empiricism, and by very acute argument seeks to subvert the self-subsistence of mind or the soul as Berkeley had subverted the substantiality of matter. Ideas are but weakened copies of impressions of the senses; mind is but a succession of ideas; and there is no necessary connection between cause and effect. Hume profoundly influenced European thought. The Scottish sceptical philosopher wakened Kant (also of Scottish descent) 'from his dogmatic slumber,' and by Kant's own confession gave a new direction to his researches in speculative philosophy; Hume may be said to have moved the man that moved the universe of modern thought. Kant said that since metaphysic first took shape there had been no more pregnant contribution to it than Hume's 'skepsis.' Hume was probably the keenest and most original thinker of his time: his revolutionary and destructive speculations provoked a complete reconstruction of philosophy by Kant on one hand and the Scottish school on the other. Hume, not Bacon, marks the change from the old to the new; and in our own time Green treated him as the most perfect exponent of empiricism. His ethical system was utilitarian, based mainly on unselfish sympathy, and provided Smith with the basis of his moral theory. The famous argument against the credibility of miracles, which for long provoked much keener controversy than any part of his philosophical system, turned on the doctrine that miracles are incapable of proof because they rest on testimony; since no testimony can be so strong and convincing as our own experience of the uniformity of nature.

The History of Hume is not a work of authority, but it is an admirably clear and well-written narrative, and fully entitled to supersede Rapin and Carte (see page 244), whose materials and collections he largely relied on. He was constantly eliminating Scotticisms and otherwise subjecting it to revision in point of style, but was content to take his authorities at second hand. It has been said that up to 1750 no great historical work had appeared in any modern language, the most valuable books prior to that date being rather contemporary memoirs, biographical sketches, and the materials for history rather than history itself: the temper for dealing with long periods of the past, and informed by a sense of the social progress and development of the interrelation of events, did not yet exist. To annalists and chroniclers the wide outlook, the synthetic vision, are unknown. The spirit of real scientific research was yet unborn; and if it had been born, the materials to work on were not yet accessible. Manuscripts began to be edited by the antiquaries in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; the great historic collections of Rymer, Leibnitz, and Muratori all date from the early eighteenth century. In France the historic spirit first awoke; and French influence told directly on Scotland. Hume and Robertson were both directly

influenced by the contemporary French historical methods (Voltaire's Life of Louis XIV. appeared in 1751; Hume's first volume in 1754); and the earlier writers of this school, though gifted with the power of dealing with large masses of facts and wide surveys, and with the graces of style, are not yet scientific historians. They are read for pleasure, but not as authorities or for purposes of research.

The striking parts of his subject are related by Hume with picturesqueness; and it is seldom indeed that he fails so ludicrously as in the scene of the slaughter of Comyn, where he makes Kirkpatrick ask the hesitating Bruce, ‘And is that a matter to be left to conjecture?' In his dissertations on the state of parties and the tendency of particular events, he shows a philosophical tone and method hitherto unknown in English history. He was too indifferent to sympathise heartily with any political party, and too sceptical on matters of religion to appreciate the full force of religious principles in directing the course of public events. An enemy to all turbulence and enthusiasm,' he naturally leaned to the side of settled government, even when it was united to arbitrary power; and though he could 'shed a generous tear for the fate of Charles I. and the Earl of Strafford,' the struggles of his poor countrymen for conscience' sake against the tyranny of the Stuarts excited in him no other feelings than those of ridicule or contempt. He could even forget Raleigh's merits and exaggerate his faults to shelter the sordid injustice of a weak and contemptible sovereign. No hatred of oppression burns through his pages. The epicurean repose of the philosopher was not disturbed by visions of liberty or ardent aspirations for the improvement of mankind. 'He had early in life,' said Sir James Mackintosh, 'conceived an antipathy to the Calvinistic divines, and his temperament led him at all times to regard with disgust and derision that religious enthusiasm or bigotry with which the spirit of English freedom was, in his opinion, inseparably associated.' He defended the paradox that the history of the English constitution justified the despotic and absolute system of the Stuarts. Irritation at English prejudices against Scotland and Scotsmen made him become, during the progress of the History, more patriotically Scotch and Tory, more pronouncedly anti-English and anti-Whig; and in altering he debated what he conceived to be concessions to 'villainous Whiggism.' But Tory though he was, he wished success to the American revolution.

Love of effect betrayed him into inconsistencies, exaggeration, and inaccuracies. Thus in speaking of the end of Charles I., he says that 'the height of all iniquity and fanatical extravagance yet remained -the public trial and execution of the sovereign.' Yet three pages farther on we find: 'The pomp, the dignity, the ceremony of this transaction, corresponded to the greatest conception that is

suggested in the annals of humankind; the delegates of a great people sitting in judgment upon their supreme magistrate, and trying him for his misgovernment and breach of trust.' He in one part admits, and in another denies, that Charles was insincere in dealing with his opponents. To illustrate his theory of the sudden elevation of Cromwell into importance, he states that about the meeting of Parliament in 1640 the name of Oliver is not to be found oftener than twice upon any committee, whereas the journals of the House of Commons show that, before the time specified, Cromwell was on forty-five committees, and twelve special messages to the Lords. Hundreds of such errors were pointed out; no doubt Hume was careless as to facts. But in judging of the History as a contribution to literature we must look at its clear and admirable narrative, the dignity of its style, the sagacity with which the views of conflicting sects and parties are estimated and developed, the large admissions which the author makes to his opponents, and the high importance he everywhere assigns to the interests of learning and literature. The critical keenness of his mind is admirably shown in the oft-quoted remark that 'an English Whig who asserts the reality of the Popish Plot, an Irish Catholic who denies the Massacre in 1641, and a Scotch Jacobite who maintains the innocence of Queen Mary must be considered as men beyond the reach of argument or reason, and must be left to their prejudices.' Hume and Robertson both surpassed their French masters in not making their works on the past a vehicle for covertly attacking contemporary movements. In virtue of his History, Hume ranks with Robertson and Gibbon in the English historical triumvirate, in which Gibbon said he himself 'never presumed to take a place.' Schlegel and Gifford ranked Hume above Gibbon. Dr Johnson was hostile, and, like Jeffrey, criticised Hume's style as not English but French; Macaulay has criticised his attitude with sufficient asperity. But it may safely be said that Hume was the first to give literary charm to the study of English history.

The Middle Ages-Progress of Freedom. Those who cast their eye on the general revolutions of society will find that, as almost all improvements of the human mind had reached nearly to their state of perfection about the age of Augustus, there was a sensible decline from that point or period; and men thenceforth gradually relapsed into ignorance and barbarism. The unlimited extent of the Roman empire, and the consequent despotism of its monarchs, extinguished all emulation, debased the generous spirits of men, and depressed the noble flame by which all the refined arts must be cherished and enlivened. The military government which soon succeeded, rendered even the lives and properties of men insecure and precarious; and proved destructive to those vulgar and more necessary arts of agriculture, manufactures, and commerce; and in the end, to the military art and

genius itself, by which alone the immense fabric of the empire could be supported. The irruption of the barbarous nations which soon followed overwhelmed all human knowledge, which was already far in its decline; and men sunk every age deeper into ignorance, stupidity, and superstition; till the light of ancient science and history had very nearly suffered a total extinction in all the European nations.

But there is a point of depression as well as of exaltation, from which human affairs naturally return in a contrary direction, and beyond which they seldom pass, either in their advancement or decline. The period in which the people of Christendom were the lowest sunk in ignorance, and consequently in disorders of every kind, may justly be fixed at the eleventh century, about the age of William the Conqueror; and from that era the sun of science, beginning to reascend, threw out many gleams of light, which preceded the full morning when letters were revived in the fifteenth century. The Danes and other northern people who had so long infested all the coasts, and even the inland parts of Europe, by their depredations, having now learned the arts of tillage and agriculture, found a certain subsistence at home, and were no longer tempted to desert their industry in order to seek a precarious livelihood by rapine and by the plunder of their neighbours. The feudal governments also, among the more southern nations, were reduced to a kind of system; and though that strange species of civil polity was ill fitted to insure either liberty or tranquillity, it was preferable to the universal license and disorder which had everywhere preceded it. But there was no event which tended farther to the improvement of the age than one which has not been much remarked, the accidental finding of a copy of Justinian's pandects, about the year 1130, in the town of Amalfi in Italy.

It may appear strange that the progress of the arts, which seems, among the Greeks and Romans, to have daily increased the number of slaves, should in later times have proved so general a source of liberty; but this difference in the events proceeded from a great difference in the circumstances which attended those institutions. The ancient barons, obliged to maintain themselves continually in a military posture, and little emulous of eloquence or splendour, employed not their villeins as domestic servants, much less as manufacturers; but composed their retinue of freemen, whose military spirit rendered the chieftain formidable to his neighbours, and who were ready to attend him in every warlike enterprise. The villeins were entirely occupied in the cultivation of their master's land, and paid their rents either in corn or cattle, and other produce of the farm, or in servile offices, which they performed about the baron's family, and upon the farms which he retained in his own possession. In proportion as agriculture improved and money increased, it was found that these services, though extremely burdensome to the villein, were of little advantage to the master; and that the produce of a large estate could be much more conveniently disposed of by the peasants themselves who raised it, than by the landlord or his bailiff who were formerly accustomed to receive it. A commutation was therefore made of rents for services, and of money-rents for those in kind; and as men, in a subsequent age, discovered that farms were better cultivated where the farmer enjoyed a security in his possession, the practice

of granting leases to the peasant began to prevail, which entirely broke the bonds of servitude, already much relaxed from the former practices. After this manner villenage went gradually into disuse throughout the more civilised parts of Europe: the interest of the master as well as that of the slave concurred in this alteration. The latest laws which we find in England for enforcing or regulating this species of servitude were enacted in the reign of Henry VII.

And though the ancient statutes on this head remain unrepealed by parliament, it appears that, before the end of Elizabeth, the distinction of villein and freeman was totally though insensibly abolished, and that no person remained in the state to whom the former laws could be applied.

Thus personal freedom became almost general in Europe; an advantage which paved the way for the increase of political or civil liberty, and which, even where it was not attended with this salutary effect, served to give the members of the community some of the most considerable advantages of it. The constitution of the English government ever since the invasion of this island by the Saxons may boast of this pre-eminence, that in no age the will of the monarch was ever entirely absolute and uncontrolled; but in other respects the balance of power has extremely shifted among the several orders of the state. (From the History, Chap. xxiii.)

State of Parties at the Reformation in England. The friends of the Reformation asserted that nothing could be more absurd than to conceal, in an unknown tongue, the word of God itself, and thus to counteract the will of Heaven, which, for the purpose of universal salvation, had published that salutary doctrine to all nations; that if this practice were not very absurd, the artifice at least was very gross, and proved a consciousness that the glosses and traditions of the clergy stood in direct opposition to the original text dictated by Supreme intelligence; that it was now necessary for the people, so long abused by interested pretensions, to see with their own eyes, and to examine whether the claims of the ecclesiastics were founded on that charter which was on all hands acknowledged to be derived from Heaven; and that, as a spirit of research and curiosity was happily revived, and men were now obliged to make a choice among the contending doctrines of different sects, the proper materials for decision, and, above all, the Holy Scriptures, should be set before them; and the revealed will of God, which the change of language had somewhat obscured, be again by their means revealed to mankind.

The favourers of the ancient religion maintained, on the other hand, that the pretence of making the people see with their own eyes was a mere cheat, and was itself a very gross artifice, by which the new preachers hoped to obtain the guidance of them, and to seduce them from those pastors whom the laws of ancient establishments, whom Heaven itself, had appointed for their spiritual direction; that the people were, by their ignorance, their stupidity, their necessary avocations, totally unqualified to choose their own principles; and it was a mockery to set materials before them of which they could not possibly make any proper use; that even in the affairs of common life, and in their temporal concerns, which lay more within the compass of human reason, the laws had in a great measure deprived them of the right of private judgment, and had, happily for

their own and the public interest, regulated their conduct and behaviour; that theological questions were placed far beyond the sphere of vulgar comprehension; and ecclesiastics themselves, though assisted by all the advantages of education, erudition, and an assiduous study of the science, could not be fully assured of a just decision, except by the promise made them in Scripture, that God would be ever present with His church, and that the gates of hell should not prevail against her; that the gross errors adopted by the wisest heathens prove how unfit men were to grope their own way through this profound darkness; nor would the Scriptures, if trusted to every man's judgment, be able to remedy, on the contrary, they would much augment those fatal illusions; that Sacred Writ itself was involved in so much obscurity, gave rise to so many difficulties, contained so many appearing contradictions, that it was the most dangerous weapon that could be intrusted into the hands of the ignorant and giddy mul titude; that the poetical style in which a great part of it was composed, at the same time that it occasioned uncertainty in the sense by its multiplied tropes and figures, was sufficient to kindle the zeal of fanaticism, and thereby throw civil society into the most furious. combustion; that a thousand sects must arise, which would pretend, each of them, to derive its tenets from the Scriptures; and would be able, by specious arguments, to seduce silly women and ignorant mechanics into a belief of the most monstrous principles; and that if ever this disorder, dangerous to the magistrate himself, received a remedy, it must be from the tacit acquiescence of the people in some new authority; and it was evidently better, without further contest or inquiry, to adhere peaceably to ancient, and therefore the more secure, establishments. (From the History, Chap. xxxi.)

Character of Queen Elizabeth. The council being assembled, sent the keeper, admiral, and secretary to know her [the queen's] will with regard to her successor. She answered with a faint voice that as she had held a regal sceptre, she desired no other than a royal successor. Cecil requesting her to explain herself more particularly, she subjoined that she would have a king to succeed her; and who should that be but her nearest kinsman, the king of Scots? Being then advised by the archbishop of Canterbury to fix her thoughts upon God, she replied that she did so, nor did her mind in the least wander from Him. Her voice soon after left her; her senses failed; she fell into a lethargic slumber, which continued some hours, and she expired gently, without further struggle or convulsion (March 24, 1603), in the seventieth year of her age, and forty-fifth of her reign.

So dark a cloud overcast the evening of that day, which had shone out with a mighty lustre in the eyes of all Europe! There are few great personages in history who have been more exposed to the calumny of enemies and the adulation of friends than Queen Elizabeth; and yet there is scarcely any whose reputa tion has been more certainly determined by the unanimous consent of posterity. The unusual length of her administration, and the strong features of her character, were able to overcome all prejudices; and obliging her detractors to abate much of their invectives, and her admirers somewhat of their panegyrics, have at last, in spite of political factions, and what is more, of religious

animosities, produced a uniform judgment with regard to her conduct. Her vigour, her constancy, her magnanimity, her penetration, vigilance, and address, are allowed to merit the highest praises, and appear not to have been surpassed by any person that ever filled a throne: a conduct less rigorous, less imperious, more sincere, more indulgent to her people, would have been requisite to form a perfect character. By the force of her mind she controlled all her more active and stronger qualities, and prevented them from running into excess: her heroism was exempt from temerity, her frugality from avarice, her friendship from partiality, her active temper from turbulency and a vain ambition: she guarded not herself with equal care or equal success from lesser infirmities—the rivalship of beauty, the desire of admiration, the jealousy of love, and the sallies of anger.

Her singular talents for government were founded equally on her temper and on her capacity. Endowed with a great command over herself, she soon obtained an uncontrolled ascendant over her people; and while she merited all their esteem by her real virtues, she also engaged their affections by her pretended ones. Few sovereigns of England succeeded to the throne in more difficult circumstances; and none ever conducted the government with such uniform success and felicity. Though unacquainted with the practice of toleration— the true secret for managing religious factions-she preserved her people, by her superior prudence, from those confusions in which theological controversy had involved all the neighbouring nations: and though her enemies were the most powerful princes of Europe, the most active, the most enterprising, the least scrupulous, she was able by her vigour to make deep impressions on their states; her own greatness meanwhile remained untouched and unimpaired.

The wise ministers and brave warriors who flourished under her reign share the praise of her success; but instead of lessening the applause due to her, they make great addition to it. They owed, all of them, their advancement to her choice; they were supported by her constancy, and with all their abilities they were never able to acquire any undue ascendant over her. In her family, in her court, in her kingdom, she remained equally mistress: the force of the tender passions was great over her, but the force of her mind was still superior; and the combat which her victory visibly cost her, serves only to display the firmness of her resolution and the loftiness of her ambitious sentiments.

The fame of this princess, though it has surmounted the prejudices both of faction and bigotry, yet lies still exposed to another prejudice, which is more durable because more natural, and which, according to the different views in which we survey her, is capable either of exalting beyond measure or diminishing the lustre of her character. This prejudice is founded on the consideration of her sex. When we contemplate her as a woman, we are apt to be struck with the highest admiration of her great qualities and extensive capacity; but we are also apt to require some more softness of disposition, some greater lenity of temper, some of those amiable weaknesses by which her sex is distinguished. But the true method of estimating her merit is to lay aside all these considerations, and consider her merely as a rational being placed in authority, and intrusted with the government of mankind. We may find it difficult to reconcile our fancy to her as a wife or a mistress;

From the Autobiographical Fragment. In spring, 1775, I was struck with a disorder in my bowels, which at first gave me no alarm, but has since, as I apprehended, become mortal and incurable. I now reckon upon a speedy dissolution. I have suffered very little pain from my disorder; and what is more strange, have, notwithstanding the great decline of my person, never suffered a moment's abatement of my spirits; insomuch, that were I to name a period of my life which I should most choose to pass over again, I might be tempted to point to this later period. I possess the same ardour as ever in study, and the same gaiety in company. I consider besides, that a man of sixty-five, by dying, cuts off only a few years of infirmities; and though I see many symptoms of my literary reputation's breaking out at last with additional lustre, I know that I could have but few years to enjoy it. It is difficult to be more detached from life than I am at present.

To conclude historically with my own character. I am, or rather was (for that is the style I must now use in speaking of myself, which emboldens me the more to speak my sentiments); I was, I say, a man of mild disposition, of command of temper, of an open, social, and cheerful humour, capable of attachment, but little susceptible of enmity, and of great moderation in all my passions. Even my love of literary fame, my ruling passion, never soured my temper, notwithstanding my frequent disappointments. My company was not unacceptable to the young and careless, as well as to the studious and literary; and as I took a particular pleasure in the company of modest women, I had no reason to be displeased with the reception I met with from them. In a word, though most men, anywise eminent, have found reason to complain of calumny, I never was touched, or even attacked by her baleful tooth; and though I wantonly exposed myself to the rage of both civil and religious factions, they seemed to be disarmed in my behalf of their wonted fury. My friends never had occasion to vindicate any one circumstance of my character and conduct. I cannot say there is no vanity in making this funeral oration of myself, but I hope it is not a misplaced one; and this is a matter of fact which is easily cleared and ascertained.

The standard Life of Hume is that by J. Hill Burton (2 vols. 1846). and there are short Lives by Huxley (1879), Knight (1886), and Calderwood (1898). For his philosophy, see the edition of his works by Green and Grose (4 vols. 1874); Compayré, La Philosophie de David Hume (1873); and German works by E. Pfleiderer (1874), Gizycki (1878), and Mararyk (1884); for his theological standpoint, Leslie Stephen's English Thought in the Eighteenth Century (1876). See, too, Hume's Letters to Strahan (1888) and Jupiter' Carlyle's Autobiography. Hume's History has been often reprinted; usually with a continuation beyond 1688 from the history by Smollett, and also with subsequent continuations.

William Robertson

He was

was born 19th September 1721 at Borthwick in Midlothian, son of the then minister of Borthwick, who was afterwards called to Old Greyfriars Church, Edinburgh. The son was also educated for the Church, and in 1743 was appointed minister of the small parish of Gladsmuir in Haddingtonshire, whence he removed in 1758 to Lady Yester's parish in Edinburgh. He had distinguished himself in the General Assembly and in a 'Select Society' which had Adam Smith, David Hume, Adam Fergusson, and Lord Kames amongst its members; but it was not till 1759 that he became known as a historian. In that year he published his History of Scotland during the Reigns of Queen Mary and of King James VI. till his Accession to the Crown of England (begun in 1753), for the copyright of which he received £600. No first work was ever more successful. The author was congratulated by Hume, Burke, Gibbon, Horace Walpole, Chesterfield, and the most conspicuous of his contemporaries-though Dr Johnson did not join in the chorus. appointed chaplain of Stirling Castle and one of His Majesty's chaplains in ordinary for Scotland; and he was successively made minister of Old Greyfriars, Principal of the University of Edinburgh, and historiographer for Scotland. Stimulated by such success, and undeterred by the dissuasions of Hume, in 1769 he produced his History of the Reign of Charles V. in three volumes quarto, for which he received from the booksellers the princely sum of £4500. It was equally well received with his former work, made his fame European, and ranked Voltaire and Catherine II. of Russia amongst his admirers. In 1777 he published his History of America, which (just at the time of the war) was at least as popular as the earlier works, but, because of the war, was left unfinished. His Historical Disquisition about ancient India (1791) is a slight work, to which he had been led by Major Rennell's Memoirs of a Map of Hindostan (1783). For many years Dr Robertson was leader of the moderate party in the Church of Scotland, exhibiting in the General Assembly an extraordinary readiness and eloquence. He died on the 11th of June 1793, in the seventy-second year of his age.

The History of Scotland has all the interest of a memoir of Mary Queen of Scots. Though Robertson is not among the number of her indiscriminate admirers and apologists, he laboursrather with the writer's art to produce a romantic narrative than with the historian's zeal to establish truth-to awaken the sympathies of the reader strongly in her behalf. Walpole and Hume thought him partial to Mary; Tytler charged him with unfairness to her. As histories all Robertson's works have been superseded; in his day the materials available were comparatively slender, and the modern conception of the scope of history had not

yet dawned. He philosophised on defective data with all the complacency, dignity, and elegance of the eighteenth century. But as literature his histories are still excellent reading. His English style surprised his southern contemporaries; and Horace Walpole, in a letter to the author, expresses the feeling with his usual point and vivacity. 'Before I read your History, I should probably have been glad to dictate to you, and (I will venture to say it-it satirises nobody but myself) should have thought I did honour to an obscure Scotch clergyman by directing his studies by my superior lights and abilities. How you have saved me, sir, from making a ridiculous figure, by making so great a one yourself! But could I suspect that a man I believe much younger, and whose dialect I scarce understood, and who came to me with all the diffidence and modesty of a very middling author, and who I was told had passed his life in a small living near Edinburgh-could I then suspect that he had not only written what all the world now allows the best modern history, but that he had written it in the purest English, and with as much seeming knowledge of men and courts as if he had passed all his life in important embassies?' This condescending eulogy was perhaps a little out of place. Hume had already proved by his Essays, his Inquiry, his Political Discourses, and the first two volumes of his History that an Edinburgh-bred man could write English to some purpose; and the intimate of Hume and Adam Smith had not lived heretofore amongst boors.

Robertson has few salient points and no careless beauties; his style is clear but formal and monotonous, somewhat laboured and Latinised, and without idiomatic vigour or variety. Yet it was of him that Johnson quoted the tutor's advice, 'Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine strike it out.' His pompous manner at times becomes ridiculous, as when he apologises for the introduction of Rizzio, whose 'low birth and indigent condition placed him in a station in which he ought naturally to have remained unknown to posterity,' but whose fortune and sufferings oblige 'history to descend from its dignity and to record his adventures.' When he sums up the character of a sovereign, or traces the progress of society and the influence of laws and government, we recognise the mind and language of a master in historical composition. The artificial graces of his style are also largely displayed in scenes of tenderness and pathos, or in picturesque description, as in his story of the beauty and sufferings of Mary, or the account of Columbus's first glimpses of the New World. His History of the Reign of Charles V. is undoubtedly his masterpiece. The prefixed 'View of the State of Society in Europe from the subversion of the Roman Empire to the beginning of the Sixteenth Century' impressed Hallam and amazed Carlyle by its sagaciousness and broad generalisation; and in virtue of it