The letter terminates with a recommendation which accounts for the absence of all observations on religious topics in the correspondence between Blair and Hume: while it shows that their intercourse had not always excluded discussions of such a character.

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structed.

Having said so much to your friend, who is certainly a very ingenious man, though a little too zealous for a philosopher, permit me also the freedom of saying a word to yourself. Whenever I have had the pleasure to be in your company, if the discourse turned upon any common subject of literature, or reasoning, I always parted from you both entertained and inBut when the conversation was diverted by you from this channel towards the subject of your profession; though I doubt not but your intentions were very friendly towards me, I own I never received the same satisfaction: I was apt to be tired, and you to be angry. I would therefore wish, for the future, whenever my good fortune throws me in your way, that these topics should be forborne between us. I have long since done with all inquiries on such subjects, and am become incapable of instruction; though I own no one is more capable of conveying it than yourself. After having given you the liberty of communicating to your friend what part of this letter you think proper, I remain, sir," &c.

Hume afterwards wrote the following letter on the same subject:

You put me in mind,' said an honest fellow in the company, whose name I did not know, of an acquaintance of mine, a notary public, who having been condemned to be hanged for forgery, lamented the hardship of his case; that after having written many thousand inoffensive sheets, he should be hanged for one line."" Hardy's Memoirs of Charlemont, p. 121.

HUME to DR. CAMPBELL.

"January 7, 1762.

"DEAR SIR,It has so seldom happened that controversies in philosophy, much more in theology, have been carried on without producing a personal quarrel between the parties, that I must regard my present situation as somewhat extraordinary, who have reason to give you thanks for the civil and obliging manner in which you have conducted the dispute against me, on so interesting a subject as that of miracles. Any little symptoms of vehemence, of which I formerly used the freedom to complain, when you favoured me with a sight of the manuscript, are either removed or explained away, or atoned for by civilities, which are far beyond what I have any title to pretend to. It will be natural for It will be natural for you to imagine, that I will fall upon some shift to evade the force of your arguments, and to retain my former opinion in the point controverted between us; but it is impossible for me not to see the ingenuity of your performance, and the great learning which you have displayed against me.

"I consider myself as very much honoured in being thought worthy of an answer by a person of so much merit; and as I find that the public does you justice with regard to the ingenuity and good composition of your piece, I hope you will have no reason to repent engaging with an antagonist, whom, perhaps, in strictness, you might have ventured to neglect. I own to you, that I never felt so violent an inclination to defend myself as at present, when I am thus fairly challenged by you, and I think I could find something specious at least to urge in my defence; but as I had fixed a resolution, in the beginning of my life, always

to leave the public to judge between my adversaries and me, without making any reply, I must adhere inviolably to this resolution, otherwise my silence on any future occasion would be construed an inability to answer, and would be matter of triumph against

me."

He then, in the passage already cited, describes the occasion on which the "Theory of Miracles" was suggested to him.

In answer to this, there is a letter by Campbell, in which he endeavours to rival his opponent in candour, politeness, and gentlemanlike feeling. The happy courtesy with which he apologizes for the occasionally irascible tone of his essay, shows that the retired northern divine possessed in no small degree the qualities that might have adorned a more showy station.

DR. CAMPBELL to HUME.

25th June, 1762.

The testimony you are pleased to give in favour of my performance, is an honour of which I should be entirely unworthy, were I not sensible of the uncommon generosity you have shown in giving it. Ever since I was acquainted with your works, your talents as a writer have, notwithstanding some differences in abstract principles, extorted from me the highest veneration. But I could scarce have thought that, in spite of differences of a more interesting nature, even such as regard morals and religion, you could ever force me to love and honour you as a man. Yet no religious prejudices (as you would probably term them,) can hinder me from doing justice to that goodness and candour, which appear in every line of your letter.

It would be in vain to dissemble the pleasure which it gives me, that I am thought to have acquitted myself tolerably in a dispute with an author of such acknowledged merit. At the same time, it gives me real pain, that any symptoms of vehemence (which are not so easily avoided in disputation as one would imagine,) should give so generous an adversary the least ground of complaint. You have (if I remember right, for I have not the book here,) in the appendix to the third volume of your "Treatise on Human Nature," apologized for using sometimes the expressions-'Tis certain, 'Tis evident, and the like. These, you observe, were in a manner forced from you by the strong, though transient light in which a particular object then appeared, and are therefore not to be considered as at all inconsistent with the general principles of scepticism which are maintained in the Treatise. My apology is somewhat similar. There is in all controversy a struggle for victory, which I may say compels one to take every fair advantage that either the sentiments or the words of an antagonist present him with. But the appearances of asperity or raillery, which one will be thereby necessarily drawn into, ought not to be constructed as in the least affecting the habitual good opinion, or even the high esteem, which the writer may nevertheless entertain of his adversary.

The Publication of the History anterior to the Accession of the Tudors — Completion of the History - Inquiry how far it is a complete History Hume's Intention to write an Ecclesiastical History - Opinions of Townsend and others on his History - Appreciation of the Fine Arts-Hume's House in James's Court-Its subsequent occupation by Boswell and Johnson-Conduct of David Mallet- Hume's Projects - The Douglas Cause Correspondence with Reid.

IN 1762 there was published, in two quarto volumes, the "History of England, from the Invasion

of Julius Cæsar, to the Accession of Henry VII." The farther back we proceed from those periods of which a full narrative of historical events is preserved by contemporary chroniclers, into those more obscure ages when even the lines of kings are hardly preserved, and fragments of laws, or of long obsolete literature, and antiquarian relics, are the historian's only guide, the less satisfactory is Hume's history, when compared with other historical works. The earliest part is thus the least valuable. He had here, however, to encounter difficulties which we are only at this day able to estimate, in the absence of those materials which the industry of antiquaries has lately brought to light, to so great an extent, as almost necessarily to supersede Hume's "History of England" during the early ages, as a source of historical knowledge.1

The works prepared by the Record Commission, whether it be true or not that it has failed to fulfil the services expected from so large an expenditure of the public money, present the sources of British history on a very different scale from that in which they appeared before Hume; and if he had lived in the present day, he would not have attempted to write the history of the first fourteen centuries in less than three years; or, attempting it, would have palpably overlooked materials which, in his own time, he could not have found access to. Among such sources may be viewed, Domesday Book, the Rotuli Hundredorum, the many records of the various courts of justice, the "Parliamentary writs, or writs of military summons, together with the records and muniments relating to the suit and service due and performed to the king's high court of parliament and the councils of the realm, as affording evidence of attendance given at parliaments and councils ;" the remains of Anglo-Saxon legislation, collected under the name of "Ancient laws and institutions of England," and the "Ancient laws and institutes of Wales."

To these must be added the many antiquarian labours of private individuals or societies, such as the county histories, the works circulated by the numerous book clubs, and the inquiries into the early ecclesiastical history, which the controversies on church polity, for which this age is becoming peculiar, have excited. The publi