The innate conviction of the heart admits of another kind of proof, which influences the sentiments of an honest man. You well know the basis of mine.

"You ask me, with great confidence, to name your accuser. That accuser, sir, is the only man in the world whose testimony I should admit against you: it is yourself. Without reserve or fear, I shall give myself up to the natural frankness of my disposition; and being an enemy to every kind of artifice, I shall speak with the same freedom, as if you were a person in whom I placed all that confidence which I no longer have in you. I will give you a history of the emotions of my heart, and of what produced them. While speaking of Mr. Hume in the third person, I shall make yourself the judge of what I ought to think of him. Notwithstanding the length of my letter, I shall pursue no other order than that of my ideas, beginning with the premises, and ending with the demonstration.

"I quitted Switzerland, wearied out by the barbarous treatment which I had experienced, but which affected only my personal safety, while my honour was secure. I was going, as my heart directed me, to join lord Marischal, when I received at Strasburgh a most affectionate invitation from Mr. Hume, to go over with him to England, where he promised me the most agreeable reception and more tranquillity than I had met with. I hesitated some time between my old friend and my new one; in this I was wrong. I preferred the latter, and in this was still more so; but the desire of visiting in person a celebrated nation, of which I had heard both so much good and so much ill, prevailed. Assured that I was not to lose George Keith, I was flattered by the acquisition of David Hume. His great merit, extraordinary abilities, and established probity of character, made me desirous of annexing his friendship to that with which I was honoured by his illustrious countryman. Besides, I gloried not a little in setting an example to men of letters, in a sincere union between two men so different in their principles.

"Before I had received an invitation from the king of Prussia, and Lord Marischal, and while undetermined about the place of my retreat, I had requested and obtained, by the interest of my friends, a passport from the court of France. I made use of this, and went to Paris to join Mr. Hume. He saw, and perhaps saw too much of the favourable reception I met with from a great prince, and, I will venture to say, from the public. I yielded, as it was my duty, though with reluctance, to that eclat; concluding how far it would excite the envy of my enemies. At the same time, I saw, with pleasure, the regard which the public entertained for Mr. Hume sensibly increasing throughout Paris, on account of the good work he had undertaken with respect to me. Doubtless he was affected too; but I know not if it was in the same manner as I was.

"We set out with one of my friends, who came to England almost entirely on my account. When we landed at Dover, I was transported with the thoughts of having set foot in this land of liberty, under the conduct of so celebrated a person; I threw my arms round his neok, and pressed him to my heart, without speaking a syllable; bath

ing his checks, as I kissed them, with tears sufficiently expressive. This was not the only time, nor the most remarkable instance I have given him of the effusions of a heart full of sensibility. I know not what he does with the recollection of them, when that happens; but I have a notion they must be sometimes troublesome to him.

"On our arrival in London, all ranks of people eagerly pressed to give me marks of their kindness and esteem. Mr. Hume politely presented me to every body: and it was natural for me to ascribe to him as I did, the best part of my good reception. My heart was full of him: I spoke in his praise to every one; I wrote to the same purpose to all my friends my attachment to him gathered new strength every day, while his appeared the most affectionate to me: of which he frequently gave me instances that touched me extremely. That of causing my portrait to be painted, however, was not of the number. This seemed to me to carry with it too much affectation, and had an air of ostentation which by no means pleased me. All this, however, might have been easily excusable, if Mr. Hume had been a man apt to throw away his money, or had a gallery of pictures, containing the portraits of his friends. After all, I freely confess, that, on this head, I may be in the wrong.

"But what appears to me an act of friendship and generosity the most undoubted and estimable, in a word, the most worthy of Mr. Hume, was the care he took to solicit for me of his own accord, a pension from the king; to which, most assuredly, I had no right to aspire. As I was a witness to the zeal he exerted in that affair, I was greatly affected by it. Nothing could flatter me more than a piece of service of that nature; not merely for the sake of interest; for, too much attached perhaps to what I actually possess, I am not capable of desiring what I have not; and as I am able to subsist on my labour and the aid of my friends, I covet nothing more. But the honour of receiving testimonies of the goodness, I will not say of so great a monarch, but of so good a father, so good a husband, so good a master, so good a friend, and, above all, so worthy a man, sensibly affected me; and when I considered farther, that the minister who had obtained for me this favour, was a living instance of that probity so useful to mankind, and so rarely met with in one of his situation, I could not forbear to pride myself, at having for my benefactors three men, whom, of all the world, I could most desire to have my friends. Thus, so far from refusing the pension offered me, I only made one condition necessary for my acceptance; and that was the consent of a person, whom I could not without neglecting my duty, fail to consult.

"Being honoured with the civilities of all the world, I endeavoured to make a proper return. In the mean time, my bad state of health, and my custom of living in the country, made my residence in town very disagreeable. Immediately country-houses presented themselves in plenty; I had my choice of all the counties of England. Mr. Hume took the trouble to receive these proposals, and to represent them to me; accompanying me to two or three places in the neighbouring counties.. I hesitated a good while in any choice, and increased the difficulty of determination. At length I fixed on this place, and im

mediatety Mr. Hume settled the affair; all difficulties vanished, and I departed. I arrived at this solitary, convenient, and agreeable habitation; where the owner of the house superintends every thing, and provides every thing; and where nothing is wanting. I became tranquil and independent; and this seemed to be the wished for moment, when all my misfortunes were to have an end. On the contrary, it was now they began; misfortunes more cruel than any I had yet experienced.

"Hitherto I have spoken in the fulness of my heart, and to do justice, with the greatest pleasure, to the good offices of Mr. Hume. Would to heaven, that what remains for me to say were of the same nature! It would never give me pain to speak what would redound to his honour; nor is it proper to set a value on benefits till one is accused of ingratitude; and Mr. Hume now accuses me. I will, therefore, venture to make one observation. In estimating his services by the time and pains they cost him, they were of an infinite value, and that still more from his good will in their performance; but for the actual service they were of to me, it was much more in appearance than in reality. I did not come over as a mendicant to beg my bread in England; I brought the means of subsistence with me. I came merely to seek an asylum in a country which is open to every stranger. I was, besides, not so totally unknown, that even, if I had arrived alone, I should have wanted either assistance or service. If some persons have sought my acquaintance for the sake of Mr. Hume, others have sought it for my own. Thus when Mr. Davenport, for example, was so kind as to offer my present retreat, it was not for the sake of Mr. Hume, whom he did not know, and whom he saw only in order to desire him to make me his obliging proposal. So that when Mr. Hume endeavours to alienate from me this worthy man, he seeks to take from me what he did not give me. All the good that has been done me, would have been done me nearly the same without him, and perhaps better; but the evil would not have been done me: for why should I have enemies in England? Why are those enemies the very friends of Mr. Hume? Who could have excited their enmity against me? It was certainly not I, who knew nothing of them, nor ever saw them in my life: I should not have had a single enemy, if I had come to England alone.

"I have hitherto dwelt upon public and notorious facts, which, from their own nature, and my acknowledgment, have made the greatest eclat. Those which are to follow are not only particular, but secret, at least, in their cause, and all possible measures have been taken to keep the knowledge of them from the public; but as they are all well known to the person interested, they will not have the less influence towards his own conviction.

"A very short time after our arrival in London, I observed there an absurd change in the minds of the people regarding me, which soon became very apparent. Before I arrived in England, there was not a country in Europe in which I had a greater reputation, I might indeed venture to say, greater estimation. The public papers were full of encomiums on me, and a general outcry prevailed against my

persecutors. This was the case at my arrival, which was announced in the newspapers with triumph: England prided itself in affording me refuge, and justly gloried on that occasion in its laws and government. On a sudden, and without the least assignable cause, this tone was changed; and that so speedily and totally, that of all the caprices of the public, there never was known any thing more surprising. The signal was given in a certain magazine, equally full of follies and falsehoods, in which the author, being well informed, or pretending to be so, gives me out for the son of a musician. From this time, I was constantly spoken of in the public prints in a very equivocal or slighting manner. Every thing that had been published concerning my misfortunes was misrepresented, altered, or placed in a wrong light, and always as much as possible to my disadvantage. So far was any body from speaking of the reception which it met with at Paris, and which had made but too much noise, it was not even supposed, that I durst have appeared in that city; and one of Mr. Hume's friends was very much surprised when I told him I came through it. "Accustomed as I had too much been to the inconstancy of the public, to be affected by this instance of it, I could not help being astonished, however, at a change so very sudden and general, that not one of those who had so much praised me in my absence, appeared, now I was present, to think even of my existence. I thought it something very odd, that, exactly after the return of Mr. Hume, who has so much credit in London, so much influence over the booksellers and men of letters, and such great connections with them, his presence should produce an effect so contrary to what might have been expected; that among so many writers of every kind, not one of his friends should show himself to be mine; while it was easy to be seen, that those who spoke of him were not his enemies, since, in noticing his public character, they reported that I had come through France under his protection, and by favour of a passport which he had obtained of the court; nay, they almost went so far as to insinuate, that I came over in his retinue, and at his expense.

"All this was of little signification, and was only singular; but what was much more so, was, that his friends changed their tone with me as much as the public. I shall always take a pleasure in saying, that they were still equally solicitous to serve me, and that they exerted themselves greatly in my favour; but so far were they from showing me the same respect, particularly the gentleman at whose house we alighted on our arrival, that he accompanied all his actions with discourse so rude, and sometimes so insulting, that one would have thought he had taken an occasion to oblige me, merely to have a right to express his contempt. His brother, who was at first very polite and obliging, altered his behaviour with so little reserve, that he would hardly deign to speak a single word to me, even in their own house, in return to a civil salutation, or to pay any of those civilities which are usually paid in like circumstances to strangers. Nothing new had happened, however, except the arrival of J. J. Rousseau and David Hume; and certainly the cause of these alterations

did not come from me, unless indeed too great a portion of simplicity, discretion, and modesty be the cause of offence in England.

"As to Mr. Hume, he was so far from assuming such a disgusting tone, that he gave in to the other extreme. I have always looked upon flatterers with an eye of suspicion; and he was so full of all kinds of flattery, that he even obliged me, when I could bear it no longer, to tell him my sentiments on that head. His conduct was such as to render few words necessary; yet I could have wished he had sometimes substituted, in place of such gross encomiums, the style of a friend; but I never found in his language any thing which savoured of true friendship, not even in his manner of speaking of me to others in my presence. One would have thought that, in endeavouring to procure me patrons, he strove to deprive me of their good will; that he sought rather to have me assisted than beloved; and I have been sometimes surprised at the rude turn he has given to my behaviour before people, who might not unreasonably have taken offence at it. An example will explain this. Mr. Penneck, of the museum, a friend of lord Marischal, and pastor of a parish where they wished me to reside, came to see us. Mr. Hume made my excuses, while I myself was present, for not having paid him a visit. Doctor Maty,' said he, invited us to the museum on Thursday, where M. Rousseau should have seen you; but he chose rather to go with Mrs. Garrick to the play; we could not do both the same day.' You will confess, sir, this was a strange method of recommending me to Mr. Penneck. "I know not what Mr. Hume might say of me in private to his acquaintances, but nothing was more extraordinary than their beha viour to me, even by his own confession, and even often through his own means. Although my purse was not empty, and I needed not that of any other person, as he very well knew; yet any one would have thought, that I was come over to subsist at the expense of the public, and that nothing more was to be done than to give me alms in such a manner as to save me a little embarrassment. I must own, that this constant and insolent piece of affectation was one of those things which made me averse to reside in London. This certainly is not the footing on which a man should be introduced in England, if there be a design of procuring him ever so little respect; but this display of charity may admit of a more favourable interpretation, and I consent it should. To proceed.

"At Paris was published a fictitious letter from the king of Prussia, addressed to me, and replete with the most cruel malignity. I learned with surprise, that the publisher of it was one Mr. Walpole, a friend of Mr. Hume. I asked him, if it was true; but in answer to this question, he asked me from whom I had the information. A moment. before he had given me a card for this same Mr. Walpole, for the purpose of prevailing on him to bring over some papers of mine from Paris, which I wanted to have by a safe hand.

"I was informed that the son of that quack Fronchin, my most mortal enemy, was not only the friend of Mr. Hume, and under his protection, but that they both lodged in the same house; and when Mr. Hume found that I knew this, he imparted it in confidence to me ;