he said, above all
worldly considerations. He had no difficulty, in an excursion to
London, in finding a priest, who perceived in the first interview that
persuasion was needless. "After sounding the motives and merits of my
conversion, he consented to admit me into the pale of the Church, and
at his feet on the 8th of June 1753, I solemnly, though privately,
abjured the errors of heresy." He was exactly fifteen years and one
month old. Further details, which one would like to have, he does not
give. The scene even of the solemn act is not mentioned, nor whether
he was baptized again; but this may be taken for granted.

The fact of any one "going over to Rome" is too common an occurrence
nowadays to attract notice. But in the eighteenth century it was a
rare and startling phenomenon. Gibbon's father, who was "neither a
bigot nor a philosopher," was shocked and astonished by his "son's
strange departure from the religion of his country." He divulged the
secret of young Gibbon's conversion, and "the gates of Magdalen
College were for ever shut" against the latter's return. They really
needed no shutting at all. By the fact of his conversion to Romanism
he had ceased to be a member of the University.

CHAPTER II.

AT LAUSANNE.

The elder Gibbon showed a decision of character and prompt energy in
dealing with his son's conversion to Romanism, which were by no means
habitual with him. He swiftly determined to send him out of the
country, far away from the influences and connections which had done
such harm. Lausanne in Switzerland was the place selected for his
exile, in which it was resolved he should spend some years in
wholesome reflections on the error he had committed in yielding to the
fascinations of Roman Catholic polemics. No time was lost: Gibbon had
been received into the Church on the 8th of June, 1753, and on the
30th of the same month he had reached his destination. He was placed
under the care of a M. Pavillard, a Calvinist minister, who had two
duties laid upon him, a general one, to superintend the young man's
studies, a particular and more urgent one, to bring him back to the
Protestant faith.

It was a severe trial which Gibbon had now to undergo. He was by
nature shy and retiring; he was ignorant of French; he was very young;
and with these disadvantages he was thrown among entire strangers
alone. After the excitement and novelty of foreign travel were over,
and he could realise his positio