Jtejlmons on Hi storey sc. ^SG^ 



with most of ' the events recorded .in thclrstx?- 

 spcctivc works, have, Avith a propensity com- 

 mon to many serious minds, delineated inci- 

 dents with too sombre a j>encil. Had they 

 been at a greater distance from the gloomy 

 views, v^^hich they bavc given, they might 

 have blended a little more light with the sliade, 

 and rendered their historical landscapes, more 

 agreeable as well as more faithful and exact. 



But if historians who record the events of 

 their o^yn times be influenced. by party spirit, 

 to give various and contrary, accounts, their 

 very prejudices tend to cure their own evils, 

 and guide the candid and impartial to the 

 attainment of truth. When a narrator has any 

 inferior object in view, the judicious and dis- 

 cerning are not long in discovering his aim. It 

 was soon perceived, for instance, that Hume 

 was too ])artial to the Stuarts ; and that one of 

 his objects in writing the previous history of 

 Eugland, Avas to show that the encroachments 

 of t\je royal power were not without prece- 

 dent in the reigns of the Tudors. Though the 

 question might still be referred to principles of 

 general policy and justice, yet if the mind 

 should receive an undue bias from such repre- 

 sentations it may easily recover its bent, by ap^ 

 plication, to the narraiiviC of- Macaulcy, or if 

 that be thought top favorable .to the. repub J icijn 



