Through all this time there is no sign of any wish on Fletcher's part to return to Switzerland; and it is at first sight a little perplexing that his visit to England should have developed into something very like a permanent residence, when as yet he had no definite calling, and the powerful influences of a great spiritual change had not come into existence. But there is a reasonable explanation to be found in the state of things in his native country, where a gentleman's younger son, disinclined for the ministry and disappointed of a commission in the army, had no great choice of a career. On this matter we have the testimony of an exceptionally keen and competent observer. The early years of Fletcher's residence in England correspond very closely with those of Gibbon's first period of residence in Switzerland. From 1753 to 1758, years spent by Fletcher in the family of Mr. Hill, the youthful Gibbon was living under the roof of M. Pavilliard, a Calvinist minister at Lausanne. It was about the close of this period that he wrote, for the benefit of a Swiss friend, a short paper upon political and social life in Switzerland, an essay that is doubly worth reading, for its own sake, and as exhibiting the powers and the promise in early manhood of the future historian. An extract or two will show some aspects of the society that Fletcher had so lately left, and to which he never really returned, and will suggest the explanation of that readiness to "forget his own people and his father's house," which has perplexed some of his critics and biographers: