Its conception had come to his mind as he sat one evening amid the ruins of the Capitol at Rome, and heard the barefooted friars singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter. He had then thought of writing the decline and fall of the city of Rome, but soon expanded his view to the empire. This was in 1764. Nearly thirteen years afterwards, he wrote the last line of the last page in his garden-house at Lausanne, and reflected joyfully upon his recovered freedom and his permanent fame. His second thought, however, will fitly close this notice with a moral from his own lips: "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 whatever might be the future fate of my history, the life of the historian must be short and precarious." OTHER CONTRIBUTORS TO HISTORY. _James Boswell_, 1740-1795: he was the son of a Scottish judge called Lord Auchinleck, from his estate. He studied law, and travelled, publishing, on his return, _Journal of a Tour in Corsica_. He appears to us a simple-hearted and amiable man, inquisitive, and exact in details. He became acquainted with Dr. Johnson in 1763, and conceived an immense admiration for him. In numerous visits to London, and in their tour to the Hebrides together, he noted Johnson's speech and actions, and, in 1791, published his life, which has already been characterized as the greatest biography ever written. Its value is manifold; not only is it a faithful portrait of the great writer, but, in the detailed record of his life, we have the wit, dogmatism, and learning of his hero, as expressing and illustrating the history of the age, quite as fully as the published works of Johnson. In return for this most valuable contribution to history and literature, the critics, one and all, have taxed their ingenuity to find strong words of ridicule and contempt for Boswell, and have done him great injustice. Because he bowed before the genius of Johnson, he was not a toady, nor a fool; at the worst, he was a fanatic, and a not always wise champion. Johnson was his king, and his loyalty was unqualified.