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O character has laboured under greater obloquy than that of the earl of Shaftesbury: yet he appears from the general tenor of his conduct to have deferved highly of his country; and thofe parts of it which are at all queftionable have been moft grofsly and invidiously aggravated. It is the province of history to correct thefe errors, and to distribute with impartial juftice the awards of praise or cenfure. Unfortunately for the memory of lord Shaftesbury, the moft eloquent hiftorian of the age, Mr. Hume, has in relation to him imbibed all the prejudices of preceding writers, in all their virulence and all their abfurdity. His ideas of this celebrated nobleman are indeed evidently and almoft wholly taken from bishop Burnet, low as the authority of that prelate ftands with him upon moft other occafions. But what Mr. Hume remarks of the duke of Albemarle is at leaft as true of lord Shaftesbury, that bishop Burnet, agreeably to

'his own factious fpirit, treats this

nobleman with great malignity." Mr. Hume has even copied the ridiculous notion of the bishop, that lord Shaftesbury was addicted to judicial aftrology. Lord Shaftesbury is known to have entertained a diflike and contempt of Burnet; and poffeffing a strong turn for humour, in order to avoid serious difquifition, he might poffibly divert himself at times with the bishop's curiofity and credulity. At the period of the Restoration, few perfons ftood higher in the esteem of the nation at large than fir Anthony Ashley Cooper; and though decidedly of opinion, in oppofition to general Monk, that conditions ought to have been propofed for the fecurity of public liberty, the king, nothing offended at his warmth of patriotifm, even before his coronation created him a peer by the title of lord Afhley. And in the preamble to his patent, the reftoration is expressly faid to be chiefly owing to him; and that afA 2'

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