ng the whole of his stay in England,
with that care and attention which might be expected from a temper so
perfectly friendly and affectionate. As I had written to my mother that
she might expect me in Scotland, I was under the necessity of continuing
my journey. His disease seemed to yield to exercise and change of air;
and when he arrived in London, he was apparently in much better health
than when he left Edinburgh. He was advised to go to Bath to drink the
waters, which appeared for some time to have so good an effect upon him,
that even he himself began to entertain, what he was not apt to do, a
better opinion of his own health. His symptoms, however, soon returned
with their usual violence; and from that moment he gave up all thoughts
of recovery, but submitted with the utmost cheerfulness, and the most
perfect complacency and resignation. Upon his return to Edinburgh,
though he found himself much weaker, yet his cheerfulness never abated,
and he continued to divert himself, as usual, with correcting his own
works for a new edition, with reading books of amusement, with the
conversation of his friends; and, sometimes in the evening, with a party
at his favorite game of whist. His cheerfulness was so great, and his
conversation and amusements ran so much in their usual strain, that,
notwithstanding all bad symptoms, many people could not believe he was
dying. "I shall tell your friend, Colonel Edmonstone," said Dr. Dundas,
to him one day, "that I left you much better, and in a fair way of
recovery." "Doctor," said he, "as I believe you would not choose to tell
any thing but the truth, you had better tell him that I am dying as fast
as my enemies, if I have any, could wish, and as easily and cheerfully
as my best friends could desire." Colonel Edmonstone soon afterwards
came to see him, and take leave of him; and on his way home he could not
forbear writing him a letter, bidding him once more an eternal adieu,
and applying to him, as to a dying man, the beautiful French verses in
which the abbe Chaulieu in expectation of his own death, laments his
approaching separation from his friend the marquis de la Fare. Mr.
Hume's magnanimity and firmness were such, that his most affectionate
friends knew that they hazarded nothing in talking or writing to him as
to a dying man, and that so far from being hurt by this frankness, he
was rather pleased and flattered by it. I happened to come into his room
while he was reading this