_Mr Hume’s misrepresentations of the behaviour of the Reformers to Queen Mary._――The whole account which this historian has given of the conduct of the protestant clergy towards Mary, from her arrival in Scotland until her marriage with Darnley, is very remote from sober and genuine history. It is rather a satire against the Reformation, which he charges with rebellion; against the presbyterian church, whose genius he describes as essentially productive of fanaticism and vulgarity; and against his native country, the inhabitants of which, without exception, he represents as overrun with rusticity, strangers to the arts, to civility, and the pleasures of conversation. History, Reign of Eliz. chap. i. near the close. “Il n’est rien de plus facile quand on a beaucoup d’esprit, et beaucoup d’experience dans l’art de faire des livres, que de composer une Histoire satyrique, des meme faits qui ont servi à faire une Eloge. Deux lignes supprimée, ou _pour_ ou _contre_, dans l’exposition d’un fait, sont capables de faire paroistre un homme ou fort innocent, ou fort coupable: et comme par la seule transposition de quelques mots, on peut faire d’un discours fort saint un discours impie; de meme par la seule transposition de quelques circonstances, l’on peut faire de l’action la plus criminelle, l’action la plus vertueuse.” Bayle, Critique Generale de l’Histoire du Calvinisme, {320} p. 13, 2de edition, 1683. To this charge the historian of England has exposed himself on more than one occasion.