ment;—but we are confident that inquiry will prove it to be correct. But the want of industry, though a serious delinquency in a historian, is almost venial when compared with a want of impartiality, and the deficiency of Hume in this last quality has been often and largely exposed. The extent in which the historian was conscious of his own habit of unfairness, it is not in our power to determine; but there is hardly a conceivable form of disingenuousness, of which his volumes might not be shown to afford numerous and striking examples. The volume embracing the reigns of James and Charles was first published, and we have seen that the reception it met with only taught the author to resolve, with a more fixed purpose, as to the complexion of those which were to follow. In instances where his integrity is in the main preserved, his eloquence is often so far misdirected that the truth becomes discoloured, and makes the impression of falsehood. In his hands the faults of his favourites lose much of their magnitude and grossness, while their merits are raised much above their proper level, and with regard to their opponents, the inverse process is adopted. Disagreeable facts are passed over, or but partially and very artfully developed; while others, of an opposite nature, have all prominence, and all imaginable force assigned them. Incidents of very rare occurrence, and existing only as exceptions, are culled with the greatest care, and presented as the rule, and as no more than samples of the abundance that might be adduced. And in describing the reasonings and the motives by which the contending parties from time to time were influenced, it is the fixed usage of this writer to consult his own prejudices or imagination much more than the lights These afforded by the documents of the times. summaries, as they are called, are inserted by Hume, in the place of the speeches which the ancient historians were wont to put into the mouth of their leading men; and, interesting as they are, deserve no more credit, considered as the character of parties, or as accounts of what was really said, than it is usual to bestow on those elaborate harangues. There is much reason to believe that the historian began the reigns of the two first Stuarts with a sincere conviction that sufficient allowance had not been made for the peculiar situation of those princes. But his delinquencies are such, that this excuse must be of small avail in his defence. The majority of more than one generation in this country have derived their notions of English history almost exclusively from the pages of Hume; but so low has he fallen as a historical authority, that the persons who have read scarcely anything else, rarely show courage, or rather weakness, enough to make any appeal to him. 1 JOHN HARRISON was born in May, 1693, at Foulby, in Yorkshire. His father, who was a joiner, trained him from an early age to the same business; but he soon began to study machinery. He turned his attention to the mechanism of clocks; and to obviate the irregularities produced in their rate of going by variations of temperature, he invented the method of compensation, employed in what is now called the gridiron pendulum, before the year 1720. This contrivance consisted in constructing a pendulum with bars of different metals, having different rates of expansion so as to correct each other: it is described in all popular treatises on physics. By this means it is stated that he had, before the year above mentioned, constructed two clocks which agreed with each other within a second a month, and one of which did not vary, on the whole, more than a minute in ten years. * This success induced him to turn his attention to watches, or rather to time-keepers for naval purposes. It would be impossible without the help of plates to render intelligible the rise and progress of his methods, for which we must refer the reader to treatises on Horology. His first instrument was tried upon the Humber, in rough weather, and succeeded so well that he was recommended to carry it to London, for the inspection of the Commissioners of Longitude. The question of the discovery of the longitude had been considered of national importance since the year 1714, when an Act was passed offering 10,0007., 15,000l., and 20,000l. for any method of discovering the longitude within 60, 40, or 30 miles respectively. In 1735 Harrison arrived in London with his time-piece, and showed it to several members of the Royal Society. He obtained a certificate of its goodness, signed by Halley, Smith, Bradley, Machin, and Graham, in consequence of which he was allowed to proceed with it to Lisbon, in a king's ship, in 1736. The watch was found to correct the ship's reckoning a degree and a half; and the Commissioners thereupon gave Harrison 500l., to enable him to proceed. He finished a second time-piece in 1739, and a third in 1758, each nearer to perfection than the former, and both abounding in ingenious contrivances to overcome the effects of temperature, and of the motion of a vessel at sea. In 1741 he obtained another certificate, signed by almost every name of eminence in English science of the time. In 1749 the gold medal of the Royal Society was awarded to him. In 1761, having then a fourth Folke's Address to the Royal Society, Nov. 30, 1740. Q time-piece in hand, but being convinced that the third was sufficiently correct to come within the limits of the act of parliament, he applied to the Commissioners for a trial of it. Accordingly, in 1761 (Nov. 18), his son, William Harrison, was sent in a king's ship to Jamaica with the watch, and returned to Portsmouth, March 26, 1762. On arrival at Port Royal, Jan. 19, 1762, the watch was found wrong only 5 seconds; and at its return, only 1 minute 54 seconds. This was sufficient to determine the longitude within 18 miles; and Harrison accordingly claimed 20,000l., in a petition to the House of Commons, presented early in 1763. The Commissioners had awarded him 1500l., and promised 1000/. more after another voyage. Owing to some doubt as to the method of equal altitudes employed in finding the time at Port Royal, they do not appear to have been of opinion that the first voyage was conclusive. In 1763 an act passed, by which, firstly, no other person could become entitled to the reward until Harrison's claim was settled; and secondly, 5,000l. was awarded to him on his discovery of the structure of the instrument. But the Commissioners not agreeing about the payment, another voyage was resolved on, and Mr. William Harrison sailed again for Barbadoes, with Dr. Maskelyne, afterwards the Astronomer Royal. The result was yet more satisfactory than before; and in 1765 a new act was passed, awarding to Harrison the whole sum of 20,000l.: the first moiety upon the discovery of his construction; the second, so soon as it should be found that others could be made like it. In this act it is stated that the watch did not lose more than ten miles of the longitude. But Harrison had by this time been rendered unduly suspicious of the intentions of the Commissioners. He imagined that Dr. Maskelyne had treated him |