spot where he intended building his bridge; and, coming to the banks of the river, he jumped off his horse, and said, "Here is the spot where I will take you across." Without the least noise or confusion, Mina halted all his men, forced his own horse into the river, to try the depth; and, finding it practicable, he ordered a hundred men to get up behind a hundred of the cavalry, and plunge into the river. In this manner he contrived to pass over 800 Spanish prisoners and land them in perfect safety, before the French were aware that he was not coming down to the bridge. The moment he had placed us in safety on the other side of the river, he said, "Now, Spaniards! you are safe." He divided two handkerchiefs full of dollars amongst us, saying, that we had as good right to share in the plunder of the French as they had; and, wishing us farewell, galloped into the river with his cavalry, and disappeared, leaving 20 dragoons and an officer to escort us. This extraordinary man might, if he chose, increase the number of his army to ten or twelve thousand men; but he has no vanity; and says fairly, that he thinks he can manage four or five thousand men better than a larger number.

From the Memoirs of the Earl of Charlemont, by Francis Hardy, Esq.

DAVID HUME.

(By Lord Charlemont.) The celebrated David Hume, whose character is so deservedly high in the literary world, and

whose works, both as a philoso pher and an historian, are so wonderfully replete with genius and entertainment, was, when I was at Turin, Secretary to Sir John Sinclair, Plenipotentiary from the court of Great Britian to his Sardinian Majesty. He had then lately published those Philosophical Essays which have done so much mischief to mankind, by contributing to loosen the sacred bonds by which alone man can be restrained from rushing to his own destruction, and which are so intimately necessary to our nature, that a propensity to be bound by them was apparently instilled into the human mind by the all-wise Creator, as a balance against those passions which, though perhaps necessary as incitements to activity must, without such control, inevitably have hurried us to our ruin. The world, however, unconscious of its danger, had greedily swallowed the bait; the Essays were received with applause, read with delight, and their admired author was already, by public opinion, placed at the head of the dangerous school of sceptic philosophy.

With this extraordinary man I was intimately acquainted. He had kindly distinguished me from among a number of young men who were then at the academy, and appeared so warmly attached to me, that it was apparent he not only intended to honour me with his friendship but to bestow on me what was, in his opinion, the first of all favours and benefits, by making me his convert and disciple.

Nature, I believe, never formed any man more unlike his real character

character than David Hume. The powers of physiognomy were baffled by his countenance; neither could the most skilful in that science pretend to discover the smallest trace of the faculties of his mind in the unmeaning features of his visage. His face was broad and flat, his mouth wide, and without any other expression than that of imbecility. His eyes vacant and spiritless, and the corpulency of his whole person was far better fitted to communicate the idea of a turtle-eating alderman, than of a refined philosopher. His speech, in English, was rendered ridiculous by the broadest Scotch accent, and his French was, if possible, still more laughable; so that wisdom most certainly never disguised herself before in so uncouth a garb. Though now near fifty years old, he was healthy and strong; but his health and strength far from being advantageous to his figure, instead of manly comeliness, had only the appearance of rusticity. His wearing a uniform added greatly to his natural awkwardness, for he wore it like a grocer of the train bands. Sinclair was a lieutenant general, and was sent to the courts of Vienna and Turin as a military envoy, to see that their quota of troops was furnished by the Austrians and Piedmontese. It was, therefore, thought necessary that his secretary should appear to be an officer, and Hume was accordingly disguised in scarlet.

Having thus given an account of his exterior, it is but fair that I should state my good opinion of his character. Of all the philosophers of his sect, none, I believe, ever joined more real benevolence

to its mischievous principles than my friend Hume. His love to mankind was universal and vehement; and there was no service he would not cheerfully have done to his fellow creatures, excepting only that of suffering them to save their souls in their own way. He was tender-hearted, friendly, and charitable in the extreme, as will appear from a fact which I have from good authority. When a member of the university of Edinburgh, and in great want of money, having little or no paternal fortune, and the collegiate stipend being very inconsiderable, he had procured, through the interest of some friend, an office in the university, which was worth about forty pounds a year. On the day when he had received this good news, and just when he had got into his possession the patent or grant entitling him to his office, he was visited by his friend Blacklock, the poet, who is much better known by his poverty and blindness than by his genius. This poor man began a long descant on his misery, bewailing his want of sight, his large family of children, and his utter inability to provide for them, or even to procure them the necessaries of life. Hume unable to bear his complaints, and destitute of money to assist him, ran instantly to his desk, took out the grant, and presented it to his miserable friend, who received it with exultation, and whose name was soon after, by Hume's interest, inserted instead of his own. relation, it is needless that I should say any more of his genuine philanthropy and generous beneficence; but the difficulty will now

After such a

occur,

occur, how a man, endowed with such qualities, could possibly consent to become the agent of so much mischief as undoubtedly has been done to mankind by his writings; and this difficulty can only be solved by having recourse to that universal passion, which has, I fear, a much more general influence over all our actions than we are willing to confess. Pride, or vanity, joined to a sceptical turn of mind, and to an education which, though learned, rather sipped knowledge than drank it, was, probably, the ultimate cause of this singular phænomenon; and the desire of being placed at the head of a sect whose tenets controverted and contradicted all received opinions, was too strong to be resisted by a man whose genius enabled him to find plausible arguments, sufficient to persuade both himself and many others, that his own opinions are true. A philosophical knight-errant was the dragon he had vowed to vanquish, and he was careless, or thoughtless, of the consequences which might ensue from the achievement of the adventure to which he had pledged himself. He once professed himself the admirer of a young, most beautiful, and accomplished lady at Turin, who only laughed at his passion. One day he addressed her in the usual common-place strain, that he was abimè, anéanti. Oh! pour anéanti,' replied the lady; ce n'est en effet qu'une operation très naturelle de vôtre systéme.

In London, where he often did me the honour to communicate the manuscripts of his additional essays, before their publication, I have sometimes, in the course of

What

our intimacy, asked him whether he thought that, if his opinions were universally to take place, mankind would not be rendered more unhappy than they now were; and whether he did not suppose that the curb of religion was necessary to human nature? The objections,' answered he, ' are not without weight; but error can never produce good, and truth ought to take place of all considerations.' He never failed, in the midst of any controversy, to give its due praise to every thing tolerable that was either said or written against him. One day that he visited me in London, he came into my room laughing, and apparently well pleased. has put you into this good humour, Hume? said I. ' Why, man,' replied he, "I have just now had the best thing said to me I ever heard. I was complaining in a company where I spent the morning, that I was very ill treated by the world, and that the censures passed upon me were hard and unreasonable. That I had written many volumes, throughout the whole of which there were but few pages that contained any reprehensible matter, and yet, for those few pages I was abused and torn to pieces. You put me in mind, said an honest fellow in the company, whose. name I did not know, of an acquaintance of mine, a notary public, who having been condemned to be hanged for forgery, lamented the hardship of his case; that, after having written many thousand inoffensive sheets, he should be hanged for one line.'

But an unfortunate disposition to doubt of every thing seemed interwoven with the nature of

Hume;

Hume; and never was there, I am convinced, a more thorough and sincere sceptic. He seemed not to be certain even of his own existence, and could not therefore be expected to entertain any set tled opinion respecting his future state. Once I asked him what he thought of the immortality of the soul? Why troth, man,' said he, it is so pretty and so comfortable a theory, that I wish I could be convinced of its truth, but I canna help doubting.'

Hume's fashion at Paris, when he was there as secretary to Lord Hertford, was truly ridiculous; and nothing ever marked, in a more striking manner, the whimsical genius of the French. No man, from his manners, was surely less formed for their society, or less likely to meet with their approbation; but that flimsy philosophy which pervades and deadens even their most licentious novels, was then the folly of the day. Free thinking and English frocks were the fashion, and the Anglomanie was the ton du pais. Lord Holland, though far better calculated than Hume to please in France, was also an instance of this singular predilection. Being about this time on a visit to Paris, the French concluded that an Englishman of his reputation must be a philosopher, and must be admired. It was customary with him to doze after dinner, and one day, at a great entertainment, he happened to fall asleep; Le voilà!' says a Marquis, pulling his neighbour by the sleeve; La voilà qui pense!' But the madness for Hume was far more singular and extravagant. From what has been already said of him, it is apparent that his con

versation to strangers, and particularly to Frenchmen, could be little delightful, and still more particularly, one would suppose, to French women; and yet, no lady's toilette was complete without Hume's attendance. At the opera, his broad unmeaning face was usually seen entre deux jolis minois. The ladies in France give the ton, and the ton was deism; a species of philosophy ill suited to the softer sex, in whose delicate frame weakness is interesting, and timidity a charm. But the women in France were deists, as with us they were charioteers. The tenets of the new philosophy were à portée de tout le monde; and the perusal of a wanton novel, such, for example, as Therese Philosophe, was amply sufficient to render any fine gentleman, or any fine lady, an accomplished, nay, a learned deist. How my friend Hume was able to endure the encounter of these French female Titans I know not. In England, either his philosophic pride, or his conviction that infidelity was ill suited to women, made him perfectly averse from the initiation of ladies into the mysteries of his doctrine. I never saw him so much displeased, or so much dis concerted, as by the petulance of Mrs. Mallet, the conceited wife of Bolingbroke's editor. This lady, who was not acquainted with Hume, meeting him one night at an assembly, boldly accosted him in these words: Mr. Hume, give me leave to introduce myself to you; we deists ought to know each other. Madame,' replied he, I am no deist. I do not style myself so, neither do I desire to be known by that appellation.'

Nothing

Nothing ever gave Hume more real vexation, than the strictures made upon his history in the House of Lords by the great Lord Chatham. Soon after that speech I met Hume, and ironically wished him joy of the high honour that had been done him. Zounds, man,' said he, with more peevishness than I had ever seen him express, 'he's a Goth! he's a Vandal!'Indeed, his History is as dangerous in politics, as his Essays are in religion and it is somewhat extraordinary, that the same man who labours to free the mind from what he supposes religious prejudices, should as zealously endeavour to shackle it with the servile ideas of despotism. But he loved the Stuart family, and his history is, of course, their apology. All his prepossessions, however, could never induce him absolutely to falsify history; and though he endeavours to soften the failings of his favourites, even in their actions, yet it is on the characters which he gives to them, that he principally depends for their vindication: and from hence frequently proceeds, in the course of his history, this singular incongruity, that it is morally impossible that a man possessed of the character which the historian delineates, should in certain circumstances have acted the part which the same historian narrates and assigns to him. But now to return to his philosophical principles, which certainly constitute the discriminating feature of his character. The practice of combating received opinions had one unhappy, though not unusual effect on his mind. He grew fond of paradoxes, which his abilities enabled him successfully to sup

port; and his understanding was so far warped and bent by this unfortunate predilection, that he had well nigh lost that best faculty of the mind, the almost intuitive perception of truth. His sceptical turn made him doubt, and conse quently dispute every thing; yet was he a fair and pleasant dispu tant. He heard with patience, and answered without acrimony. Neither was his conversation at any time offensive, even to his more scrupulous companions: his good sense, and good nature, prevented his saying any thing that was likely to shock; and it was not till he was provoked to argument, that, in mixed companies, he entered into his favourite topics. Where, indeed, as was the case with me, his regard for any individual rendered him desirous of making a proselyte, his efforts were great, and anxiously incessant.

MONTESQUIEU.

(By Lord Charlemont.) I have frequently met him in company with ladies, and have been as often astonished at the politeness, the gallantry, and sprightliness of his behaviour. In a word, the most accomplished, the most refined petit-maître of Paris could not have been more amusing from the liveliness of his chat, nor could have been more inexhaustible in that sort of discourse which is best suited to women, than this venerable philosopher of seventy years old. But at this we shall not be surprised, when we reflect, that the profound author of L'Esprit des Loix was also author of the

Persian