238 HUME. 



it less manifest that he was justified in giving his own 

 opinions to the world on those questions if he chose, 

 provided he handled them with decorum, and with the 

 respect due from all good citizens to the religious opi- 

 nions of the State. There are but one or two passages 

 in them all, chiefly in the * Essay on Miracles,' which 

 do not preserve the most unbroken gravity, and all 

 the seriousness befitting the subject. 



In his familiar correspondence he was a little less 

 precise, though even here he was very far from resem- 

 bling the Voltaire school. In his conversation he 

 seldom alluded to th6 subject, but occasionally his 

 opinions were perceivable. Thus, when one of the 

 University, the late Mr. John Bruce, professor of 

 logic, asked him to revise the syllabus of his lectures, 

 he went over the proof-sheets with him ; and on 

 coming to the section entitled ' Proofs of the Exist- 

 ence of the Deity,' Mr. Hume said, " Right ; very 

 well." But the next section was entitled ' Proof of 

 the Unity of the Deity,' and then he cried out, " Stop, 

 John, stop : who told you whether there were ane or 

 mairf The same professor met him one day on 

 the staircase of the College Library, where the in- 

 scription " Christo et Musis has cedes sacrarunt cives 

 Edinenses " drew from the unbeliever an irreverent 

 observation on the junction which the piety rather 

 than the classical purity of the good town had made 

 between the worship of the heathen and our own. 



That his conversation, however, was habitually free 

 from all irreverent allusion, there can be no more 

 complete proof than his uninterrupted intimacy with 

 a man who never would have tolerated the least devia- 



