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. FOOTNOTES: [74:1] The following contrasted extracts represent some of the variations above alluded to. The passages on the one side will be found in the first, and those in the other in the last corrected edition of the "History of the Stuarts." _First edition._ _Later editions._ _King James_ inculcated those monarchical tenets with which he was so much infatuated. P. 54. Inculcated those monarchical tenets which he had so strongly imbibed. _Divine right._ And though these doctrines were perhaps more openly inculcated and more strenuously insisted on during the reign of the Stuarts, they were not then invented. P. 120. And though it is pretended that these doctrines were more openly inculcated, and more strenuously insisted on, during the reign of the Stuarts, they were not then invented. _America._ The seeds of many a noble state have been sown in climates kept desolate by the wild manners of the ancient inhabitants; and an asylum secured in that solitary world for liberty and science, if ever the spreading of unlimited empire, or the inroad of barbarous nations, should again extinguish them in this turbulent and restless hemisphere. P. 134. Expunged. _Charles I._ However moderate his temper, the natural illusions of self-love, joined to his education under James, and to the flattery of courtiers and churchmen, had represented his political tenets as certain and uncontroverted. P. 148.