I wish that my indignation at the present madness, encouraged by lies, calumnies, imposture, and every infamous act usual among popular leaders, may not throw me into the opposite extreme." A wise wish, indeed.

Posterity respectfully concurs therein; and subjects Hume's estimate of England and things English to such modifications as it would probably have undergone had the wish been fulfilled.
In 1775, Hume's health began to fail; and, in the spring of the following year, his disorder, which appears to have been haemorrhage of the bowels, attained such a height that he knew it must be fatal.

So he made his will, and wrote _My Own Life_, the conclusion of which is one of the most cheerful, simple, and dignified leave-takings of life and all its concerns, extant.
"I now reckon upon a speedy dissolution.

I have suffered very little pain from my disorder; and what is more strange, have, notwithstanding the great decline of my person, never suffered a moment's abatement of spirits; insomuch that were I to name the period of my life which I should most choose to pass over again, I might be tempted to point to this later period.

I possess the same ardour as ever in study and the same gaiety in company; I consider, besides, that a man of sixty-five, by dying, cuts off only a few years of infirmities; and though I see many symptoms of my literary reputation's breaking out at last with additional lustre, I know that I could have but few years to enjoy it.