very generally felt, lies against this historian, which more than counterbalances all the advantages which I have enumerated, and renders his work dangerous and pernicious to those, whom it is in other respects so well calculated to instruct and improve. Hume, I need not say, was an infidel-and an infidel of no common stamp. His infidelity was not merely the cold speculation of a false philosophy, that could assume and consistently maintain the guise of indifference and impartiality in weighing the pretensions, and appreciating the respective merits of the different schemes of religion that have engaged the attention of mankind. An infidel of this class, one could imagine might make a faithful historian, having only to record facts and opinions as he found them :-one could conceive, indeed, that, in the examination of some periods of history, an infidel might bring a mind to the task less prejudiced and less biassed than a better man ; and having no feeling, no interest, where all hearts besides are so deeply engaged, and overwhelmed at the importance of the issue, he would be a most unexceptionable witness, and a most desirable referee, where the object was to obtain a dispassionate statement of facts.

Mr. Hume has no claim to be reckoned among this class: he was rather the virulent and insidious enemy of all religion, natural and revealed. The bad distinction which he seemed ambitious to aim at, was, to be considered as the destroyer of

the faith of his countrymen. His ever wakeful industry, indeed, leaves us no room to doubt the sincerity of his principles; but, at the same time, his hatred and zeal against religion and religious characters have rendered him, in all cases in which the interests or good name of these are in the remotest degree concerned, the most prejudiced, and on some occasions, it should even seem, the most blinded partisan that can easily be imagined.

My reader, perhaps, has been sometimes both amused and disgusted with the fond credulity and bigotry of the monkish historians of the dark ages, who could see nothing, and would know nothing, but in relation to one paramount interest; who conceived all things to be fair and right, that had a tendency to promote their superstition, and even thought a falsehood had lost its disgraceful nature, if thereby, what they deemed to be important truths, were more extensively diffused, and more zealously embraced. Mr. Hume is exactly the same bigot in the cause of infidelity; and his History must be read with just the same sort of caution and allowance, as the impartial inquirer would deem it proper to exercise in turning over the pages of the devoted chroniclers of the cloister.

The hostility of this historian to the Christian religion, and especially as it begins to appear in its fairest form at the time of the Reformation, is singularly striking. If an opportunity occurs

in the course of his narrative, of a silent and disguised attack upon its interests, he can manage it with consummate skill: by suppressing some facts and distorting others, by a convenient belief or disbelief of his authorities, and by employing, above all, the colouring of his own scepticism, the friends of religion are made to mourn, and its enemies to exult without suspecting the fallacy.. He can even enjoy, with seeming moderation and candour, and with cool philosophical dignity, the too frequent triumphs afforded to the adversaries of the faith by the follies or vices of its professed advocates or interested followers. But no sooner does Christianity present itself in such an aspect, on the track of the civil historian, as bids fair to challenge the attention and admiration of mankind, than Mr. Hume loses himself in his malevolence, and, as if thrown off his guard by the violence of his passion, he no longer preserves his disguise, or seems capable of exercising his usual judgment and discrimination. The appearance of some eminently religious character on the page of the eloquent historian, seems, indeed, to have sometimes the same effect upon his faculties, as when you happen to touch the one discordant string in the harmony of the composed maniac's mind, who had been delighting you with some fine speculations of his exalted fancy. In a moment the just connexion of the whole train of ideas is broken up; and the mind remains solely

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occupied with the distorted image, the object of the morbid aversion.

From these reflections, it will be obvious, how very improper a book Hume's History, in the original editions, must be to form the study of young people. There will, I trust, be found few persons of information in the present day, whatever may have been their own neglect of religion, and their consequent incompetency to discriminate between the conflicting claims and jarring doctrines of the different churches and sects of Christendom,-there will, I trust, be found but few persons, whatever are the errors of their opinion on this subject, or their want of all opinion, who would choose to have sceptical principles and an hatred against all revealed religion instilled into the minds of their children.

Indeed, the consequences of the diffusion of such principles, these very principles of Hume, have been so severely felt in our age, and have so lately been written in characters of blood on the page of almost every nation of Europe, that policy, and the mere regard which every individual must feel for the safety of himself and family; his con cern for his property, and for the safe transmission of that property to his children; must render him, if better motives were wanting, no indifferent spectator of the diffusion of irreligious principles in this nation. After the experience of the French revolution, indeed, we may expect to find the leading ranks more firmly attached than ever to

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the religion of their country; or, at least, to some modification of Christianity, which may serve as the cement of civil society, and which may give that proper sanction to the laws of men, without which, it is plainly seen, they will be obeyed no longer than while force is at hand to compel obedience: a system which in the end seldom fails to overturn the laws it was raised to support, and to provoke again by oppression the ruinous march of revolution.

Mr. Hume, it is true, has been esteemed a writer very favourable to monarchical principles; but the intelligent reader will recollect, that, though there is no reason to suppose that our historian acted upon system, yet it afterwards became a canon of the antichristian party, to spare the throne while the altar was attacked, and to offer incense at the shrine of religion, while the authority of the prince was insulted; that each might be rendered incapable of assisting the other, and thus the fall of both be insured.

The plan of the Editor of the present work is, to put into the hands of parents and instructors of youth, and into those of the general reader, who has no time to search more original authorities, an edition of this eloquent and useful historian, purified from his contaminating principles.

In pursuit of this object, the Editor has altered no one fact or statement of the general narrative, or one line of those masterly delineations of character with which this beautiful