CHAPTER II.
LATER YEARS: THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
In 1744, Hume's friends had endeavoured to procure his nomination to the Chair of "Ethics and pneumatic philosophy"[8] in the University of Edinburgh.

About this matter he writes to his friend William Mure:-- "The accusation of heresy, deism, scepticism, atheism, &c., &c., &c.

was started against me; but never took, being bore down by the contrary authority of all the good company in town." If the "good company in town" bore down the first three of these charges, it is to be hoped, for the sake of their veracity, that they knew their candidate chiefly as the very good company that he always was; and had paid as little attention, as good company usually does, to so solid a work as the _Treatise_.

Hume expresses a naive surprise, not unmixed with indignation, that Hutcheson and Leechman, both clergymen and sincere, though liberal, professors of orthodoxy, should have expressed doubts as to his fitness for becoming a professedly presbyterian teacher of presbyterian youth.

The town council, however, would not have him, and filled up the place with a safe nobody.
In May, 1746, a new prospect opened.