(Edward, Esq.), the celebrated historian of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, was born at Putney in the county of Surrey on the 27th of April 1737. He was the first child of the marriage of Edward Gibbon, Esq., and Judith Porten, the youngest daughter of a merchant of London.

The family of Gibbon appears to be ancient and honourable; and our author delights to trace its pedigree from John Gibbon architect to King Edward III., who possessed lands in the hundred and parish of Rovenden, in the district which is now called the Weald of Kent. In that district the elder branch of the family still adheres to its native soil, without much increase or diminution of property; but the fortunes of the younger branch, from which sprung the subject of this memoir, were fluctuating. It is not, however, with his family, but with himself, that we are concerned.

So feeble was his constitution, and so precarious his life during his childhood years, that at the baptism of each of his brothers (and they were five in number) his father's prudence successively repeated the name of Edward, that, in case of the death of the eldest son, this patronymic appellation might still be perpetuated in the family. His brothers and sisters were all snatched away in their infancy; and, in terms of affectionate gratitude, he attributes his own preservation to the more than maternal care of a maiden aunt, his mother's eldest sister. "Many anxious and solitary days (says he) did that dear and excellent woman consume in the patient trial of every mode of relief and amusement. Many wakeful nights did she fit by my bedside in trembling expectation that each hour would be my last. Suffice it to say, that while every practitioner from Sloane and Ward to the Chevalier Taylor was successively summoned to torture or relieve me, the care of my mind was too frequently neglected for that of my health. Compassion always suggested an excuse for the indulgence of the matter, or the idleness of the pupil; and the chain of my education was broken as often as I was called from the school of learning to the bed of sickness."

His education seems indeed to have been far from systematic. At the age of seven he was delivered into the hands of Mr. John Kirkby, who exercised about eighteen months the office of his domestic tutor, and of whom he writes in terms of respect. This man had been an indigent curate in Cumberland, and when forced by distress to leave his native country, he was introduced by his learning and his virtue to the family of Mr. Gibbon, from whom he might have found at least a temporary shelter, had not an act of indiference again driven him into the world. One day reading prayers in the parish church, he most unluckily forgot the name of King George; and his patron, a loyal subject, dismissed him with some reluctance and a decent reward. As our author describes his ancestors as hereditary Tories, and some of them as Jacobites, we think it not improbable that Mr Kirkby may have been accustomed to omit the name of the King when reading prayers in the family; for otherwise he would have pronounced it mechanically in the church.

Be this as it may, our author, upon the dismission of his tutor, was sent to Kingston upon Thames, to a school of seventy boys kept by Dr Wooddefon and his assistants. He does not represent himself either as happy or as having made great progress at that school. The want of strength and activity disqualified him for the sports of the field; his companions reviled him for the sins of his Tory ancestors; and his studies were frequently interrupted by sickness. After a real or nominal residence of near two years at Kingston, he was finally recalled (Dec. 1747) by the death of his mother. By this time he was well acquainted with Pope's Homer, the Arabian Nights Entertainments, Dryden's Virgil, and a translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses; and the entertainment which he received from these books gave him a taste for devotory reading.

After living a year with his maternal aunt, during which period he read many books on religious subjects too deep for the comprehension of a boy, he was in January 1749 entered in Westminster school, of which Dr John Nicoll was at that time head master. "There (says he) in the space of two years, interrupted by danger and debility, I painfully climbed into the third form; and my riper age was left to acquire the beauties of the Latin and the rudiments of the Greek tongue. Instead of audaciously mingling in the sports, the quarrels, and the connexions of our little world, I was still cherished at home under the maternal wing of my aunt, who now lived in College-street; and my removal from Westminster long preceded the approach of manhood."

He was first carried to Bath for the recovery of his health; then to Winchester, where he lived in the house of a physician; then to Bath again, where he read with a clergyman some odes of Horace and some episodes of Virgil; after which an unsuccessful trial was made to renew his attendance at Westminster school. "It might now be apprehended (says he) that I should continue for life an illiterate cripple; but as I approached my sixteenth year, Nature displayed in my favour her mysterious energies: my constitution was fortified and fixed; and my disorders, instead of growing with my growth, and strengthening with my strength, most wonderfully vanished." In consequence of this he was carried to Oxford; and before he had accomplished his fifteenth year, was, on April 3, 1752, matriculated a gentleman-commoner of Magdalen college.

For the honour of that celebrated university, we would fain hope that the account which Mr Gibbon gives of Magdalen college is greatly exaggerated. He represents his tutors as wholly regardless of his morals or his studies. Speaking of the first and best of them, for he had two, he says, "No plan of study was recommended for my use; no exercises were prescribed for his inspection; and, at the most precious season of youth, whole days and weeks were suffered to elapse without labour or amusement, without advice or account." We shall make no other remark on this pallage, than that from gentlemen, who must have been contemporary with Mr Gibbon at Magdalen, we have received different accounts of the college; and it is surely a very singular circumstance, that at this period of idleness, our author should have become enamoured of Sir John Martham's Canon Chronicus, and have conceived the idea of writing an Essay on the Age of Sceptics. Such, however, was the case. Not only was the essay planned, but part of it was written; and though he never finished it, he declares, that his solution of some difficulties in chronology was not devoid of ingenuity; but he goes on to vilify Oxford. "It might at least be expected (says he), that an ecclesiastical school should inculcate the orthodox principles of religion. But our venerable mother had contrived to unite the opposite extremes of bigotry and indifference: an heretic, or unbeliever, was a monster in her eyes; but she was always, or often, or sometimes (a), remiss in the spiritual education of her own children. Without a single lecture, either public or private, either Christian or Protestant, without any academical subscription, without any Episcopal confirmation, I was left by the dim light of my catechism to grope my way to the chapel and communion table, where I was admitted, without a question, how far, or by what means, I might be qualified to receive the sacrament. Such almost incredible neglect was productive of the worst mischiefs. From my childhood I had been fond of religious disputations; nor had the elastic spring been totally broken by the weight of the atmosphere of Oxford. The blind activity of idleness urged me to advance without armour into the dangerous mazes of controversy; and, at the age of sixteen, bewildered myself in the errors of the church of Rome."

Thus anxious is our author to account for his reconciliation to the Romish church by the negligence of the tutors of his college. This event took place on the 8th of June 1753, when, at the feet of a priest in London, he solemnly, though privately, abjured the errors of heresy. An elaborate controversial epistle, approved by his director, and addressed to his father, announced and justified the step he had taken; and the old gentleman, in the fitfully of passion, divulging the secret, the gates of Magdalen college were shut against the convert. It was necessary therefore to form a new plan of education; and our young Catholic, by the advice of Mr Eliot (afterwards Lord Eliot), was settled, on the 30th of June, under the roof and tuition of Mr Pavilliard, a Calvinist minister at Lausanne in Switzerland.

He represents his situation there as at first extremely uncomfortable. He could not avoid contracting a small chamber, ill contrived and ill-furnished, with his elegant apartment in Magdalen college; and M. Pavilliard being entrusted with the management of his expenses, he felt himself degraded from the rank of gentleman-commoner to that of a school-boy. He began, however, gradually to be reconciled to his fate; and his love of reading returned, which, he says, had been chilled by the air of Oxford. He rapidly acquired the French language; and of his tutor he says, "My obligations

(a) Surely always and sometimes are words of very different import: why are they used then, in this sentence, as synonymous? to the lessons of Mr Pavilliard gratitude will not suffer me to forget. He was endowed with a clear head and a warm heart; his innate benevolence had afflamed the spirit of the church; he was rational, because he was moderate: in the course of his studies, he had acquired a just, though superficial knowledge of most branches of literature; by long practice he was skilled in the arts of teaching; and he laboured with affiduous patience to know the character, gain the affection, and open the mind of his English pupil."

Under the tuition of this amiable preceptor he describes his progress in the French and Latin classics, in history, geography, logic, and metaphysics, as uncommonly rapid; and he allows to the same man a handsome share of the honour of reclaiming him from the errors of popery. The various discriminating articles of the Roman creed disappeared like a dream; and, after a full conviction, on Christmas-day 1754, he received the sacrament in the church of Lausanne. Thus had our author communicated with three different societies of Christians before the completion of his eighteenth year; and as such changes from church to church are always dangerous, we need not wonder, that, in a mind so ill-furnished as Mr Gibbon's then was for theological investigations, they paved the way for his last change to Deism. At present, however, he suspended his religious inquiries, acquiescing (as he says) with implicit belief in the tenets and mysteries which are adopted by the general consent of Catholics and Protestants.

He continued to prosecute his studies with ardour. Under Mr Pavilliard he learned the Greek alphabet, the grammar, and the pronunciation of the language according to the French accent; and soon made himself master of the works of Homer, Herodotus, and Xenophon. During two winters he attended the private lectures of M. de Traytorrens, who explained the elements of algebra and geometry as far as the conic sections of the Marquis de l'Hôpital; but in mathematics he was content (he says) to receive the passive impression of his professor's lectures, without any active exercise of his own powers. In the writings of Grotius and Puffendorf he studied the duties of a man, the rights of a citizen, the theory of justice, and the laws of peace and war, which have had some influence on the practice of modern Europe. "Locke's treatise on government, (says he) instructed me in whig-principles, which are founded rather in reason than experience; but my delight was in the frequent perusal of Montesquieu, whose energy of style and boldness of hypothesis were powerful to awaken and stimulate the genius of the age."

We have been thus minute in our account of Mr Gibbon's studies, because it furnishes perhaps the most useful lesson which can be drawn from the whole history of his life. His education had been rendered irregular, and had been often interrupted by ill health and a feeble constitution; but as soon as he was able, and had an opportunity, he applied with ardour to the cultivation of letters, and his works bear witness that his labour was crowned with success. "This part of his story therefore (to use the words of Johnson) well deserves to be remembered. It may afford useful admonition and powerful encouragement to men whose abilities have been made, for a time, useless, and who, having lost one part of life in idleness, are tempted to throw away the remainder in despair."

In the year 1757 Voltaire arrived at Lausanne, and our young student's desire to see the man who was once a poet, an historian, and, as he deemed himself, the prince of philosophers, was ardent, and easily gratified. He was received by the vain and arrogant Frenchman with civility as an English youth, but could not boast of any peculiar notice or distinction. "The highest gratification (says he) which I received from Voltaire's residence at Lausanne, was the uncommon circumstance of hearing a great poet declaim his own productions on the stage. His declamation was fashioned to the pomp and cadence of the old stage; and he expressed the enthusiasm of poetry rather than the feelings of Nature."

About this time Mr Gibbon became enamoured of Mademoiselle Sufan Curchod, the daughter of the minister of Crassy, in the mountains which separate the Pays de Vaud from the county of Burgundy. In terms of rapture he describes this lady as possessed of every accomplishment which could adorn her sex. She listened to the voice of truth and passion; her parents honourably encouraged the connection; and our author indulged in the dream of felicity: but on his return to England, he discovered that his father would not hear of this strange connection, and that without his consent he was destitute and helpless. "After a painful struggle (says he) I yielded to my fate. I fished as a lover, I obeyed as a son, and my wound was infallibly healed by time, absence, and the habits of a new life." The lady consoled herself by giving her hand to M. Neckar, then a rich banker of Paris, afterwards the minister, and at last one of the destroyers of the French monarchy.

In the spring of the year 1758 our author was recalled to England. On his arrival in London he hastened to the house of his aunt, Mrs Porten, who had been the guardian of his tender years; for though his father was in town awaiting his arrival, he knew not how he should be received by a parent who had parted with him in anger, and given him a stepmother in his absence. His reception was more agreeable than he expected. His father received him as a man and a friend; and the manners of Mrs Gibbon were such, that, after some reserve on his side, she and he easily adopted the tender names and genuine characters of mother and son; and, by the indulgence of these parents, he was left at liberty to consult his own taste or reason in the choice of place, of company, and of amusements. In London he had few acquaintances, and hardly any friends; and being accustomed to a very small society at Lausanne, he preferred the retirement of the country to the bustle of that overgrown metropolis, where he found hardly any entertainment but in the theatres.

Before he left Lausanne he had begun a work on the study of ancient literature, which was suggested by the desire of justifying and praising the object of a favourite pursuit. "In France (says he), to which my ideas were confined, the learning and language of Greece and Rome were neglected by a philosophic age. The guardian of those studies, the Academy of Inscriptions, was degraded to the lowest rank among the three royal societies of Paris: The new appellation of Erudits was contemptuously applied to the successors of Lipsius and Diderot Casaubon; and I was provoked to hear *, that the ex-Preliminaires erose of the memory, their sole merit, had been superseeded by the nobler faculties of the imagination and the judgment, etc. judgment. I was ambitious of proving by my own example, as well as by my precepts, that all the faculties of the mind may be exercised and displayed by the study of ancient literature." This laudable ambition continued; and in his father's house at Beriton in Hampshire he finished his Essai sur l'Etude de la Litterature; which, after being revised by Mallet the poet and Dr Maty of the British museum, was, in 1761, published in a small 12mo volume.

The subjects of taste, criticism, and philosophy, which in this work came under our young author's consideration, could hardly promise much novelty of remark. Some former observations, however, he appears to have placed in a new and pleasing point of view; advancing, moreover, some ingenious conjectures, and displaying no inconsiderable erudition. Yet, by his own account, he was at this time almost a stranger to the writers of Greece; and when he quotes them, it is probable that the quotations are given at second hand. To this essay was prefixed a dedication to his father in the English language, which exhibits the author himself in a very amiable light; but if his reputation had depended solely upon this youthful attempt, the name of Gibbon would have been lost in oblivion. Yet he seems, even in his riper years, to have been delighted with it himself, and to have considered its merits as equal to those of his later productions; but Milton, it is said, preferred the Paradise Regained to the Paradise Lost.

Before the publication of this essay, the author, at his own desire, had been appointed a captain in the South Hampshire militia, in which he served upwards of two years. At first, the company of rustic and illiterate officers, and the bustle of a military life, were extremely disagreeable to him, as they interrupted his studies; but he admits, that his military services, his bloodless and inglorious campaigns, as he calls them, were, on the whole, beneficial, as they brought him acquainted with English manners, English parties, and English principles, to which his foreign education and reserved temper had hitherto kept him an entire stranger. In the camp and in quarters he had even found leisure, after the first seven or eight months of his service, to read a great deal of Greek, and to plan different historical works, to the composition of which he seems to have thought that he was born with an innate propensity. He always talks of himself as a philosopher; but surely a more unphilosophical persuasion than this has seldom been admitted.

At the end of the war he went again abroad, and reached Paris on the 28th of January 1763, only 36 days after the disbanding of the militia in which he had borne the commission of a captain. In that metropolis he stayed not long. He visited palaces, churches, gardens, and theatres, and was introduced to D'Alembert and Diderot, then considered as at the head of French science. From Paris he proceeded to Switzerland, and once more took up his residence at his favourite Lausanne. Voltaire's impieties had forced him from that town to his own castle at Ferney, where our author once visited him, without (he says) courting his more intimate acquaintance.

The society in which Mr Gibbon most delighted during his second residence at Lausanne was a very singular one. "It consisted of fifteen or twenty unmarried ladies of genteel families; the eldest perhaps about twenty, all agreeable, several handsome, and two or three of exquisite beauty. At each other's houses they assembled almost every day, without the control, or even the presence of a mother or an aunt; they were trusted to their own prudence, among a crowd of young men of every nation in Europe. They laughed, they sung, they danced, they played at cards, they acted comedies; but in the midst of this careless gaiety, they respected themselves, and were respected by the men; the invisible line between liberty and licentiousness was never transgressed by a gesture, a word, or a look, and their virgin chastity was never sullied by the breath of scandal or suspicion."

We readily agree with our author that this singular institution was expressive of the innocent simplicity of Swiss manners; and we only regret that he had not the same respect for the ladies of his own country as for those frolic females of Switzerland. He would not, in that case, have claimed some of his most brilliant pages with obscene rudeness.

We shall not follow him in his ramble through Italy, or repeat his remarks on the towns which he visited. It is sufficient, in such a sketch as this, to inform our readers, that it was at Rome on the 15th of October 1764, as he sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, that the idea of his great work first started into his mind. But his original plan was circumscribed to the decay of the city rather than of the empire.

From carrying even this contracted plan into execution he was for some years diverted. On the 25th of June 1765 he arrived from Italy at his father's house in Hampshire, and found that he had filial duties to perform which interrupted his studies and disturbed his quiet. His father had involved himself in difficulties, from which he could be extricated only by selling or mortgaging part of his estate; and to such sale or mortgage our author cheerfully consented. He regrets on this occasion that he had not "embraced the lucrative pursuits of the law or of trade, the chances of civil office or India adventure, or even the fat flumpers of the church;" and it is to be hoped that, when he thought even of jumbling in the church, he had still some faith in revealed religion. He waited some time in planning a history of the revolutions of Switzerland, and even wrote part of it in the French language, which, by the advice of friends, he however suppressed. We next find him engaged with a friend in a Journal entitled Memoires Litteraires de la Grand Bretagne, of which two volumes for the years 1767 and 1768 were published, and a third almost completed, when his friend, a native of Switzerland, was engaged, through his interest, as travelling governor to Sir Richard Worsley, and the Journal was, of course, abandoned. He then entered the lists with Warburton; whose interpretation of the fifth book of the Aeneid he attacked with great pertinacity and with much success. The bishop of Glocester was by this time in a state of great mental decay, which was peculiarly unfortunate for our author; for had his Lordship enjoyed his pristine vigour, he would probably have given Mr Gibbon such a satisfaction as might have made him more modest afterwards when writing the history of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

To that great work he now sat down seriously; and the history which he gives of his preparatory studies sufficiently accounts for the inaccuracy of his quotations. Through Through the darkness of the middle ages he explored his way in the annals and antiquities of Italy by the learned Muratori and other moderns; and seems to acknowledge that, from the beginning to the end of his work, he frequently contented himself with authorities furnished at second-hand.

At last, in 1776, the first volume of his history was published by Cadell the bookeller and Strahan the printer; and the success of it far surpassed his expectation. The encomiums lavished on it by Dr Robertson and Mr Hume in letters to the author, and the fulsome compliments which those three eminent historians paid to each other, are melancholy specimens of lettered littleness and vanity. The second and third volumes appeared in 1781; the fourth, fifth, and sixth in 1787; and Mr Gibbon's fame was established as a historian. The work was admired both by natives and by foreigners, and translated into several of the languages of Europe. Dr Zimmermann represents the author as excelling perhaps Hume and Robertson, who were historians of the first rank. "All the dignity (he adds), all the charms of historic style, are united in Gibbon: his periods are melody itself, and all his thoughts have nerve and vigour." This praise, however, must not be admitted without exception. Few writers, indeed, were possessed of such popular talents as our historian. The acuteness of his penetration, and the fertility of his genius, have been seldom equaled, and scarcely ever surpassed. He seizes, with singular felicity, on all the most interesting facts and situations, and these he embellishes with the utmost luxuriance of fancy and elegance of style. His periods are full and harmonious; his language is always well chosen, and is frequently distinguished by a new and peculiarly happy adaptation. His epithets, too, are in general beautiful and happy; but he is rather too fond of them. The uniform flatness of his diction sometimes imparts to his narrative a degree of obscurity, unless he descends to the miserable expedient of a note, to explain the minute circumstances. His style, on the whole, is much too artificial; and this gives a degree of monotony to his periods, which extends, we had almost said, to the turn of his thoughts.

A more serious objection is his attack upon Christianity; the loose and disrespectful manner in which he mentions many points of morality regarded as important on the principles of natural religion; and the indecent allusions and expressions which too often occur in the work.

An attack upon Christianity is not censurable merely as such; it may proceed from the purest and most virtuous motives: but, in that case, the attack will never be carried on in an infamous manner, and with improper weapons; and Christianity itself, so far from dreading, will invite every mode of fair and candid discussion. Our historian, it must be confessed, often makes, when he cannot readily find, an opportunity to insult the Christian religion. Such, indeed, is his eagerness in the cause, that he stoops to the most despicable pun, or to the most awkward perversion of language, for the pleasure of turning the scripture into ribaldry, or calling Jesus an impostor.

Yet of the Christian religion has Mr Gibbon himself observed, that it "contains a pure, benevolent, and universal system of ethics, adapted to every duty and every condition of life." Such an acknowledgment, and from such a writer, too, ought to have due weight with a certain class of readers, and of authors likewise, and lead them seriously to consider, how far it is consistent with the character of good citizens, to endeavour, by fly insinuations, oblique hints, indecent sneers, and profane ridicule, to weaken the influence of so pure and benevolent a system as that of Christianity, acknowledged to be admirably calculated for promoting the happiness of individuals, and the welfare of society.

Mr Hayley, in his poetical Essay on History, after a splendid panegyric on the arduous labours of his friend, laments the irreligious spirit by which he was actuated.

Think not my verse means blindly to engage In rash defence of thy profaner page! Though keen her spirit, her attachment fond, Safe service cannot suit with Friendship's bond; Too firm from Duty's sacred path to turn, She breathes an honest sigh of deep concern, And pities Genius, when his wild career Gives Faith a wound, or Innocence a tear. Humility herself divinely mild, Sublime religion's meek and modest child, Like the dumb son of Creitus, in the strife, Where force assail'd his father's sacred life, Breaks silence, and with filial duty warm, Bids thee revere her parent's hallowed form (a)!

The part of the history which gave such offence to his own friend, as well as to the friends of the Christian religion in general, was the account which our historian has given of the progress and establishment of Christianity in the two last chapters of his first volume; in which he endeavors to prove, that the wonderful triumph of that religion over all the established religions of the earth, was not owing to any miraculous attestations to its truth, but to five secondary causes which he enumerates; and that Christianity, of course, could not be of divine origin. Several answers appeared on this occasion, written, as we may naturally suppose, with different degrees of temper and ability (c).

One of them only, Mr Davis, who had undertaken to point out various instances of misrepresentation, inaccuracy, and even plagiarism in his account, did our historian condescend particularly to answer, and that in

---

(a) Herodotus relates, that a Persian soldier, at the storming of Sardis, was preparing to kill Croesus, whose person he did not know, and who, giving up all as lost, neglected to defend his own life. A son of the unfortunate monarch, who had been dumb from his infancy, and who never spoke afterward, found utterance in that trying moment, and preserved his father by exclaiming, 'O kill not Croesus!'

(c) Dr Chelfsum, Dr Randolph, Dr Watson (bishop of Llandaff) Lord Hailes, Dr White, Mr Apthorpe, Mr Davis, and Mr Taylor, the author of 'The Letters of Ben Mordecai.' Gibbon. a tone of proud contempt and confident superiority. To this Mr Davis replied; and it is but justice to observe, that his reply bears evident marks of learning, judgment, and critical acumen, and that he has convicted our author of sometimes quoting inaccurately to serve a purpose. At his other answers Mr Gibbon merely glanced, treating Dr Watson, however, with particular respect; but his posthumous memoirs shew how much he felt the attacks made on him by Lord Hailes, Dr White of Oxford, and Mr Taylor. To Dr Priestley, who, in his History of the Corruptions of Christianity, threw down his gauntlets at once to Bishop Hurd and the historian of the Roman empire, and who presented the latter with a copy of his book, declaring, at the same time, that he sent it not as a gift but as a challenge; he wrote in such terms as produced a correspondence, which certainly added not to the honour of the dissenting divine.

At the beginning of the memorable contest between Great Britain and America, our author was returned, by the interest of Mr Eliot (now Lord Eliot), for the borough of Liskeard, and supported, with many a sincere and silent vote, the rights, though not, perhaps, the interest, of the mother country. "After a fleeting illusive hope, prudence condemned me (says he) to acquiesce in the humble station of a mute. I was not armed by Nature and education with the intrepid energy of mind and voice.

Vincentem flebimus, et natum revoc agenda.

Timidity was fortified by pride; and even the success of my pen discouraged the trial of my voice."

That pen, however, was useful to the ministry whom he could not support by his eloquence in the house. At the request of the Lord Chancellor and Viscount Weymouth, then secretary of state, he vindicated, in a very able manner, against the French manifesto, the justice of the British arms, and his Memoire justificatif was delivered as a state paper to the courts of Europe. He was rewarded for this service with the place of one of the lords commissioners of trade and plantations; and kept it, till the board was abolished by Mr Burke's reform bill. For accepting this place he was severely, but most unjustly, blamed by some of the leaders of the opposition, as if he had deserted a party in which he had never enlisted, and to the principles of which he was rendered inimical both by family prepossession and by his own judgement.

On the downfall of Lord North's administration, Mr Gibbon was of course in the opposition deprived of an office, without the salary of which he could not conveniently support the expense of living in London. The coalition was indeed soon formed, and his friends were again in power; but having nothing to give him immediately, they could not detain him in parliament or even in England. He was tired of the bustle of the metropolis, and wished once more for the retirement of Lausanne, at which he arrived before the overthrow of the coalition ministry, and where he lived happily till the last years of his life. It was in this retreat that he wrote the fourth, fifth, and sixth volumes of his history; and he left it only for a year to superintend the publication of these volumes in London. This great work being concluded, he returned to the banks of the Leman lake, but found his enjoyments damped by the distress, and soon afterwards by the death, of his eldest and dearest Swift's friend. Lausanne had now lost much of its attraction; the French revolution had crowded it with unfortunate emigrants, who could not be cheerful themselves or excite the cheerfulness of others; and the demons of democracy had begun to poison the minds of the sober citizens with principles which Mr Gibbon had always held in abhorrence. Speaking of these principles and their effects in Switzerland, he adds, "I beg leave to subscribe my assent to Mr Burke's creed on the revolution of France. I admire his eloquence, I approve his politics, I adore his chivalry, and I can almost excuse his reverence for church establishments. While the aristocracy of Berne protects the happiness, it is superfluous to enquire whether it be founded in the rights of men: the economy of the state is liberally supplied without the aid of taxes; and the magistrates may reign with prudence and equity, since they are unarmed in the midst of an armed nation."

It was against the beneficent and mild government of Berne that the emissaries of France contrived to excite the discontented of the people, by instilling into their simple and untutored minds their own wild notions of liberty and equality. From the effects of this Gallic phrenzy, which began to be very visible so early as the beginning of the year 1792, Mr Gibbon resolved to take shelter in England, and to abandon, for some time at least, what he called his paradise at Lausanne. Difficulties intervened, and forced him to postpone his journey from week to week, and from month to month; but on receiving the accounts of Lady Sheffield's death, he hastened to administer consolation to his friend, and arrived safe in London in the beginning of June 1793.

He continued in good health and spirits through the whole of the summer; but his constitution had suffered much from repeated attacks of the gout, and from an incipient dropsy in his ankles. The swelling of his ankles, however, subsided; but it was only in consequence of the water flowing to another place; and being repeatedly tapped for a hydrocele, he at last sunk under it, and died at his lodgings in St James's street, London, on the 16th of January 1794.

To draw a character at once general and just of this extraordinary man, would be difficult perhaps to one who had enjoyed the pleasure of his acquaintance, and must be impossible to those to whom his person was a stranger. Of the extent of his erudition there can be but one opinion; but various opinions may be held respecting the accuracy of his knowledge. Lord Sheffield, who knew him well, and loved him much, affirms us, that his conversation was still more captivating than his writings: but this could not result from the brilliancy of his wit; for of wit he declares himself that he had none. His memory was capacious and retentive, his penetration uncommon, and his colloquial eloquence ready and elegant; so that he could illustrate almost any topic of conversation from the copious stores of his own mind. From his private correspondence, and a journal not written for the public eye, he appears to have been a dutiful son, a loyal subject, and an affectionate and steady friend; but it is difficult to reconcile with so much moral and political worth his unfair and unmanly sneers at the religion of his country.

GIBRALTAR is a fortress of immense strength, of which a very full account has been given in the Encyclopaedia. Nothing, however, is in that article said of the natural history of the mountain on which the fortress is built, though, to men of science, that subject must be as interesting as a detail of siege. This defect we are enabled to supply by means of Major Imrie's mineralogical description of Gibraltar, which is published in the fourth volume of the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh; and, we are persuaded, the following abstract of that elegant memoir will afford rational entertainment to many of our readers.

"The form of this mountain is oblong; its summit a sharp craggy ridge; its direction is nearly from north to south; and its greatest length, in that direction, falls very little short of three miles. Its breadth varies with the indentations of the shore, but it no where exceeds three quarters of a mile. The line of its ridge is undulated, and the two extremes are somewhat higher than its centre.

"The summit of the Sugar Loaf, which is the point of its greatest elevation towards the south, is 1439 feet; the Rock Mortar, which is the highest point to the north, is 1350; and the Signal House, which is nearly the central point between these two, is 1276 feet above the level of the sea. The western side of the mountain is a series of rugged slopes, interspersed with abrupt precipices. Its northern extremity is perfectly perpendicular, except towards the north-west, where what are called the Lines intervene, and a narrow passage of flat ground that leads to the isthmus, and is entirely covered with fortification. The eastern side of the mountain mostly consists of a range of precipices; but a bank of sand, rising from the Mediterranean in a rapid acclivity, covers a third of its perpendicular height. Its southern extremity falls, in a rapid slope from the summit of the Sugar Loaf, into a rocky flat of considerable extent, called Windmill Hill.

"The principal mass of the mountain rock consists of a grey, dense (what is generally called primary) marble; the different beds of which are to be examined in a face of 1350 feet of perpendicular height, which it presents to Spain in a conical form. These beds, or strata, are of various thicknesses, from 20 to upwards of 40 feet, dipping in a direction from east to west, nearly at an angle of 35 degrees. In some parts of the solid mass of this rock are found tectaceous bodies entirely transmuted into the constituent matter of the rock, and their interior hollows filled up with calcareous spar; but these do not occur often in its composition, and its beds are not separated by any intermediate strata.

"The caves of Gibraltar are many, and some of them of great extent. That which most deserves attention and examination is called St. Michael's Cave, which is situated upon the southern part of the mountain, almost equally distant from the Signal Tower and the Sugar Loaf. Its entrance is 1000 feet above the level of the sea; this entrance is formed by a rapid slope of earth, which has fallen into it at various periods, and which leads to a spacious hall, inclosed with spar, and apparently supported in the centre by a large maffy stalactite pillar. To this succeeds a long series of caves of difficult access. In these cavernous recesses, the formation and process of stalactites is to be traced, from the flinty quilt-like cone, suspended from the roof, to the robust trunk of a pillar, three feet in diameter, which rises from the floor, and seems intended by Nature to support the roof from which it originated.

"The only inhabitants of these caves are bats, some of which are of a large size. The soil, in general, upon the mountain of Gibraltar is but thinly laid; and in many parts that thin covering has been washed off by the heavy autumnal rains, which have left the surfaces of the rock, for a considerable extent, bare and open to inspection. In those situations, an observing eye may trace the effects of the flow, but constant, decomposition of the rock, caused by its exposure to the air, and the corrosion of sea-salts, which, in the heavy gales of westerly winds, are deposited with the spray on every part of the mountain. Those uncovered parts of the mountain rock also expose to the eye a phenomenon worthy of some attention, as it tends clearly to demonstrate, that, however high the surface of this rock may now be elevated above the level of the sea, it has once been the bed of agitated waters. This phenomenon is to be observed in many parts of the rock, and is constantly found in the beds of torrents. It consists of pot-like holes, of various sizes, hollowed out of the solid rock, and formed apparently by the attrition of gravel or pebbles, set in motion by the rapidity of rivers or currents in the sea.

"Upon the west side of the mountain, towards its base, some strata occur, which are heterogenous to the mountain rock: the first, or highest, forms the segment of a circle; its convex side is towards the mountain, and it slopes also in that direction. This stratum consists of a number of thin beds; the outward one, being the thinnest, is in a state of decomposition, and is mouldering down into a blackish brown or ferruginous coloured earth. The beds, inferior to this, progressively increase in breadth to 17 inches, where the stratification rests upon a rock of an argillaceous nature.

"This last bed, which is 17 inches thick, consists of quartz of a blackish blue colour, in the septa or cracks of which are found fine quartz crystals, colourless, and perfectly transparent. These crystals are composed of 18 planes, disposed in hexangular columns, terminated at both extremities by hexangular pyramids. The largest of those that Major Imrie saw did not exceed one-fourth of an inch in length: They, in general, adhere to the rock by the sides of the column, but are detached without difficulty. Their great degree of transparency has obtained them the name of Gibraltar diamonds."

Much has been said of the fossil bones found in the rock of Gibraltar; and the general idea which exists concerning them is, that they are found in a petrified state, and inclosed in the solid calcareous rock; but this, says Major Imrie, is a mistake, which could arise only from inaccurate observation and false description.

"In the perpendicular fissures of the rock, and in some of the caverns of the mountain (all of which afford evident proofs of their former communication with the surface), a calcareous concretion is found, of a reddish brown ferruginous colour, with an earthy fracture, and considerable induration, inclosing the bones of various animals, some of which have the appearance of being human. These bones are of various sizes, and lie in all directions, intermixed with shells of snails; fragments of the calcareous rock, and particles of spar; all of which materials are still to be seen in their natural uncombined states." Gibraltar states, partially scattered over the surface of the mountain. These having been swept by heavy rains at different periods, from the surface into the situations above described, and having remained for a long series of years in those places of rest, exposed to the permeating action of water, have become enveloped in, and cemented by, the calcareous matter which it deposits.

"The bones, in this composition, have not the smallest appearance of being petrified; and if they have undergone any change, it is more like that of calcination than that of petrification, as the most solid parts of them generally admit of being cut and scraped down with the same ease as chalk.

"Bones combined in such concretions are not peculiar to Gibraltar: they are found in such large quantities in the country of Dalmatia, and upon its coasts in the islands of Cherso and Oleron, that some naturalists have been induced to go so far as to affirm, that there has been a regular stratum of such matter in that country, and that its present broken and interrupted appearance has been caused by earthquakes, or other convulsions, experienced in that part of the globe. But, of late years, a traveller (Abbé Alberto Fortis) has given a minute description of the concretion in which the bones are found in that country: And by his account it appears, that with regard to situation, composition, and colour, it is perfectly similar to that found at Gibraltar. By his description, it also appears that the two mountain rocks of Gibraltar and Dalmatia consist of the same species of calcareous stone; from which it is to be presumed, that the concretions in both have been formed in the same manner and about the same periods.

"Perhaps if the fissures and caves of the rock of Dalmatia were still more minutely examined, their former communications with the surface might yet be traced, as in those described above; and, in that case, there would be at least a strong probability, that the materials of the concretions of that country have been brought together by the same accidental cause which has probably collected those found in the caverns of Gibraltar. Major Imrie traced, in Gibraltar, this concretion, from the lowest part of a deep perpendicular fissure, up to the surface of the mountain. As it approached to the surface, the concretion became less firmly combined, and, when it had no covering of the calcareous rock, a small degree of adhesion only remained, which was evidently produced by the argillaceous earth, in its composition, having been moistened by rain and baked by the sun.

"The depth at which these materials had been penetrated by that proportion of flinty matter, capable of giving to the concretion its greatest adhesion and solidity, he found to vary according to its situation, and to the quantity of matter to be combined. In fissures, narrow and contracted, he found the concretion possessing a great degree of hardness at six feet from the surface; but in other situations more extended, and where a larger quantity of the materials had been accumulated, he found it had not gained its greatest degree of adhesion at double that depth. In one of the caves, where the mass of concretion is of considerable size, he perceived it to be divided into different beds, each bed being covered with a crust of the flinty spar, from one inch to an inch and a half in thickness, which seems to indicate, that the materials have been carried in at various periods, and that those periods have been very remote from each other.

"At Rota Bay, upon the west side of Gibraltar, this concretion is found in what has evidently been a cavern, originally formed by huge unflaky masses of the rock which have tumbled in together. The fissure, or cavern, formed by the disruption and subsidence of those masses, has been entirely filled up with the concretion, and is now exposed to full view by the outward walls having dropped down in consequence of the encroachments of the sea. It is to this fact, that strangers are generally led to examine the phenomenon; and the composition, having here attained to its greatest degree of hardness and solidity, the hasty observer seeing the bones inclosed in what has so little the appearance of having been a vacancy, examines no further, but immediately adopts the idea of their being incased in the folioid rock. The communication from this former chasm, to the surface from which it has received the materials of the concretion, is still to be traced in the face of the rock; but its opening is at present covered by the base of the lime wall of the garrison. Here bones are found that are apparently human; and those of them that appear to be of the legs, arms, and vertebrae of the back, are scattered among others of various kinds and sizes, even down to the smallest bones of small birds. Major Imrie found here the complete jaw-bone of a sheep; it contained its full complement of teeth, the enamel of which was perfect, and its whiteness and lustre in no degree impaired. In the hollow parts of some of the large bones was contained a minute crystallization of pure and colourless calcareous spar; but, in most, the interior part consisted of a sparry crust of a reddish colour, scarcely in any degree transparent.

"At the northern extremity of the mountain, the concretion is generally found in perpendicular fissures. The miners there, employed upon the fortifications in excavating one of those fissures, found, at a great depth from the surface, two skulls, which were supposed to be human; but, to the Major, one of them, if not both, appeared to be too small for the human species. The bone of each was perfectly firm and solid; from which it is to be presumed, that they were in a state of maturity before they were inclosed in the concretion. Had they appertained to very young children, perhaps the bone would have been more porous, and of a less firm texture. The probability is, that they belonged to a species of monkey, which still continues to inhabit, in considerable numbers, those parts of the rock which are to us inaccessible.

"This concretion varies, in its composition, according to the situation in which it is found. At the extremity of Princes Lines, high in the rock which looks towards Spain, it is found to consist only of a reddish calcareous earth, and the bones of small birds cemented thereby. The rock around this spot is inhabited by a number of hawks, that, in the breeding season, settle here and rear their young; the bones in this concretion are probably the remains of the food of those birds. At the base of the rock, below King's Lines, the concretion consists of pebbles of the prevailing calcareous rock. In this concretion, at a very considerable depth under the surface, was found the under parts of a glass bottle, uncommonly shaped, and of great thickness; the colour of the glass was of a dark green."

Major Major Imrie makes an apology for giving so minute a description of these fossil holes; but, in our opinion, the public is indebted to him for bestowing so much attention on a subject which all must admit to be curious, and which, from the strange inferences drawn from similar phenomena by modern philosophers, has become important as well as curious.

We cannot dismiss this article without noticing the subterraneous galleries constructed in the rock not only for the protection of the men during a siege, but also for placing cannon, to annoy the enemy, in situations inaccessible but by such means. The idea of forming these galleries was conceived by the late Lord Heathfield when governor, and by him, in some measure, carried into execution; though the plan was not completed till lately by General O'Hara. Of these galleries we have in the Monthly Magazine for April 1798 an animated account, which we shall insert in the writer's own words.

"The subterraneous galleries are very extensive, pierce the rock in several places and in various directions, and at various degrees of elevation; all of them have a communication with each other, either by flights of steps cut in the rock, or by wooden flairs where the passageways are required to be very perpendicular.

"The sentinels may now be relieved during a siege from one post to another in perfect safety; whereas, previously to the constructing of these galleries, a vast number of men were killed by the Spaniards while marching to their several stations. The width of these galleries is about twelve feet, their height about fourteen. The rock is broken through in various places, both for the purpose of giving light and for placing the guns to bear on the enemy. In different parts there are spacious recesses, capable of accommodating a considerable number of men. To these recesses they give names, such as St Patrick's Chamber, St George's Hall, &c. The whole of these singular structures have been formed out of the solid rock by blasting with gunpowder. Through the politeness of an officer on duty, a place called Smart's Reservoir was opened for our inspection, which is a great curiosity, and not generally permitted to be shewn. It is a firing at a considerable depth in the body of the rock, and is above 700 feet above the level of the sea; we descended into the cavern that contains it by a rope ladder, and with the aid of lighted candles proceeded through a narrow passage over crystallized protuberances of the rock till we came to a hollow, which appears to have been opened by some convulsion of Nature. Here, from a bed of gems, arises the solitary fountain, clear as the brilliant of the east, and cold as the icicle. We hailed the nymph of the grot, and, prostrating ourselves, quaffed hygean nectar from her sparry urn. When restored to the light of day, we obtained, through the medium of the same gentleman, the key of St George's Hall, at which we arrived by a very intricate and gloomy path to the spacious excavation, which is upwards of an hundred feet in length, its height nearly the same. It is formed in a semicircular part of the rock; spacious apertures are broken through, where cannons of a very large calibre command the isthmus, the Spanish lines, and a great part of the bay. The top of the rock is pierced through, so as to introduce sufficient light to enable you to view every part of it. It appears almost incredible that so large an excavation could be formed by gunpowder, without blowing up the whole of that part of the rock, and still more so, that they should be able to direct the operations of such an instrument, so as to render it subservient to the purpose of elegance. We found in the hall a table, placed, I suppose, for the convenience of those who are traversing the rock. The cloth was spread, the wine went round, and we made the vaulted roof resound with the accents of mirth and the songs of conviviality."

These excavations are indeed very extraordinary works; but as the whole rock abounds with caverns, we will that our author had inquired more particularly than he seems to have done, whether St George's Hall be wholly the work of art. From one of the passageways which we have extracted from Major Imrie's memoir, we are led to think that it is not, or, at least, that the concretion removed had not acquired the confluence of the more solid parts of the rock. If this was the case, much of the wonder will vanish, since the pick-axe and chisel were probably employed to give elegance to the vault, and even, in some degree, to direct the operation of the gunpowder.