p in secret. But these private devotions could not remove his
disgust at "the inn, the wine, and the company" he was forced to
endure, and latterly the militia became downright insupportable to
him. But honourable motives kept him to his post. "From a service
without danger I might have retired without disgrace; but as often as
I hinted a wish of resigning, my fetters were riveted by the friendly
intreaties of the colonel, the parental authority of the major, and my
own regard for the welfare of the battalion." At last the
long-wished-for day arrived, when the militia was disbanded. "Our two
companies," he writes in his journal, "were disembodied (December
23rd, 1762), mine at Alton, my father's at Buriton. They fired three
volleys, lodged the major's colours, delivered up their arms, received
their money, partook of a dinner at the major's expense, and then
separated, with great cheerfulness and regularity. Thus ended the
militia." The compression that his spirit had endured was shown by the
rapid energy with which he sought a change of scene and oblivion of
his woes. Within little more than a month after the scene just
described, Gibbon was in Paris beginning the grand tour.

With that keen sense of the value of time which marked him, Gibbon
with great impartiality cast up and estimated the profit and loss of
his "bloodless campaigns." Both have been alluded to already. He
summed up with great fairness in the entry that he made in his journal
on the evening of the day on which he recovered his liberty. "I am
glad that the militia has been, and glad that it is no more." This
judgment he confirmed thirty years afterwards, when he composed his
Memoirs. "My principal obligation to the militia was the making me an
Englishman and a soldier. After my foreign education, with my reserved
temper, I should long have continued a stranger in my native country,
had I not been shaken in this various scene of new faces and new
friends; had not experience forced me to feel the characters of our
leading men, the state of parties, the forms of office, the operations
of our civil and military system. In this peaceful service I imbibed
the rudiments of the language and science of tactics, which opened a
new field of study and observation. I diligently read and meditated
the _Memoires Militaires_ of Quintus Icilius, the only writer who has
united the merits of a professor and a veteran. The discipline and
evolution of a modern battalion ga