“It was at Rome on the 15th of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the bare-footed fryars 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.”

Thus did he resolve to devote himself to the tremendous task, and at Lausanne twenty-three years later it was at last fulfilled.  He recorded the event in a few pregnant sentences that are strangely memorable:—­

“It was on the day, or rather night, of the 27th of June, 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page, in a summer-house in my garden.  After laying down my pen I took several turns in a berceau, or covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and the mountains.  The air was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, and all nature was silent.  I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom, and perhaps, the establishment of my fame.  But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind, by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that, whatsoever might be the future fate of my History, the life of the historian must be short and precarious.”

In June, 1888, just one hundred and one years after that pen had been finally laid aside, I searched in Lausanne for the summer-house and covered walk, and could find no very authentic record of its site.  I brought home a flower from the garden where it seemed probable the summer-house had once existed, behind the modern hotel built there in the intervening time, and laid it between the leaves of my Gibbon.

The pressed flower was still there when I last took the book down from my shelves.

I hope my successors will preserve the little token of my reverence.

Your loving old
G.P.

[Footnote 1:  First edition, 1794.]

14

MY DEAR ANTONY,

Some of the most eloquent orators in the world have been Irishmen, and among them Henry Grattan was supreme.

The Irish Parliament in the later half of the eighteenth century frequently sat spell-bound under the magic of his voice.

In 1782, at the age of thirty-two, he achieved by his amazing eloquence a great National Revolution in Ireland.  But eighteen years later all that he had fought for and achieved was lost in the Act of Union.  In these days I suppose few will be found to defend the means whereby that Act was passed; but the public assertions that the people of Ireland were in favour of it wrung from Grattan the following cry of indignation and wrath:—­