controversial attacks, conducted by no mean champions. No author or speaker could launch into a defence of monarchical prerogative without triumphantly citing the opinion of Hume;--no friend of any popular cause, from Chatham downwards, could appeal to history without condemning his plausible perversions. No season of a debating society has ever ended without the vexed questions he has started being discussed in conjunction with his name. Every newspaper has recorded the editor's opinion of the tendency of Hume's History. In reviews and magazines, and political pamphlets, the references, laudatory or condemnatory, are still, notwithstanding all that has been done for British history in later times, unceasing; and some books, of no small bulk, have been written, solely against the History, as one pamphlet is written against another. Of a book which is so universally known, and has been subjected to so thorough a critical examination, both in its narrative and its reflective parts, a detailed criticism in a work like the present would be superfluous and unwelcome. But the great extent of the controversial writings on the subject, the quantity of able criticism which the controversy has produced, the new light it has frequently been the means of throwing on portions of British history, and the variety of contending opinions it has elicited, do, in some measure, enable one who is partial to that kind of reading, to note slightly and fugitively the leading opinions which this controversy has developed; and thus, looking back through the whole vista of debate and inquiry, to describe, in general terms, the estimate which those who have since Hume's time studied British history to best effect, have formed of his great work. Perhaps, for casting a glance at the general principles he has announced as to the progress of the constitution and public opinion in Britain, as well as the general scope and extent of his historical labours, his work may be divided into two leading departments; the history from the accession of the house of Tudor downwards, which he completed in 1759; and the history anterior to that epoch, which was published at a later period of his life. In this arrangement, the general observations will find their place in a subsequent portion of this work; while, in the meantime, the opinions entertained of the narrative department of the volume, published in 1754, may be noticed. The chief charge brought against it has been, that in describing the great conflict which ended in the protectorate, the author has shown a partiality to the side of the monarch, and particularly to Charles I. and his followers; and has endeavoured to make the opposite side--Independents, Presbyterians, Republicans, or under whatever name they raised the banner of opposition to the court--odious and ridiculous.