Having however spoken thus of Mr. Hume’s style, and remarked the general acuteness and frequent justice of his observations, we have fairly exhausted our topics of praise. With regard to the two most valuable qualities of a historian—research and integrity, the claims of Hume are in the inverse position of his pretensions in other respects. Instead of seeking, as the author of the Essay on Miracles might have been expected to do, for the best possible testimonies, for these in the greatest possible number, and then sifting them to the utmost, we find him committing himself, with apparent unconsciousness, to the most incompetent guides, often to a single authority where several were accessible, and where several are adduced, attaching no more credit to the depositions of an intelligent writer contemporary with what he records, than to that of some worthless chronicler, who lived some centuries later! This is particularly the case with regard to that portion of our history which precedes the Reformation; and there cannot be a greater mistake than to suppose that his references at the foot of the page in these earlier volumes indicate the sources from which the material of his text was derived. “Ingenious but superficial” is the description of these volumes which Gibbon recorded in his diary, after reading them. In the more modern period of our history, as the authorities relating to it may be consulted by an indolent man with less labour, and by a man of taste with less disgust, we find a little more research and discrimination, but by no means sufficient to render his accounts worthy of implicit confidence, even when not liable to be affected by any of his known partialities. It is to this deficient industry, and to the consequent want of a steady mastery of his subject before beginning to write upon it, that we have mainly to attribute the perpetual contradictions which occur in his description of the great contest under the Stuart princes; contradictions which are so many and so irreconcilable as to make his book one of the most inconsistent that ever emanated from a man of ordinary powers. We have not, of course, space in which to exhibit the proofs of this statement;—but we are confident that inquiry will prove it to be correct.