trong 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 Tully spoke, or Caesar fell, was at once
present to my eye, and several days of intoxication were lost and
enjoyed before I could descend to a cool and minute examination." He
gave eighteen weeks to the study of Rome only, and six to Naples, and
we may rest assured that he made good use of his time. But what makes
this visit to Rome memorable in his life and in literary history is
that it was the occasion and date of the first conception of his great
work. "It was at Rome, on the 15th October, 1764, as I sat musing amid
the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing
vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline
and fall of the city first started to my mind." The scene, the
contrast of the old religion and the new, the priests of Christ
replacing the flamens of Jupiter, the evensong of Catholic Rome
swelling like a dirge over the prostrate Pagan Rome might well
concentrate in one grand luminous idea the manifold but unconnected
thoughts with which his mind had so long been teeming. Gibbon had
found his work, which was destined to fill the remainder of his life.
Henceforth there is a fixed centre around which his thoughts and
musings cluster spontaneously. Difficulties and interruptions are not
wanting. The plan then formed is not taken in hand at once; on the
contrary, it is contemplated at "an awful distance"; but it led him on
like a star guiding his steps, till he reached his appointed goal.

After crossing the Alps on his homeward journey, Gibbon had had some
thoughts of visiting the southern provinces of France. But when he
reached Lyons he found letters "expressive of some impatience" for his
return. Though he does not exactly say as much, we may justly conclude
that the elder Gibbon's pecuniary difficulties were beginning to be
oppressive. So the traveller, with the dutifulness that he ever showed
to his father, at once bent his steps northward. Again he passed
through Paris, and the place had a new attraction in his eyes in the
person of Mdlle. Curchod, now become Madame Necker, and wife of the
great financier.

This perhaps will be the most convenient place to notice and estimate
a certain amount of rather spiteful gossip, of which Gibbon was the
subject in Swit