624 MR small's BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF PROF. ADAM FERGUSON. 



" I am very glad that the pleasure you give us recoils a little on yourself, 

 through our feeble testimony. I have, as you suppose, been employed, at any 

 intervals of leisure or rest I have had for some years, in taking notes or collect- 

 ing materials for a history of the destruction that broke down the Roman 

 Republic, and ended in the establishment of Augustus and his immediate succes- 

 sors. The compliment you are pleased to pay, I cannot accept of, even to my 

 subject. Your subject now appears with advantages it was not supposed to 

 have had, and I suspect that the magnificence of the mouldering ruin will appear 

 more striking than the same building, when the view is perplexed with scaffold- 

 ing, workmen, and disorderly lodgers, and the ear is stunned with the noise of 

 destruction, and repairs, and the alarms of fire. The night which you begin to 

 describe is solemn, and there are gleams of light superior to what is to be found 

 in any other time. I comfort myself, that as my trade is the study of human 

 nature, I could not fix on a more interesting source of it than the end of the 

 Roman Republic. Whether my compilations should ever deserve the attention of 

 any one beside myself, must remain to be determined after they are farther 

 advanced. I take the liberty to trouble you with the enclosed for Mr Smith,* 

 whose uncertain stay in London makes me at a loss how to direct for him. You 

 have both such reason to be pleased -with the world just now, that I hope you 

 are pleased with each other. I am, with the greatest respect, dear Sir, your most 

 obedient and humble servant, Adam Ferguson." f 



The progress of his labours, in collecting materials for the History of Rome, 

 was, however, interrupted by circumstances which turned his attention for a time 

 to other inquiries. 



The Revolution in America had now drawn more general attention to the 

 affairs which were passing on that great continent. It is unnecessary here to 

 relate the different steps Avhich led to the institution of the American Congress 

 in 1773. It is sufficient to remark that the Congress had, in 1776, assumed the 

 functions of sovereignty, and required all persons to abjure the British Govern- 

 ment, and swear allegiance to the Congress itself. | 



the English physicians absurd and erroneous. They own a small tumour in my liver ; but so small 

 and trivial, that it never could do me any material injury ; and they say that I might have liv'd 

 twenty years with it, and never have felt any inconvenience from it ; each of them has had patients 

 who have had tumours in that part ten times larger without almost complaining for years together. 

 They have thoroughly persuaded me to be of their opinion ; and, according to their united senti- 

 ments, my distemper is now a haemorrhage as before, which is an illness that I had as lief dye of as 

 any other. The first part of the text being now discuss'd, we proceed to the second, viz., the cure, 

 which I leave to another opportunity. I send you a letter which my nephew opened by mistake ; 

 but finding, after he had read a few lines, that it was not meant for him, he proceeded no further. 

 ■ Yours sincerely, David Hume." 



In token of the long friendship which had existed between Hume and Ferguson, Hume be- 

 queathed him a legacy of L.200. 



* Dr Adam Smith. [f Gibbon's Misc. Works. By Lord Shefiield, vol. ii. p. 501. 



J Ferguson was in the habit of discussing from time to time in his correspondence with 

 General Clerk, Mr Johnstone (afterwards Sir William Pulteney), and other friends, the various 



