And thus we are brought back to the anecdote with which we set out. The story we have told is, in all its essentials, that which Donald Gorm, David Hume’s barber, treated him to on that morning when he wanted to close up for ever the mouth of the arch sceptic. It is not easy to smile while under the hands of a story-telling barber, for the reason that the contracted muscle runs a risk of being still more contracted by a slice being taken off it by a resolute razor moving in straight lines, so that probably it was not till Donald had finished both the story and the shaving, that David dared to indulge in that good-natured smile with which he used to meet his opponents, even in the teeth of the Gael’s oath, “’Tis a miracle, py Cot,”--a word this latter which, in Donald’s humour, might stand for the word cod, as well as for another too sacred to be here mentioned. Yet the philosopher had further occasion for his good-humoured reticence, with which, as is well known, he declared he would alone meet the censors of his Essay, for it was really on the occasion of this great religious sensation in the city that the washer-women at the “Nor’ Loch” threatened to “dook him,” for the reason that, as they had heard, he had not only written that detestable Essay to prove that no miracles (for they were ungenerous enough to pay no attention to his _very_ grave exception of the real Bible ones) could ever be, but he had actually gone the extreme length of disbelieving the intervention of God to save the innocent Mary Mochrie from the Moloch of the criminal law. We need not be unassured that this additional bit of gossip, as it spread though the city, would only tend to the inflammation that already prevailed. Nor need we wonder at all this, when we remember the play of metaphysical wit, which was received as very serious by the vulgar,--that David believed in nothing, except that there was no God.