ADAM SMITH’S CELEBRATED ACCOUNT OF HUME’S DEATH.

he was not apt to do, a better opinion of his own health. His symptoms, however, soon returned with their usual violence, and from that moment he gave up all thoughts of recovery, but submitted with the utmost cheerfulness, and the most perfect complacency and resignation. Upon his return to Edinburgh, though he found himself much weaker, yet his cheerfulness never abated, and he continued to divert himself as usual, with correcting his own works for a new edition, and reading books of amusement, with the conversation of his friends, and, sometimes in the evening, with a party at his favourite game of whist. His cheerfulness was so great, his conversation and amusements ran so much in their usual strain that, notwithstanding all bad symptoms, many people could not believe he was dying. ‘I shall tell your friend, Colonel Edmondstone,’ said Doctor Dundas to him one day, ‘that I left you much better, and in a fair way of recovery.’ ‘Doctor,’ said he, ‘as I believe you would not choose to tell anything but the truth, you had better tell him that I am dying as fast as my enemies, if I have any, could wish, and as easily and as cheerfully as my best friends could desire.’ Colonel Edmondstone soon afterwards came to see him, and took leave of him; and on his way home he could not forbear writing him a letter bidding him once more an eternal adieu, and applying to him, as a dying man, the beautiful French verses in which the Abbé Chaulieu, in expectation of his own death, laments his approaching separation from his friend, the Marquis de la Fare. Mr. Hume’s magnanimity and firmness were such, that his most affectionate friends knew that they hazarded nothing in talking or writing to him as to a dying man, and that, so far from being hurt by this frankness, he was rather pleased and flattered by it. I happened to come into his room while he was reading this letter, which he had just received, and which he immediately showed me. I told him that though I was sensible how very much he was weakened, and that appearances were in many respects very bad yet his cheerfulness was still so great, the spirit of life seemed still to be so very strong in him, that I could not help {p-xxiv} entertaining some faint hopes. He answered—‘Your