on to a house in London.
During this interval I continued to divide my year between town and the
country; but my new situation was brightened by hope; my stay in London
was prolonged into the summer; and the uniformity of the summer was
occasionally broken by visits and excursions at a distance from home.
The gratification of my desires (they were not immoderate) has been
seldom disappointed by the want of money or credit; my pride was never
insulted by the visit of an importunate tradesman; and my transient
anxiety for the past or future has been dispelled by the studious or
social occupation of the present hour. My conscience does not accuse me
of any act of extravagance or injustice, and the remnant of my estate
affords an ample and honourable provision for my declining age. I shall
not expatiate on my oeconomical affairs, which cannot be instructive
or amusing to the reader. It is a rule of prudence, as well as of
politeness, to reserve such confidence for the ear of a private friend,
without exposing our situation to the envy or pity of strangers; for
envy is productive of hatred, and pity borders too nearly on contempt.
Yet I may believe, and even assert, that in circumstances more indigent
or more wealthy, I should never have accomplished the task, or acquired
the fame, of an historian; that my spirit would have been broken by
poverty and contempt, and that my industry might have been relaxed in
the labour and luxury of a superfluous fortune.

I had now attained the first of earthly blessings, independence: I was
the absolute master of my hours and actions: nor was I deceived in the
hope that the establishment of my library in town would allow me to
divide the day between study and society. Each year the circle of my
acquaintance, the number of my dead and living companions, was enlarged.
To a lover of books, the shops and sales of London present irresistible
temptations; and the manufacture of my history required a various
and growing stock of materials. The militia, my travels, the House of
Commons, the fame of an author, contributed to multiply my connections:
I was chosen a member of the fashionable clubs; and, before I left
England in 1783, there were few persons of any eminence in the literary
or political world to whom I was a stranger. [Note: From the mixed,
though polite, company of Boodle's, White's, and Brooks's, I must
honourably distinguish a weekly society, which was instituted in the
year 1764, and