Lord Brougham has rendered service not only to "Letters," but also to Freethought, by his admirable "Lives," incomparably the best we have, of Voltaire, Rousseau, Hume, Gibbon, etc. From Lord Brougham we learn (whose life in this sketch we follow) that David Hume, related to the Earl of Hume's family, was born in Edinburgh, in April, 1711. Refusing to be made a lawyer, he was sent, in 1734, to a mercantile house in Bristol. The "desk" not suiting the embryo historian's genius, we find him in 1737 at La Flèche, in Anjou, writing his still-born "Treatise on Human Nature;" which in 1742, in separate Essays, attracted some notice. Keeper and companion to the Marquis of Annandale in 1745, private secretary to General St. Clair in 1747, he visited on embassy the courts of Vienna and Turin. While at Turin he completed his "Inquiry Concerning the Human Understanding," the "Treatise on Human Nature" in a new form. Returned to Scotland, he published his "Political Discourses" in 1752, and the same year his "Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals." The "Essays, Moral and Metaphysical," are the form in which we now read these speculations. In 1752, Hume became librarian to the Faculty of Advocates. In 1754 he published the first volume of his "History of England." In 1755, appeared his "Natural History of Religion." In 1763 he accompanied the British ambassador to Paris. In 1765 he became _charge d'affaires_. In 1766 he was appointed Under Secretary of State under Marshal Conway. In 1775 he was seized with a mortal disease, which he bore without any abatement of his cheerfulness; and on the 25th of August, "_le bon_ David," as he was styled in Paris, died, to use his own words, having "no enemies--except all the Whigs, all the Tories, and all the Christians"--which was something to his honor, and a testimony of the usefulness of his life. David Hume was the first writer who gave historical distinction to Great Britain. Lord John Russell remarked in a speech at Bristol, in October, 1854:--"We have no other 'History of England' than Hume's.... When a young man of eighteen asks for a 'History of England,' there is no resource but to give him Hume." Hume was the author of the modern doctrines of politics and political economy, which now rule the world of science. He was "the sagacious unfolder of truth, the accurate and bold discoverer of popular error." More than a sceptic, he was an Atheist. Such is Lord Brougham's judgment of him. Hume carried Freethought into high places. In originality of thought, grace of style, and logical ability, he distanced all rival writers on religion in his time, and what is of no small importance, his life was as blameless as his intellect was unapproachable. Our first extract from his writings is a felicitous statement of the _pro_ and _con_., on the questions of polygamous and single, marriages:--