As might have been predicted, this venture was not more fortunate than his previous ones; and, after a year's endurance, diversified latterly with pecuniary squabbles, in which Hume's tenacity about a somewhat small claim is remarkable, the engagement came to an end.
FOOTNOTES: [1] A picture of the house, taken from Drummond's _History of Noble British Families_, is to be seen in Chambers's _Book of Days_ (April 26th); and if, as Drummond says, "It is a favourable specimen of the best Scotch lairds' houses," all that can be said is worst Scotch lairds must have been poorly lodged indeed.
[2] Mr.John Hill Burton, in his valuable _Life of Hume_, on which, I need hardly say, I have drawn freely for the materials of the present biographical sketch.
[3] One cannot but be reminded of young Descartes' renunciation of study for soldiering.
[4] _My Own Life._ [5] Letter to Gilbert Elliot of Minto, 1751.

"So vast an undertaking, planned before I was one-and-twenty, and composed before twenty-five, must necessarily be very defective.

I have repented my haste a hundred and a hundred times." [6] So says Mr.Burton, and that he is right is proved by a letter of Hume's, dated February 13, 1739, in which he writes, "'Tis now a fortnight since my book was published." But it is a curious illustration of the value of testimony, that Hume, in _My Own Life_, states: "In the end of 1738 I published my Treatise, and immediately went down to my mother and my brother." [7] Burton, _Life_, vol.i.p.

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