44
“Variety,” Saturday Magazine: National Recorder, vol. 5 (17 March 1821), p. 174.
Anonymous
The Saturday Magazine: National Recorder was published in Philadelphia as a weekly from January 1819 to June 1822. Edited by Eliakim Littell, the magazine reprinted many items from British papers, but its focus was also on internal improvements in an expanding America. It is interesting to see Hume’s History commented upon in that context. On The Saturday Magazine see Neal L. Edgar, A History and Bibliography of American Magazines, 1810–1820 (Metuchen, 1975), p. 232; API, p. 199; BAP, p. 136.
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HISTORY.
We read history, not to indulge the frivolous inquisitiveness of a dull antiquary, but to explore the causes of the miseries and prosperities of our country. We are more interested in the progress of the human mind, than in that of empires.
A Hearne would feel a frigid rapture, if he could discover the name of a Saxon monarch unrecorded in our annals; and of whom as little should remain, as of the doubtful bones of a Saxon dug out of a tumulus. Such are his anecdotes! A Hume is only interested with those characters who have exerted themselves in the cause of humanity, and with those incidents which have subverted or established the felicities of a people.
HUME
Says, in the slight sketch he gives of his life: “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.”