wn hand; for beef and cabbage (a charming
dish) and old mutton and old claret nobody excels me. I make also
sheep's-head broth in a manner that Mr. Keith speaks of for eight
days after; and the Duc de Nivernois would bind himself apprentice
to my lass to learn it. I have already sent a challenge to David
Moncreiff: you will see that in a twelvemonth he will take to the
writing of history, the field I have deserted; for as to the giving
of dinners, he can now have no further pretensions. I should have
made a very bad use of my abode in Paris if I could not get the
better of a mere provincial like him. All my friends encourage me
in this ambition; as thinking it will redound very much to my
honour."

In 1770, Hume built himself a house in the new town of Edinburgh, which
was then springing up. It was the first house in the street, and a
frolicsome young lady chalked upon the wall "St. David's Street." Hume's
servant complained to her master, who replied, "Never mind, lassie, many
a better man has been made a saint of before," and the street retains
its title to this day.

In the following six years, the house in St. David's Street was the
centre of the accomplished and refined society which then distinguished
Edinburgh. Adam Smith, Blair, and Ferguson were within easy reach; and
what remains of Hume's correspondence with Sir Gilbert Elliot, Colonel
Edmonstone, and Mrs. Cockburn gives pleasant glimpses of his social
surroundings, and enables us to understand his contentment with his
absence from the more perturbed, if more brilliant, worlds of Paris and
London.

Towards London, Londoners, and indeed Englishmen in general, Hume
entertained a dislike, mingled with contempt, which was as nearly
rancorous as any emotion of his could be. During his residence in Paris,
in 1764 and 1765, he writes to Blair:--

"The taste for literature is neither decayed nor depraved here, as
with the barbarians who inhabit the banks of the Thames."

And he speaks of the "general regard paid to genius and learning" in
France as one of the points in which it most differs from England. Ten
years later, he cannot even thank Gibbon for his History without the
left-handed compliment, that he should never have expected such an
excellent work from the pen of an Englishman. Early in 1765, Hume writes
to Millar:--

"The rage and prejudice of parties frighten me, and above all, th