Eustace, John Cretwode: A classical tour through Italy An. MDCCCII (Vol. 4): 3. ed., rev. and enl (London: J. Mawman, 1815)

210 CLASSICAL TOUR Dis.
commendation it could possess in the eyes of his
countrymen, the sanction of Fashion.
Such was the state of opinion in France, when
two persons of very different tastes and charac-
ters in other respects, but equally enslaved to va-
nity and to pride, visited that country—I mean
Hume and Gibbon, who, though Britons in ge-
neral are little inclined to bend their necks to the
yoke of foreign teachers, meanly condescended
to sacrifice the independence of their own under-
standing and the religion of their country, to the
flatteries and the sophisms of Parisian atheists.
These two renegadoes joined in the views of their
foreign associates, undertook to propagate atheis-
tic principles among their countrymen, and faith-
ful to the engagement, endeavored in all their
works to instil doubt and indifference into the
minds of their readers, and by secret and almost
imperceptible arts, gradually to undermine their
attachment to revealed religion. Hints, sneers,
misrepresentation, and exaggeration, concealed
under affected candor, pervade almost every page
of their very popular but most pernicious histo-
ries ; and if the mischief of these works however
great, be not equal to the wishes of their authors,
it is entirely owing to the good sense and the spi-
rit of religion so natural to the minds of English-
Bien. This wise and happy temper, the source
o
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