ith a
rapid step in the various roads of honour and fortune, I stood alone,
immoveable and insignificant; for after the monthly meeting of 1770,
I had even withdrawn myself from the militia, by the resignation of an
empty and barren commission. My temper is not susceptible of envy, and
the view of successful merit has always excited my warmest applause.
The miseries of a vacant life were never known to a man whose hours were
insufficient for the inexhaustible pleasures of study. But I lamented
that at the proper age I had not embraced the lucrative pursuits of the
law or of trade, the chances of civil office or India adventure, or even
the fat slumbers of the church; and my repentance became more lively as
the loss of time was more irretrievable. Experience shewed me the use
of grafting my private consequence on the importance of a great
professional body; the benefits of those firm connections which are
cemented by hope and interest, by gratitude and emulation, by the mutual
exchange of services and favours. From the emoluments of a profession I
might have derived an ample fortune, or a competent income, instead of
being stinted to the same narrow allowance, to be increased only by an
event which I sincerely deprecated. The progress and the knowledge of
our domestic disorders aggravated my anxiety, and I began to apprehend
that I might be left in my old age without the fruits either of industry
or inheritance.

In the first summer after my return, whilst I enjoyed at Beriton the
society of my friend Deyverdun, our daily conversations expatiated over
the field of ancient and modern literature; and we freely discussed my
studies, my first Essay, and my future projects. The Decline and Fall of
Rome I still contemplated at an awful distance: but the two historical
designs which had balanced my choice were submitted to his taste: and
in the parallel between the Revolutions of Florence and Switzerland,
our common partiality for a country which was his by birth, and mine by
adoption, inclined the scale in favour of the latter. According to the
plan, which was soon conceived and digested, I embraced a period of two
hundred years, from the association of the three peasants of the Alps
to the plenitude and prosperity of the Helvetic body in the sixteenth
century. I should have described the deliverance and victory of the
Swiss, who have never shed the blood of their tyrants but in a field
of battle; the laws and manners of the c