In realizing that genius is apt among its other foibles to be over self-conscious, we should be careful not to confound conceit with vanity, to which it is so nearly allied. The latter makes one sensitive to the opinions of others, while the former renders us self-satisfied. Few have possessed either genius or personal beauty without being conscious of it; though Hazlitt declares that no great man ever thought himself great,--an assertion which the reader will hardly be prepared to indorse. A famous American philosopher was persuaded that vanity was often the source of good to the possessor, and that among other comforts of life, one might consistently thank God for his vanity. Still, when evinced in social intercourse nothing is more derogatory to dignity; one becomes not only his own, but everybody's fool. "Vanity is so anchored in the heart of man," says Pascal, "that a soldier, sutler, cook, and street porter vapor and wish to have their admirers; and philosophers even wish the same." Concerning localities rendered of special interest by association, Leigh Hunt said: "I can no more pass through Westminster without thinking of Milton, or the Borough without thinking of Chaucer and Shakespeare, or Gray's Inn without calling Bacon to mind, or Bloomsbury Square without Steele and Akenside, than I can prefer bricks and mortar to wit and poetry, or not see a beauty upon it beyond architecture, in the splendor of the recollection. I once had duties to perform which kept me out late at night, and severely taxed my health and spirits. My path lay through a neighborhood in which Dryden lived; and though nothing could be more commonplace, and I used to be tired to the heart and soul of me, I never hesitated to go a little out of the way, purely that I might pass through Gold Street, to give myself the shadow of a pleasant thought." Gibbon was twenty-three years in preparing the material for and in writing his "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire;" that is to say, he began it in 1764, and did not finish it until 1787. He says as he "sat musing amidst the ruins of the capital, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter, the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first occurred to his mind." The writer of these pages has visited the garden and summer-house at Lausanne, overlooking Lake Leman, where Gibbon completed his work, and where he laid down his pen in triumph almost exactly a century since.