thirty years later the lady, then the wife of the most conspicuous man in Europe, was able to suggest useful reflections to an aged bachelor, slightly dreaming of a superannuated marriage: ‘_Gardez-vous, monsieur, de former un de ces liens tardifs: le mariage qui rend heureux dans l’âge mûr, c’est celui qui fut contracté dans la jeunesse. Alors seulement la réunion est parfaite, les goûts se communiquent, les sentimens se répandent, les idées deviennent communes, les facultés intellectuelles se modèlent mutuellement. Toute la vie est double, et toute la vie est une prolongation de la jeunesse; car les impressions de l’âme commandent aux yeux, et la beauté qui n’est plus conserve encore son empire; mais pour vous, monsieur, dans toute la vigueur de la pensée, lorsque toute l’existence est décidée, l’on ne pourroit sans un miracle trouver une femme digne de vous; et une association d’un genre imparfait rappelle toujours la statue d’Horace, qui joint à une belle tête le corps d’un stupide poisson. Vous êtes marié avec la gloire._’ She was then a cultivated French lady, giving an account of the reception of the Decline and Fall at Paris, and expressing rather peculiar ideas on the style of Tacitus. The world had come round to her side, and she explains to her old lover rather well her happiness with M. Necker. After living nearly five years at Lausanne, Gibbon returned to England. Continental residence has made a great alteration in many Englishmen; but few have undergone so complete a metamorphosis as Edward Gibbon. He left his own country a hot-brained and ill taught youth, willing to sacrifice friends and expectations for a superstitious and half-known creed; he returned a cold and accomplished man, master of many accurate ideas, little likely to hazard any coin for any faith: already, it is probable, inclined in secret to a cautious scepticism; placing thereby, as it were, upon a system the frigid prudence and unventuring incredulity congenial to his character. His change of character changed his position among his relatives. His father, he says, met him as a friend; and they continued thenceforth on a footing of ‘easy intimacy.’ Especially after the little affair of Mademoiselle Curchod, and the ‘very sensible view he took in that instance of the matrimonial relation,’ there can be but little question that Gibbon was justly regarded as a most safe young man, singularly prone to large books, and a little too fond of French phrases and French ideas; but yet with a great feeling of common sense, and a wise preference of permanent money to transitory sentiment. His father allowed him a moderate, and but a moderate income, which he husbanded with great care, and only voluntarily expended in the purchase and acquisition of serious volumes. He lived an externally idle but really studious life, varied by tours in France and Italy; the toils of which, though not in description very formidable, a trifle tried a