II LATER YEARS 45 



and refined society which then distinguished 

 Edinburgh. Adam Smith, Blair, and Ferguson 

 were within easy reach ; and what remains of 

 Hume's correspondence with Sir Gilbert Elliot, 

 Colonel Edmonstone, and Mrs. Cockburn gives 

 pleasant glimpses of his social surroundings, and 

 enables us to understand his contentment with 

 his absence from the more perturbed, if more 

 brilliant, worlds of Paris and London. 



Towards London, Londoners, and indeed 

 Englishmen in general, Hume entertained a 

 dislike, mingled with contempt, which was as 

 nearly rancorous as any emotion of his could be. 

 During his residence in Paris, in 1764 and 1765, 

 he writes to Blair : 



" The taste for literature is neither decayed nor depraved 

 here, as with the barbarians who inhabit the banks of the 

 Thames." 



And he speaks of the "general regard paid to 

 genius and learning " in France as one of the 

 points in which it most differs from England. 

 Ten years later, he cannot even thank Gibbon for 

 his History without the lefthanded compliment, 

 that he should never have expected such an 

 excellent work from the pen of an Englishman. 

 Early in 1765, Hume writes to Millar : 



"The rage and prejudice of parties frighten me, and above 

 all, this rage against the Scots, which is so dishonourable, and 

 indeed so infamous, to the, English nation. We hear that it 



