An active scene now follows which bears no affinity to any other period of my studious and social life.  On June 12, 1759, my father and I received our commissions as major and captain in the Hampshire regiment of militia, and during two and a half years were condemned to a wandering life of military servitude.  My principal obligation to the militia was the making me an Englishman and a soldier.  In this peaceful service I imbibed the rudiments of the language and science of tactics, which opened a new field of study and observation.  The discipline and evolutions of a modern battalion gave me a clearer notion of the phalanx and the legion; and the captain of the Hampshire Grenadiers—­the reader may smile—­has not been useless to the historian of the Roman Empire.

I was detained above four years by my rash engagement in the militia.  I eagerly grasped the first moments of freedom; and such was my diligence that on my father consenting to a term of foreign travel, I reached Paris only thirty-six hours after the disbanding of the militia.  Between my stay of three months and a half in Paris and a visit to Italy, I interposed some months of tranquil simplicity at Lausanne.  My old friends of both sexes hailed my voluntary return—­the most genuine proof of my attachment.  The public libraries of Lausanne and Geneva liberally supplied me with books, from which I armed myself for my Italian journey.  On this tour I was agreeably employed for more than a year.  Turin, Milan, Genoa, Parma, Modena, and Florence were visited, and here I first acknowledged, at the feet of the Venus of Medici, that the chisel may dispute the preeminence with the pencil, a truth in the fine arts which cannot on this side of the Alps be felt or understood.

After leaving Florence, I passed through Pisa, Leghorn, and Sienna to Rome.  My temper is not very susceptible to enthusiasm; and the enthusiasm which I do not feel, I have ever scorned to affect.  But, at the distance of twenty-five years, 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 Tully spoke, or Caesar fell, was at once present to my eye; and several days of intoxication were lost, or enjoyed, before I could descend to a cool and minute observation.

It was in Rome, on October 15, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the bare-footed 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.  But my original plan was circumscribed to the decay of the city rather than the empire; and though my reading and reflections began to point towards that object, some years elapsed, and several avocations intervened, before I was seriously engaged in the execution of that laborious work.