"I could give you several anecdotes with regard to him; I shall content myself with one. One day when he was advancing some irreligious maxims in a sarcastical style, I said to him, 'L----, David, ye are much altered in your sentiments since you professed yourself a sincere Roman Catholic, confessed yourself to the priests, declared yourself a sincere penitent, got absolution, and even extreme unction.' He was much offended at this, as he believed none knew, in this country, that all this had happened to him at Nice. He answered in a huff, 'I was in a high fever then, and did not know what I said, or they did with me.' I replied, 'You put me in mind of Patie Birnie's answer to the minister of Kinghorn, who, stumbling o'er him in a passage dead drunk, said, 'Ah! Patie, is this your promise that you would never be fu' again, if the Lord spared you?'--'Wow,' quo' Pate, 'I wonder to hear ane of your honour's sense mind what ony body says in a red raving fever; I kent naithing of what was ga'en.' David and I, for years after, were tolerable good friends, but never so cordial as before. G. N." [These initials are supposed to be those of George Nichol, M. P.] [9:1] Hume was inclined to admire the polity of the Church of England, on grounds peculiar to himself. The tendency of his remarks on the wealth and dignity of that establishment, is to hold that heaping riches and honours on a clergy, by occupying their minds in pomps and vanities, diverts a certain portion of the spirit of priestcraft from its natural propensity to subdue or annoy the rest of the community, and is on the whole a judicious investment of a considerable proportion of the wealth and honours which may happen to be at the command of a state. Adam Smith's opinion, on the other hand, was, that the people are best protected against the influence of priestcraft, by allowing no sect to have a superiority over others, and by leaving the clergy of different denominations to expend their zeal in fighting with each other. [11:1] Original at Kilravock. [13:1] Scroll in Hume's handwriting, Minto MSS. [13:2] Four Dissertations: The Natural History of Religion; Of the Passions; Of Tragedy; Of the Standard of Taste. 8vo, A. Millar. Hume, in his "own life," says they were published in the interval between the first and second volumes of his History. [14:1] In a copy which I possess, after p. 200, the end of the third dissertation, there are four strips of paper, the remains of half a sheet cut away. This occurs in signature K, and signature L begins with the fourth dissertation. [14:2] Vol. i. p. 246.