8740. UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, Historical course.—[continued].
Hume, with Brodie,
should be the last histories of England to be
read [in the University of Virginia course].
If first read, Hume makes [his reader] an English
tory, whence it is an easy step to American
toryism. But there is a history by Baxter, in
which, abridging somewhat by leaving out some
entire incidents as less interesting now than
when Hume wrote, he has given the rest in
the identical words of Hume, except that when
he comes to a fact falsified, he states it truly,
and when to a suppression of truth, he supplies
it, never otherwise changing a word. It is,
in fact, an editic expurgation of Hume. Those
who shrink from the volume of Rapin, may read
this first, and from this lay a first foundation in
a basis of truth.—
To——. Washington ed. vii, 414.
(M.
1825)
