After the disbanding of the militia Gibbon obtained his father's consent to spend the money it was originally proposed to lay out in buying him a seat in Parliament, upon foreign travel, and early in 1763 he reached Paris, where he abode three months. An accomplished scholar whose too early death all who knew him can never cease to deplore, Mr. Cotter Morison, whose sketch of Gibbon is, by general consent, admitted to be one of the most valuable books of a delightful series, does his best, with but partial success, to conceal his annoyance at Gibbon's stupidly placid enjoyment of Paris and French cookery. 'He does not seem to be aware,' says Mr. Morison, 'that he was witnessing one of the most singular social phases which have ever yet been presented in the history of man.' Mr. Morison does not, indeed, blame Gibbon for this, but having, as he had, the most intimate acquaintance with this period of French history, and knowing the tremendous issues involved in it, he could not but be chagrined to notice how Gibbon remained callous and impervious. And, indeed, when the Revolution came it took no one more by surprise than it did the man who had written the _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_. Writing, in 1792, to Lord Sheffield, Gibbon says, 'Remember the proud fabric of the French monarchy: not four years ago it stood founded, and might it not seem on the rock of time, force, and opinion, supported by the triple authority of the Church, the Nobility, and the Parliament?' But the Revolution came for all that; and what, when it did come, did it teach Mr. Gibbon? 'Do not, I beseech you, tamper with Parliamentary representation. If you begin to improve the Constitution, you may be driven step by step from the disfranchisement of Old Sarum to the King in Newgate; the Lords voted useless, the bishops abolished, the House of Commons _sans culottes_.' The importance of shutting off the steam and sitting on the safety-valve was what the French Revolution taught Mr. Gibbon. Mr. Bagehot says: 'Gibbon's horror of the French Revolution was derived from the fact that he had arrived at the conclusion that he was the sort of person a populace invariably kills.' An excellent reason, in my opinion, for hating revolution, but not for misunderstanding it.