years, to avoid giving his friends offence. After writing the short memoir of his life, he set out for London, and at Morpeth met Home and Smith. Smith was obliged to return to Edinburgh. Home was enabled to accompany him to Bath, where the disease (an internal hemorrhage) seemed to yield, and hopes were entertained of recovery. In Mackenzie's "Life of Home" are some letters of Hume's, which we think Mr. Burton ought to have incorporated with his selection, and we have a codicil to Hume's will,

in which he records his difference with the poet, as to spelling the family name, and their opposed opinions on the subject of port wine. He leaves him "six dozen of port, provided he attests, under his hand, signed JOHN HUME, that he has himself alone finished one bottle of port at two sittings. By this concession he will, at once, terminate the only two differences that ever arose between us concerning temporal matters."* Hume returned home in July. His recovery now was plainly impossible. His friends appear to have been very much with him till within a few days of his actual decease. There is a mournful levity in their accounts of the indifference with which he awaited death. letter of Adam Smith, in which the particulars are detailed, can be easily referred to, being prefixed to most of the editions of the History of England. We are glad to avoid a subject so deeply painful.

The

We are, on the whole, pleased with Mr. Burton's book. His subject presented great difficulties, which are manfully met. To ourselves, an arrangement of the matter separating the letters of Hume more distinctly from the comments of his biographer, would seem a more convenient one both to author and reader. We close with Mr. Burton's account of Hume's burial place.

"On the declivity of the Calton hill, there is an old grave-yard which, seventy years ago, was in the open country beyond the boundary of the city of Edinburgh, and even at the present day, when it is the centre of a wide circumference of streets and terraces, has an air of solitude from its elevated site, and the abrupt rocky banks that separate it from the crowded thoroughfares. There, on a conspicuous point of rock, beneath a circular monument, built after the simple and solemn fashion of the old Roman tombs, lies the dust of DAVID HUME."

Mackenzie's Life of John Home.