ctions from London, but he admits that
they were useless, or rather superfluous. His nationality and his
_Essai_ were his best recommendations. It was the day of Anglomania,
and, as he says, "every Englishman was supposed to be a patriot and a
philosopher." "I had rather be," said Mdlle. de Lespinasse to Lord
Shelburne, "the least member of the House of Commons than even the
King of Prussia." Similar things must have been said to Gibbon, but he
has not recorded them; and generally it may be said that he is
disappointingly dull and indifferent to Paris, though he liked it well
enough when there. He never caught the Paris fever as Hume did, and
Sterne, or even as Walpole did, for all the hard things he says of the
underbred and overbearing manners of the philosophers. Gibbon had
ready access to the well-known houses of Madame Geoffrin, Madame
Helvetius and the Baron d'Holbach; and his perfect mastery of the
language must have removed every obstacle in the way of complete
social intercourse. But no word in his Memoirs or Letters shows that
he really saw with the eyes of the mind the singularities of that
strange epoch. And yet he was there at an exciting and important
moment. The Order of the Jesuits was tottering to its fall; the latter
volumes of the _Encyclopedia_ were being printed, and it was no
secret; the coruscating wit and audacity of the _salons_ were at their
height. He is not unjust or prejudiced, but somewhat cold. He dines
with Baron d'Holbach, and says his dinners were excellent, but nothing
of the guests. He goes to Madame Geoffrin, and pronounces her house an
excellent one. Such faint and commonplace praise reflects on the
eulogist. The only man of letters of whom he speaks with warmth is
Helvetius. He does not appear in this first visit to have known Madame
du Deffand, who was still keeping her _salon_ with the help of the
pale deep-eyed L'Espinasse, though the final rupture was imminent.
Louis Racine died, and so did Marivaux, while he was in Paris. The old
Opera-house in the Palais Royal was burnt down when he had been there
a little over a month, and the representations were transferred to the
Salle des Machines, in the Tuileries. The equestrian statue of Louis
XV. was set up in the Place to which it gave its name (where the Luxor
column now stands, in the Place de la Concorde) amidst the jeers and
insults of the mob, who declared it would never be got to pass the
hotel of Madame de Pompadour. How much