epithet, for the energy given to thought by precise words concisely turned. Such turns and expressions are the more to be remarked in Gibbon's first volumes, since he there brings them out by contrasts, not the less effective, because their object is seen through, while as we proceed farther, we find cause to regret that a labour always happy, was not sometimes better concealed. In an early stage of this progress, Gibbon, as I have already observed, obtained a seat in parliament. To express his thoughts in the most appropriate form was always a difficulty, which unfitted him for public speaking; and the consciousness of this defect, together with his awkwardness of manner, produced a timidity which he never could overcome. During eight sessions he sat a silent member. Tied to no party, either by self-love or any public expression of opinion, there was no obstacle to his accepting in 1779, the office of a Lord Commissioner of Trade and Plantations, which was obtained for him by the friendship of Mr. Wedderburne, afterwards Lord Loughborough. For this step he has been much censured; and certainly his political conduct was that of a man weak in character, and unsettled in his opinions. But this, perhaps, ought not to offend us in one whose education had not formed him to the habits and ideas of his native country. After a residence of five years at Lausanne, he had, as he himself says, "ceased to be an Englishman ;" and then he continues thus: "At the flexible period of youth, from the age of sixteen to twenty-one, my opinions, habits, and sentiments were cast in a foreign mould; the faint and distant remembrance of England was almost obliterated; my native language was grown less familiar." He could not at that period write a letter fluently in English; and even towards the close of his life, he used in his correspondence Gallicisms, which, fearing that they might not be otherwise intelligible, he explained by the French expression in which they originated.*

After Gibbon's first return to England, his father was desirous to see him a member of parliament. The young man, very sensibly, thought that the sum which an election would cost might be employed more profitably for his talent and his reputation if spent in travelling. The letter which he addressed to his father on this subject has been preserved; after urging in it his unfitness for public oratory, he added, that he had neither the national nor the party prejudices, without which it would be impossible to obtain success or advantage in such a career. Tempted to accept a seat offered to him after his parent's death, he repeatedly declared that he took it without either patriotism or ambition; nor did his views in the sequel ever rise beyond the convenient and honourable post of a lord of trade. It might, perhaps, be In his letter to Lord Sheffield, No. ccxi., he says, "It is my intention to find myself

(me trouver) in London, on or before the glorious 1st of August."

desirable that a man of talent should not have avowed so frankly a moderation, that aspired not beyond the sufficiency of an income unlaboriously acquired; but Gibbon expressed this sentiment as openly as he felt it; it was only by experience that the disgusting side of office was disclosed to him. His letters shew how deeply sensible he was that such dependence degraded him, and how he regretted that he had placed himself in a situation so unworthy of his character. He had, however, lost his place when he wrote thus: he was deprived of it in 1782, by a change of ministry.

For this reverse he was consoled by the liberty to which it restored him. Renouncing all ambitious desires, and turning from the delusive hope that another change might give him back his lost appointment, he determined to leave England. His narrow income did not allow him to continue there the mode of life which the pay of office had enabled him to lead. Lausanne, the scene of his first discomforts and of his first pleasures, which he had since revisited with joy and affection, invited him to return. A friend of thirty years, M. Deyverdun, offered to share his home with him, on terms that improved the means of both. This arrangement held out to Gibbon the prospect of a society agreeable to his sedentary tastes, combined with a retirement required for the undisturbed prosecution of his labours. The accomplishment of the plan in 1783 was ever afterwards a source of satisfaction to him.

He there brought to a conclusion his great work, on the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. "I have presumed," he said in his Memoirs, "to mark the moment of conception; I shall now commemorate the hour of my final deliverance. It was on the day, or rather the night, of the 27th of June, 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page, in a summer-house in my garden. After laying down my pen, I took several turns in a berceau, or covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and the mountains. The air was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, and all nature was silent. I will not dissemble the first emotion of joy on the recovery of my freedom, and, perhaps, the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that whatsoever might be the future fate of my history, the life of the historian must be short and precarious." Such reflections could not long depress a man who in the consciousness of health and the calm of imagination, regarded length of days as his allotted certainty, and who, even in his last moments, calcuLated the probable number of his remaining years. To enjoy the

reward of his labours, he returned that year to England and superintended the printing of his last volumes. Still he there looked fondly back on Switzerland. Under the first two Georges, letters and talents had found no patronage at court. The duke of Cumberland, whose levée Gibbon one day attended, addressed him, exclaiming "What, Mr. Gibbon, still scribble, scribble !" Little regret, therefore, did he feel, on again, after a year's residence, leaving his country and returning to Lausanne, where he was happy in himself and beloved by others. He could not fail to awaken a feeling of attachment in those among whom he lived, and who were sensible of the advantage of associating with one so easily pleased and so satisfied with his own enjoyments. Excited by no unreasonable desires, neither men nor things ruffled his contented mind. He often reviewed his pos:tion in life, with a satisfaction consonant with the moderation that pervaded his character. As the Optimist says:

"Je suis Français, Tourangeau, gentilhomme,
Je pouvais naître Turc, Limousin, paysan."

30 Gibbon, in his memoirs, said, "My lot might have been that of a slave, a savage, or a peasant; nor can I reflect without pleasure on the bounty of nature, which cast my birth in a free and civilized country, in an age of science and philosophy, in a family of honourable rank, and decently endowed with the gifts of fortune." The "golden mediocrity" of that fortune was happiness to him, since he was placed by it in the circumstances most favourable for acquiring a noble fame. "My spirit," he said, "would have been broken by poverty and contempt, and my industry might have been relaxed in the labour and luxury of a superfluous fortune." After escaping from the long perils of his childhood, his delicate constitution had been fortified by time, but he had never known "the madness of superfluous health." He enjoyed the twenty happy years, animated by the labour of his history, and no less did he enjoy in unostentatious retirement, the competence and reputation by which they were rewarded. Pleased with his position everything added to its comforts; and having undoubtedly endured with patience that of a lord of trade, his release from the slavery which it imposed, was to him a subject for sincere self-gratulation.

His memoirs are highly interesting, as well as the letters which follow them, most of which are addressed to Lord Sheffield; they bear the impress of those kindly dispositions which accompany moderation and contentment, and of feelings, if not very tender, at least very affectionate for those to whom he was bound by family or friendly ties. This affection is not expressed with much warmth, but it gives evidence of its sincerity. His long and intimate friendships with Lord Sheffield and M. Deyverdun, prove

him to have been capable both of feeling and inspiring attachment. Well, indeed, may it have been inspired by one, who, in the society of his friends poured out all the sensibilities of a heart undisturbed by passion, who delighted in sharing with them the solid treasures of his mind, and whose honourable and unassuming nature, if it did not kindle in him much ardour, yet never darkened the shining light of his talents.

The

The tranquillity of Gibbon's mind was, however, interrupted during the closing years of his life by the proceedings of the French revolution. Disappointed in his first hope of good, he afterwards condemned it with a bitterness even beyond that expressed by the unfortunate emigrants, who, driven from their homes, sought a refuge at Lausanne. He had for a short time quarrelled with M. Necker. But knowing well the character and intentions of that excellent man, lamenting his misfortunes and sharing his sorrow at the deplorable condition of France, reconciliation soon restored their former friendly intercourse. effect of the revolution was judged by him as it was by many other enlightened men, some of whom wrote as reflection suggested, before their conclusions could be sanctioned by experience. Opinions which he had long maintained assumed an exaggerated importance. I have sometimes thought," he said in his Memoirs, when referring to this subject," of writing a Dialogue of the Dead, in which Lucian, Erasmus, and Voltaire, should mutually acknowledge the danger of exposing an old superstition to the contempt of the blind and fanatic multitude." In his capacity of a living mortal, Gibbon surely would not have offered to join as a fourth in such a confession. He then averred, however, that he had attacked Christianity only because it had subverted polytheism, the ancient religion of the Roman empire. In one of his letters to Lord Sheffield he said, "The primitive Church, which I have treated with some freedom, was itself at that time an innovation, and I was attached to the old pagan establishment.” So far, indeed, did he carry his professed respect for ancient institutions, that sometimes, though facetiously, he amused himself by defending the Inquisition.

In the year 1791, Lord Sheffield, accompanied by his family, visited Gibbon at Lausanne, who promised in return soon to spend some time with them in England. This formidable journey was deferred from month to month, first, by the ever-growing troubles in France and the war, which made travelling dangerous, and then, by his great corpulence and those bodily infirmities, which, having been too long neglected, made it painful for him to At length, on receiving, in the month of April, 1793, the news of Lady Sheffield's death, to whom he was much attached, and whom he called his sister, he set out immediately to carry consolation to his friend. About six months after his arrival i

move.

England, his complaint, which had originated more than thirty years before, became so much worse that he was obliged to undergo an operation. This was several times repeated, and afforded some relief, which encouraged a hope of convalescence, till the 16th of January, 1794, when he died without disquietude and without pain.

The memory of Gibbon was dear to all who knew him, and his reputation pervaded all Europe. In his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire there may be neglected portions, which evince the fatigue of such protracted labour; it may sometimes want that vivacity of imagination which transports the reader into the midst of the scenes described, and that warmth of feeling which makes him an actor in them, with all his own interests and passions; the estimate of virtues and of vices may sometimes be too impartial; and it may be regretted, that the piercing ingenuity so often exercised in dissecting and scattering the various parts of a fact, did not occasionally give way to the staid philosophy which re-combines them and throws the reality of a new life into what it so constructs. But all must be struck with the propriety of that vast picture, with the accurate and profound views which it presents, and with those clear developments which fix attention without wearying it, while imagination is never perplexed by embarrassing vagueness. Nor less striking is that rare extensiveness of mind, which traversing the wide field of history explores its remotest parts, surveys it in every possible point of view, and exhibiting events and men under all their varied aspects, proves to the reader that incomplete perceptions are always false; and that in an order of things where all are connected and intertwined, all must be known before any right can be acquired to judge of the smallest detail. While perusing the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire the interest never flags; it is kept awake in every page by the penetration of the writer, by that admirable sagacity which discerns and follows the actual march of events, and places their most hidden causes in the fullest light. In my opinion, we can neither value too highly nor too warmly praise that immense assemblage of knowledge and of thought, the courage that ventured to employ it, and the perseverance which conducted the work to its successful issue; but most do we owe to that freely judging mind, which no institutions or times could fetter, and without which no historian can be great or any history truthful. If words can add to Gibbon's glory I conclude with these that before him no such work was ever written, nor whatever attempts might here and there be made to continue or complete it, has he left any room for such another.