"Thus you see a splendid fortune awaits me: Yet you cannot imagine with what regret I leave this country. It is like stepping out of light into darkness, to exchange Paris for Dublin. The most agreeable circumstance is the friendship and confidence of the lord-lieutenant; and if the present credit of that family continue, as it is likely to do, I shall probably have it in my power to do service to my friends--particularly to your young folks; for as to you and myself, it is long since we thought our fortunes entirely made."[287:1] He was not, however, destined to fill this office; and neither he himself, nor his best friends, appear to have regretted the circumstance; the fact being that he was but slenderly endowed with either of the qualifications then indispensable to an Irish statesman,--a capacity for hard drinking, and adroitness in bold political intrigues. The exercise of an official function, among a people where one sect of Christians enjoyed all offices, emoluments, and honours, while another, following the national religion, were scarcely allowed to live, must have shocked his sense of political justice; while it may be questioned if he was a sufficiently bold politician to have attempted any reform of this abuse. The project of his appointment, however, was brought so near its consummation, as to elicit certain applications for ecclesiastical preferment, in order that the reputation he had achieved, in other places, for influence in this department of patronage, might not be unacknowledged in Ireland.[288:1] In his letters to his friends, at this time, he describes these vicissitudes of fortune; and indulges in a feeling to which he was very prone,--an uncertainty as to his future projects, and an indolent disinclination to make up his mind how to act. HUME _to_ DR. BLAIR. "_Paris, 23d August, 1765._ "All the literati of my friends, who understand English, think your Dissertation one of the finest performances in our language. A gentleman, of my acquaintance, has translated it for his own satisfaction. He could not publish it without publishing "Ossian" at the same time. My scepticism extends no farther, nor ever did, than with regard to the extreme antiquity of those poems; and it is no more than scepticism.