The Earl was infinitely happier with Frederick and the gay freethinkers at Potsdam than in Scotland, where so many friendly heads had fallen, where every sight recalled unhappy things; where the lairds drank too much, and the ministers preached too long, and wits were scarce, and people wanted him to marry and beget heirs (here he had Frederick’s sympathy), and still the cracked old bell kept up its peevish lament, _Disloyal, Loyal, Loyal, Disloyal!_ Such was the Earl’s correspondence with Hume; they are the letters of a kind, good, humorous old pagan. To d’Alembert also he wrote freely. ‘I have read with much pleasure four volumes of your works, and was really pleased with myself when I found that I could understand them. I want to use my rights as an old fellow, and tell anecdotes.’ Then he gives a Scotch story, which would be more amusing in Scots than in his French. Of Frederick, he says that (unlike Carlyle) he is ‘gey easy to live wi’,’ _l’homme du monde le plus aisé à vivre_. He announces ‘David Hume is elevated to the sublime dignity of a Saint, by public acclamation: the street where he dwells is entitled La rue de _St. David_. Vox populi, vox Dei. Amen.’ Again,—the old sinner!— ‘I have received an inestimable treasure, plenary indulgences _in articulo mortis_, with power to bestow some of them on twelve elect souls. One I send to good David Hume; as I wish you all good things in both worlds, I offer you a place among my chosen.’ The philosopher took a simple pleasure in drolleries which no longer tempt us—we have now been so long emancipated. The Earl said that in Spain he would have felt obliged to denounce Frederick to the Inquisition. Frederick has given the old exile medicines to make him love him, as Prince Hal did to Falstaff. ‘If he had not bewitched me, would I stay here, where I only see a spectre of the sun, when I might live and die in the happy climate of Valencia?’