GIBBON.

Pardon me, sir, but, as much as I admire your abilities, I can not bear without indignation your sarcastic slyness upon Christianity, and can not see without pity your determined hostility to the Gospel.- Whitaker.

Biography.-Born at Putney, in the county of Surrey, 1737:

'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 honorable rank, and decently endowed with the gifts of fortune.'

He was succeeded by five brothers and one sister, all of whom died in infancy. He was himself so frail that the most tender assiduity was scarcely sufficient to rear him:

'As soon as the use of speech had prepared my infant reason for the admission of knowledge, I was taught the arts of reading, writing, and arithmetic.'

In his ninth year he was sent to Kingston, whence he was recalled, after a residence of two years, by the death of his mother:

'I was too young to feel the importance of my loss; and the image of her person and conversation is faintly imprinted in my memory. My poor father was inconsolable. I can never forget the scene of our first interview, some weeks after the fatal event; the awful silence, the room hung with black, the mid-day tapers, his sighs and tears; his praises of my mother, a saint in heaven; his solemn adjuration that I would cherish her memory, and imitate her virtues; and the fervor with which he kissed and blessed me as the sole surviving pledge of their loves.'

At fifteen he was sent to Oxford, carrying there a stock of erudition that would have puzzled a doctor, and a degree of ignorance of which a school-boy would have been ashamed. His reading was extensive, but desultory; and his education without direction or discipline. Hence, as he himself states, he spent fourteen months at college idly and unprofitably. While here, he read himself into Catholicism.

'Youth is sincere and impetuous, and a momentary glow of enthusiasm had raised me above all temporal considerations.'

To reclaim him, he was immediately sent to Lausanne, to be under the care of a Calvinist minister, whose prudent management, in the absence of opposing influences, effected his return to Protestantism. It is more than probable, however, that he was now indifferent to either faith, and the change was a mere matter of form; since we are told that for the rest of his life he was a 'philosopher,' as the eighteenth century understood the term;

in other words, a disbeliever in revealed religion. His disorders had won derfully vanished, and he was able to pursue, with astonishing success, a regular and severe system of study in the Latin and French languages, and in general literature. During his residence here, he became the devoted admirer of a charming girl, refined by education and exalted by piety. It is curious to speculate on the effect of such a union upon his character and opinions, but he was to be one of the illustrious men who have felt keenly the disappointment of their affections:

'I hesitate, from the apprehension of ridicule, when I approach the delicate subject of my early love. By this word I do not mean the polite attention, the gallantry, without hope or design, which has originated in the spirit of chivalry, and is interwoven with the texture of French manners. I understand by this passion the union, friendship, and tenderness, which is inflamed by a single female, which prefers her to the rest of her sex, and which seeks her possession as the supreme or the sole happiness of our being. I need not blush at recollecting the object of my choice; and though my love was disappointed of success, I am rather proud that I was once capable of feeling such a pure and exalted sentiment. The personal attractions of Mademoiselle Susan Curchod were embellished by the virtues and talents of the mind. Her fortune was humble, but her family was respectable. Her mother, a native of France, had preferred her religion to her country. The profession of her father did not extinguish the moderation and philosophy of his temper, and he lived content, with a small salary and laborious duty, in the obscure lot of minister of Crassy, in the mountains that separate the Pays de Vaud from the county of Burgundy. In the solitude of a sequestered village he bestowed a liberal and even learned education on his only daughter. She surpassed his hopes by her proficiency in the sciences and languages; and in her short visits to some relations at Lausanne, the wit, the beauty, and erudition of Mademoiselle Curchod were the theme of universal applause. The report of such a prodigy awakened my curiosity; I saw and loved. I found her learned without pedantry, lively in conversation, pure in sentiment, and elegant in manners; and the first sudden emotion was fortified by the habits and knowledge of a more familiar acquaintance. She permitted me to make her two or three visits at her father's house. I passed some happy days there, in the mountains of Burgundy, her parents honorably encouraged the connection. In calm retirement the gay vanity of youth no longer fluttered in her bosom; she listened to the voice of truth and passion; and I might presume to hope that I had made some impression on a virtuous heart. At Crassy and Lausanne I indulged my dream of felicity; but on my return to England I soon discovered that my father would not hear of this strange alliance, and that without his consent I was myself destitute and helpless. After a painful struggle, I yielded to my fate: I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son; my wound was insensibly healed by time, absence, and the habits of a new life. My cure was accelerated by a faithful report of the tranquility and cheerfulness of the lady herself; and my love subsided in friendship and esteem. The minister of Crassy soon afterwards died; his stipend died with him; his daughter retired to Geneva, where, by teaching young ladies, she earned a hard subsistence for herself and her mother; but in her lowest distress she maintained a spotless reputation and a dignified behavior. A rich banker from Paris, a citizen of Geneva, had the good fortune and good sense to discover and possess this inestimable treasure; and in the capital of taste and luxury she resisted the temptations of wealth, as she had sustained the hardships of indigence. The genius of her husband has exalted him to the most conspicuous station in Europe. In every change of prosperity and disgrace he has reclined on the bosom of a faithful friend; and Mademoiselle Curchod is now the wife of M. Necker, the minister, and perhaps the legislator, of the French monarchy.'

In 1858 he returned to England, spent two years and a half in the unpromising occupation of a militia captain; traveled and studied in France

and Italy, his indiscriminate appetite having subsided by degrees in the historic line. While at Rome, his long cherished desire to write some historical work took definite shape from a romantic incident:

'As I sat musing amidst the ruins of the capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter, the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started in my mind.'

Some years elapsed, however, before he was seriously engaged in the execution of his scheme. In 1778 he settled in London. Once seated in his library, he began the composition of his history:

'At the outset all was dark and doubtful-even the title of the work, the true era of the Decline and Fall of the Empire, the limits of the introduction, the division of the chapters, and the order of the narrative; and I was often tempted to cast away the labor of seven years.'

Entered Parliament, where, through eight sessions, he was 'a mute member,' for the great speakers filled him with despair, and the bad ones with terror. Finding it necessary to retrench, and disappointed of a lucrative place for which he had hoped from ministerial patronage, he retired to Lausanne, the paradise of his early recollections. Here he lived happily, devoting his mornings to composition, and his evenings to the enlightened and polished society which had gathered in that city and neighborhood. He died tranquilly, of a long-standing complaint, during a visit to London in 1794.

Writings. Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1788). It gins with the reign of Trajan, A. D., '98, and closes with the fall of the Eastern Empire in 1452. These limits include the irruption of the barbarians, the establishment of the Byzantine power, the re-organization of Europe, the foundation of the Mohammedan system, and the Crusades. Much of the material had to be patiently gathered from the rubbish of annalists and the wild stories of chroniclers. To reproduce the sequence and connection of events through this long and obscure period, he had to study, with laborious diligence, philosophy, theology, science, jurisprudence, geography, war, manners, and opinions, in the principal countries of Europe and Asia. All this done, he had to set it forth in a clear and When we consider the vast sweep of his subject, his long and solitary confinement to study and meditation, we can appreciate his feelings when the task was ended:

attractive manner.

'It was on the day, or rather 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 emotions 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.'

Style. In keeping with the formal rhetorical tendency of his time,stately and ornate, elaborate and antithetical, clear and cold, everywhere supported by a profusion of learning:

'The style of an author should be the image of his mind, but the choice and command of langnage is the fruit of exercise. Many experiments were made before I could hit the middle tone between a dull tone and a rhetorical declamation: three times did I compose the first chapter, and twice the second and third, before I was tolerably satisfied with their effect. In the remainder of the way I advanced with a more equal and easy pace.' The verses of Pope accustomed his ear to the sound of poetic harmony.

Rank.-'Few men,' says Guizot, 'have combined, if we are not to say in so high a degree, at least in a manner so complete and well regulated, the necessary qualifications for a writer of history.' His chief defect is coldness of feeling, disqualifying him for that dramatic animation which, with his solid and bright acquirements, would entitle him to be pronounced the first of English historians. A second fault, nearly allied to the first, is a sensuous imagination, leading him to dwell upon material grandeur with a fonder enthusiasm than he could feel for spiritual beauty or the moral sublime. More accurate, erudite, and comprehensive than Hume, he is less philosophical,-fonder of splendor and display.

The faults of the artist are the faults of his art. Its brilliancy, sustained throughout, is metallic; its splendor, though imposing, is artificial; its descriptions are luminous rather than warm. It regards all creeds, political and religious, from the outside. Facts are examined with judicial severity; but the passions of which those facts are the outward symbols, are not appreciated. Hence Christianity, that school of tranquil heroism, is disparaged. The zeal of the early Christians, we are told, was earthly; their doctrine of a future life, subordinated to wordly ends; their legends of miracles, so many proofs of their credulity; their morality, suited to popular prejudices; their contempt of ambition, a mere covering to ambition of a different kind; their sufferings, not to be compared to those which have been voluntarily encountered by other men without supernatural support. Julian the Apostate is idolized, but a bishop or a religious king is under the suspicion of enthusiasm, superstition, or roguery. The successes of barbarous energy receive more embellishment than the triumphs of Christian faith and benevolence. The former are treated with fervid eloquence; the latter, with frigid apathy. This is the famous method of attack-insidious, though unequivocal. Covert sneers are substituted for distinct assertions. Without an open avowal of disbelief, Revelation is insinuated to be a poetical fable. Without an explicit denial of its Divine origin, we are asked calmly to consider whether the phenomenon is really such as to imply the intervention of the Deity?

Thus the fidelity of the Decline and Fall, as a historical picture, is greatly marred; yet, whatever its faults, it is a monumental work, not yet, if it ever will be, superseded.

Character. He was born a student. His love of reading was early and invincible; and he would not have exchanged it, he said, for the treasures of India :

My father could never inspire me with his love and knowledge of farming. I never handled a gun, I seldom mounted a horse; and my philosophic walks were soon terminated by a shady bench, where I was long detained by the sedentary amusement of read ing or meditation.'

Industry must be incorporated with our treasures to give them value -industry that occupies itself in useful dreams by night, and, when the morning rises, flies to its unfinished labors :

'By the habit of early rising, I always secured a sacred portion of the day, and many scattered moments were stolen and employed by my studious industry.'

He was a historian by predilection:

'After his oracle Dr. Johnson, my friend Sir Joshua Reynolds denies all original genius any natural propensity of the mind to one art or science rather than another. Without engaging in a metaphysical, or rather verbal dispute, I know, by experience, that from my early youth I aspired to the character of an historian.'

In religion he was a deist. His attitude is suggested indirectly by his general estimate of the religions of the Roman Empire:

'The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true, by the philosopher as equally false, and by the magistrate as equally useful.'

If he was an infidel, he was such from conviction, from temperament, from environment. A lover of order, he abhorred controversy; and those who aspired to break a lance upon his shield, were treated, as a rule, with calm contempt. Only once was he vexed into a defense, then by imputations of bad faith. Let us hear the conclusion of his Vindication:

'It is not without some mixture of mortification and regret, that I now look back to the number of hours which I have consumed, and the number of pages which I have filled, in vindicating my literary and moral character from the charges of wilful misrepresentations, gross errois, and servile plagiarisms. I can not derive any triumph or consolation from the occasional advantages which I may have gained over those adversaries whom it is impossible for me to consider as objects either of terror or esteem. The spirit of resentment, and every other lively sensation, have long since been extinguished; and the pen would long since have dropped from my weary hand, had I not been supported in the execution of this ungrateful task by the consciousness, or at least by the opinion, that I was discharging a debt of honor to the public and to myself. I am impatient to dismiss, and to dismiss FOREVER, this odious controversy, with the success of which I can not surely be elated; and I have only to request that, as soon as my readers are convinced of my innocence, they would forget my vindication.'

A man of vast erud tion, of comprehensive intellect, of upright purpose, of dignified self-respect; but deficient in moral depth and elevation of sentiment.