Hume’s character as a man has been sketched by himself, and his account may be admitted as, in most respects, substantially accurate. He describes himself as mild in disposition, possessing a command of temper, of an open, social, and cheerful humour, capable of attachment, but little susceptible of enmity, and of great moderation in his passions. “Even my love of literary fame,” he adds, “my ruling passion, never soured my temper, notwithstanding my frequent disappointments. My company was not unacceptable to the young and careless, as well as to the studious and literary; and as I took a particular pleasure in the company of modest women, I had no reason to be displeased with the reception I met with from them. In a word, though most men any wise eminent, have found reason to complain of calumny, I never was touched, or even attacked by her baleful tooth: and though I wantonly exposed myself to the rage of both civil and religious factions, they seemed to be disarmed in my behalf of their wonted fury. My friends never had occasion to vindicate any one circumstance of my character and conduct.” Much to this effect is the testimony of Dr. Adam Smith, the intimate friend of Hume. This writer, indeed, does not hesitate to speak of him “as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man, as perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit.” Some deduction should of course be made from this language, as that of a natural self-love in the one instance, and of an ardent friendship in the other. It is no proof, for example, of Hume’s exemption from the irascible passions, that he should have been so rarely capable of adverting to the opponents of his favourite speculations in morals or religion, without indulging in reproachful and degrading language; “bigots” and “zealots” being the designations flung at such persons on almost all occasions. In the same spirit the name of a “faction,” is his favourite one for that large class of politicians in this country whose principles did not embrace so much of “the monstrous creed of many made for one,” as belonged to his own. And it is worthy of notice, that a passage in his memoirs, which was inserted by him as an evidence of his exemption from this sort of prejudice and resentment, affords one of the most decisive proofs that he shared in this common weakness much more than himself or his admirers were willing to allow. “Though I had been taught by experience,” he writes, “that the Whig party were in possession of bestowing all places, both in the state and in literature, I was so little inclined to yield to their senseless clamour, that in above a hundred alterations, which further study, reading, or reflection, engaged me to make in the reigns of the two first Stuarts, I have made all of them invariably to the Tory side.” Now what reader can suppose that the inaccuracies detected by a mind without bias, could possibly