and see them, or some of your friends offer themselves to introduce you. When I speak of these connections, I mean chiefly for dinner and the evening. Suppers as yet I am pretty much a stranger to, and I fancy shall continue so; for Paris is divided into two species, who have but little communication with each other. The one, who is chiefly connected with the men of letters, dine very much at home, are glad to see their friends, and pass the evenings till about nine in agreeable and rational conversation. The others are the most fashionable, sup in numerous parties, and always play, or rather game, both before and after supper. You may easily guess which sort suits me best. Indeed, madam, we may say what we please of the frivolity of the French, but I do assure you, that in a fortnight passed at Paris, I have heard more conversation worth remembering, and seen more men of letters among the people of fashion, than I had done in two or three winters in London. Amongst my acquaintance, I cannot help mentioning M. Helvetius, the author of the famous book de l'Esprit. I met him at dinner at Madame Geoffrin's, where he took great notice of me, made me a visit next day, has ever since treated me, not in a polite but in a friendly manner. Besides being a sensible and the worthiest creature in the world, he has a very pretty wife, an hundred thousand livres a year, and one of the best tables in Paris."

man, an agreeable companion,

To his father he adds:

"I have now passed nearly a month in this place, and I can say with truth, that it has answered my most sanguine expectations. The buildings of every kind, the libraries, the public diversions, take up a great part of my time; and I have already found several houses where it is both very easy and very agreeable to be acquainted. Lady Harvey's recommendation to Madam Geoffrin was a most excellent one. Her house is a very good one; regular dinners there every Wednesday,

and the best company of Paris, in men of letters and people of fashion. It was at her house I connected myself with M. Helvetius, who, from his heart his head, and his fortune, is a most valuable man.

"At his house I was introduced to the Baron d'Olbach, who is a man of parts and fortune, and has two dinners every week. The other houses I am known in are the Duchess d'Aiguillon's, Madame la Comtesse de Froulay's, Madame du Bocage, Madame Boyer, M. le Marquis de Mirabeau, and M. de Foucemagn. All these people have their different merit; in some I meet with good dinners; in others, societies for the evening; and in all, good sense, entertainment, and civility, which, as I have no favours to ask, or business to transact with them, is sufficient for me. Their men of letters are as affable and communicative as I expected. My letters to them did me no harm, but were very little necessary. My book had been of great service to me, and the compliments I have received upon it would make me insufferably vain, if I laid any stress on them. When I take notice of the civilities I have received, I must take notice too of what I have seen of a contrary behaviour. You know how much I al ways built upon the Count de Caylus: he has not been of the least use to me. With great difficulty I have seen him, and that is all. I do not, however, attribute his behaviour to pride, or dislike to me, but solely to the man's general character, which seems to be a very odd one."

After spending some time at Lausanne, he made the tour of Italy, with high gratification, though he has given a very succinct notice of it. The view of Rome and its illustrious monuments kindled an enthusiasm in which he seldom indulged. "At the distance of twenty-five years," says he, "I can neither forget nor express the strong emotions which agitated my mind as I first approached and entered the eternal city. After a sleepless night, I trode with a lofty step the b

ruins of the forum; 'each memorable spot where Romulus stood, or Tully spoke, or Cæsar fell, was at once present to my eye, and several days of intoxication were lost or enjoyed before I could descend to a cool. and minute investigation." After spending six weeks at Naples, he then returned to his native country, and to his former mode of life. The five years which now followed were, as he states, passed with the least enjoy. ment, and remembered with the least satisfaction, of any of his life. He was again doomed to the noise, turbulence, and hurry of a military life, which allowed him only a few occasional intervals of study. He had never made choice of any profession, but had declined that of the law, which Mrs. Gibbon proposed. He felt now the want of independent income, and professional importance. His fortune could only be increased by the death of his father, an event which he sincerely deprecated; and the embarassments of the family led to the apprehension of his old age being left entirely destitute. He found leisure, however, for various excur sions into the fields of literature. He entered into a controversy with Warburton, which he carried on with equal learning and acrimony. In conjunction with M. Deyverdun, an intimate friend, whom he had formed at Lausanne, be undertook a journal, entitled "Memoires Litteraires de la Grande Bretagne," which, however, met with little success. He had now decidedly turned his ambition to the production of a historical work, and had for many years been revolving various subjects in his mind. The expedition of Charles VIII of France into Italy; the crusade of Richard I; the wars of the barons against John and Henry III of England; the history of Edward the Black Prince; the lives, with comparisons, of Henry V, with the emperor Titus; the life of Sir Philip Sidney, that of the Marquis of Montrose, and of Sir Walter Raleigh, were successively planned and rejected. The history of the revolutions of Switzerland took deeper possession of his mind. He entered into a long course of research on

the subject, and even wrote the first book, which, by a singular choice, he composed in the French language. It was disapproved of, however, by a literary society of foreigners in London, to whom he read it; and though Hume approved, it was coldly, and with an exception to the language in which it was written. He therefore abandoned this design, and finally fixed upon his grand scheme of illustrating the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

In 1770, his father died. Gibbon appears to have been a dutiful son, and to have sincerely lamented this event, though it bestowed on him independence and an increase of fortune. He began immediately to release himself from all the fetters which had detained him from his favourite pursuits, and was soon enabled to devote himself entirely to literature. He was now introduced into parliament; but never could acquire courage to open his lips. He devoted himself almost wholly to the composition of his history, which proceeded with rapid steps. The following is his own account of the wide range of preparatory study to which he submitted:

"The classics, as low as Tacitus, the younger Pliny, and Juvenal were my old and familiar companions. I insensibly plunged into the ocean of the Augustan History; and in the descending series I investigated, with my pen always in my hand, the original records, both Greek and Latin, from Dion Cassius to Ammianus Marcellinus, from the reign of Trajan to the last age of the Western Cæsars. The subsidiary rays of medals and inscriptions, of geography and chronology, were thrown on their proper objects; and I applied the collections of Tillemont, whose inimitable accuracy almost assumes the character of genius, to fix and arrange within my reach the loose and scattered atoms of historical information. Through the darkness of the middle ages I explored my way in the annals and antiquities of Italy of the learned Muratori; and diligent

ly compared them with the parallel or transverse lines of Sigonius and Maffei, Baronius and Pagi, till I almost grasped the ruins of Rome in the fourteenth century, without suspecting that this final chapter must be attained by the labour of six quartos and twenty years. Among the books which I purchased, the Theodocian Code, with the commentary of James Godefroy, must be gratefully remembered. I used it (and much I used it) as a work of history, rather than of jurisprudence; but in every light it may be considered as a full and capacious repository of the political state of the empire in the fourth and fifth centuries. As I believed, and as I still believe, that the propagation of the gospel, and the triumph of the church, are inseparably connected with the decline of the Roman monarchy, I weighed the causes and effects of the revolution, and contrasted the narratives and apologies of the christians themselves, with the glances of candour or enmity which the pagans have cast on the rising sects. The Jewish and heathen testimonies, as they are collected and illustrated by Dr. Lardner, directed, without superseding, my search of the originals; and in an ample dissertation on the miraculous darkness of the passion, I privately drew my conclusions from the silence of an unbelieving age. I have assembled the preparatory studies, directly or indirectly relative to my history; but, in strict equity, they must be spread beyond this period of my life, over the two summers (1771 and 1772) that elapsed between my father's death and my settlement in London."

At length, in February 1776, this great work was presented to the public. It was received with an enthusiasm of admiration; three editions, rapidly succeeded, scarcely satisfied the curiosity of the public: the book, as he expresses it, was on every table, and almost on every toilette. The following letters from his great contemporaries must have gratified him still more highly. The first we shall give is from Hume.