h of the earl of Home's, or Hume's; and my ancestors had been
proprietors of the estate which my brother possesses, for several
generations. My mother was daughter of Sir David Falconer, president of
the college of justice; the title of Lord Halkerton came by succession
to her brother.

My family, however, was not rich; and being myself a younger brother,
my patrimony, according to the mode of my country, was of course very
slender. My father, who passed for a man of parts, died when I was an
infant, leaving me, with an elder brother and a sister, under the
care of our mother, a woman of singular merit, who, though young and
handsome, devoted herself entirely to the rearing and educating of
her children. I passed through the ordinary course of education with
success, and was seized very early with a passion for literature, which
has been the ruling passion of my life, and the great source of my
enjoyments. My studious disposition, my sobriety, and my industry, gave
my family a notion that the law was a proper profession for me; but
I found an insurmountable aversion to every thing but the pursuits of
philosophy and general learning; and while they fancied I was poring
upon Voet and Vinnius, Cicero and Virgil were the authors which I was
secretly devouring.

My very slender fortune, however, being unsuitable to this plan of life,
and my health being a little broken by my ardent application, I was
tempted, or rather forced, to make a very feeble trial for entering
into a more active scene of life. In 1734, I went to Bristol, with some
recommendations to several eminent merchants; but in a few months found
that scene totally unsuitable to me. I went over to France, with a view
of prosecuting my studies in a country retreat; and I there laid that
plan of life which I have steadily and successfully pursued. I resolved
to make a very rigid frugality supply my deficiency of fortune, to
maintain unimpaired my independency, and to regard every object as
contemptible, except the improvement of my talents in literature.

During my retreat in France, first at Rheims, but chiefly at La Fleche,
in Anjou, I composed my Treatise of Human Nature. After passing three
years very agreeably in that country, I came over to London in 1737. In
the end of 1738, I published my Treatise, and immediately went down
to my mother and my brother, who lived at his country house, and was
employing himself very judiciously and successfully in the impro