the Temple of
Jupiter on the ruins of the Capitol."[46] Gibbon was twenty-seven when
he made this fruitful visit of eighteen weeks to Rome, and his first
impression, though often quoted, never loses interest, showing, as it
does, the enthusiasm of an unemotional man. "At the distance of
twenty-five years," he wrote, "I can neither forget nor express the
strong emotions which agitated my mind as I first approached and entered
the _Eternal City_. After a sleepless night, I trod with a lofty step
the ruins of the Forum; each memorable spot where Romulus _stood_ or
Cicero spoke or Caesar fell was at once present to my eye."

The admirer of Gibbon as he travels northward will stop at Lausanne and
visit the hotel which bears the historian's name. Twice have I taken
luncheon in the garden where he wrote the last words of his history; and
on a third visit, after lunching at another inn, I could not fail to
admire the penetration of the Swiss concierge. As I alighted, he seemed
to divine at once the object of my visit, and before I had half the
words of explanation out of my mouth, he said, "Oh, yes. It is this way.
But I cannot show you anything but a spot." I have quoted from Gibbon's
Autobiography the expression of his inspiration of twenty-seven; a
fitting companion-piece is the reflection of the man of fifty. "I have
presumed to mark the moment of conception," he wrote; "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.... 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 my everlasting leave of an old
and agreeable companion."[47]

Although the idea was conceived when Gibbon was twenty-seven, he was
thirty-one before he set himself seriously at work to study his
material. At thirty-six he began the composition, and he was
thirty-nine, when, in February, 1776, the first quarto volume was
published. The history had an immediate success. "My book," he wrote,
"was on every table and almost on every toilette; the historian was
crowned by the taste or fashion of the day."[48] The first edition was
exhausted in a few days, a second was printed in 1776, and next year