But upon scarcely any subject does Hume converse as a brother travelling into foreign lands might be supposed to address a brother residing at home, and cultivating his ancestral acres. We should expect to find him observing that this river is like the Tweed, or unlike it--larger or smaller; or comparing some range of hills with the Cheviots: but he is general and undomestic in all his remarks, save the one observation that the Rhine is as broad as from his brother's house to the opposite side of the river. Until he comes to the land of Virgil, where he shows real enthusiasm, the chief object of his interest and observation appears to have been the warlike operations in the midst of which he found himself. The mission must have been attended with the ordinary dangers of a military enterprise. It was undertaken at a time when all Europe was at war, and though decisive battles were not taking place, petty conflicts and surprises were of perpetual occurrence until the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, a few months afterwards, restored repose to the exhausted nations. Yet we find no symptoms of anxiety in the mind of the philosophical actor of the military character. His tone is generally that of a private traveller in a peaceful country, rather than that of a member of an expedition armed for defence, and likely to be called on to defend itself. When he mentions warlike operations, he adopts the tone of a historical critic, and never that of a person who may find his personal safety or comfort compromised by them. Though he seems to have set out with the too general notion that military affairs are the main object of attention to the man who is desirous of distinction in historical literature, we find already dawning on him the historian's nobler duty as a delineator of the state of society, and an inquirer into the causes of the happiness or misery of the people. And his observations are made with a wide and generous benevolence, strikingly at contrast with those prevailing doctrines of his day, which sought, in the success and happiness of one country, the elements of the misery of another, and made the good fortune of our neighbours a source of lamentation, as indicating calamity to ourselves. His unaffected declaration of pleasure, in finding the Germans so happy and comfortable a people, marks a heart full of genuine kindness and benevolence, and will more than atone for the want of a disposition to range through alpine scenery, or a taste to appreciate the beauties of Gothic architecture. It will be seen that Hume had intended to continue his journal, but no farther trace of it has been found. The results of the mission have not been generally noticed by historians. Its objects were of a subordinate nature, and the occasion for attending to them was obviated by the completion of the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle on 7th October.