HUME.--David Hume was born in Edinburgh on the 26th of April (O.S.), 1711. His life was without many vicissitudes of interest, but his efforts to achieve an enduring reputation on the most solid grounds, mark him as a notable example of patient industry, study, and economy. He led a studious, systematic, and consistent life. Although of good family,--being a descendant of the Earl of Home,--he was in poor circumstances, and after some study of the law, and some unsuccessful literary ventures, he was obliged to seek employment as a means of livelihood. Thus he became tutor or keeper to the young Marquis of Annandale, who was insane. Abandoning this position in disgust, he was appointed secretary to General St. Clair in various embassies,--to Paris, Vienna, and Turin; everywhere hoarding his pay, until he became independent, "though," he says, "most of my friends were inclined to smile when I said so; in short, I was master of a thousand pounds." His earliest work was a _Treatise on Human Nature_, published in 1738, which met with no success. Nothing discouraged thereat, in 1741 he issued a volume of _Essays Moral and Political_, the success of which emboldened him to publish, in 1748, his _Inquiry Concerning the Human Understanding_. These and other works were preparing his pen for its greater task, the material for which he was soon to find. In 1752 he was appointed librarian to the Faculty of Advocates, not for the emolument, but with the real purpose of having entire control of the books and material in the library; and then he determined to write the _History of England_. HISTORY OF ENGLAND.--He began with the accession of the Stuarts, in 1603, the period when the popular element, so long kept tranquil by the power and sex of Queen Elizabeth, was ready first to break out into open assertion. Hume's self-deception must have been rudely discovered to him; for he tells us, in an autobiography fortunately preserved, that he expected so dispassionately to steer clear of all existent parties, or, rather, to be so just to all, that he should gain universal approbation. "Miserable," he adds, "was my disappointment. I was assailed by one cry of reproach, disapprobation, and even detestation. English, Scotch, Irish, Whig and Tory, churchman and sectary, free-thinker and religionist, patriot and courtier, united, in their rage, against the man who had presumed to shed a generous tear for the fate of Charles I. and the Earl of Strafford." How far, too, this was ignorant invective, may be judged from the fact that in twelve months only forty-five copies of his work were sold.