But the want of industry, though a serious delinquency in a historian, is almost venial when compared with a want of impartiality, and the deficiency of Hume in this last quality has been often and largely exposed. The extent in which the historian was conscious of his own habit of unfairness, it is not in our power to determine; but there is hardly a conceivable form of disingenuousness, of which his volumes might not be shown to afford numerous and striking examples. The volume embracing the reigns of James and Charles was first published, and we have seen that the reception it met with only taught the author to resolve, with a more fixed purpose, as to the complexion of those which were to follow. In instances where his integrity is in the main preserved, his eloquence is often so far misdirected that the truth becomes discoloured, and makes the impression of falsehood. In his hands the faults of his favourites lose much of their magnitude and grossness, while their merits are raised much above their proper level, and with regard to their opponents, the inverse process is adopted. Disagreeable facts are passed over, or but partially and very artfully developed; while others, of an opposite nature, have all prominence, and all imaginable force assigned them. Incidents of very rare occurrence, and existing only as exceptions, are culled with the greatest care, and presented as the rule, and as no more than samples of the abundance that might be adduced. And in describing the reasonings and the motives by which the contending parties from time to time were influenced, it is the fixed usage of this writer to consult his own prejudices or imagination much more than the lights afforded by the documents of the times. These summaries, as they are called, are inserted by Hume, in the place of the speeches which the ancient historians were wont to put into the mouth of their leading men; and, interesting as they are, deserve no more credit, considered as the character of parties, or as accounts of what was really said, than it is usual to bestow on those elaborate harangues. There is much reason to believe that the historian began the reigns of the two first Stuarts with a sincere conviction that sufficient allowance had not been made for the peculiar situation of those princes. But his delinquencies are such, that this excuse must be of small avail in his defence. The majority of more than one generation in this country have derived their notions of English history almost exclusively from the pages of Hume; but so low has he fallen as a historical authority, that the persons who have read scarcely anything else, rarely show courage, or rather weakness, enough to make any appeal to him. [Illustration: _Engraved by E. Scriven._ DE WITT. _From a Picture by Netscher, in the possession of M^r. Lenoir, at Paris._ Under the Superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.