Gibbon then turned his thoughts to some historical subject; and among many that attracted him were The Life of Raleigh; The History of the Liberty of the Swiss; and that of the Republic of Florence under the House of Medici. But he appears not to have engaged seriously in any one of these, at the time of his second departure for the Continent. To the second of those subjects however he afterwards returned, again discarding his native tongue, for the use of what he deemed a more general language. He wrote his ‘History of Switzerland’ in Latin. But having caused a specimen of it to be recited in a society of literary foreigners in London, at which he was himself present, though not known as the author, he had the affliction of hearing its condemnation. He submitted to the sentence, and delivered the imperfect sheets to the flames. And it was in the same year (October 24, 1767) that Hume addressed to him a very sensible exhortation to confine his compositions to his own language, as that which was destined, through conquest and colonization, to the most general prevalence in after-ages. It was worthy of the riper wisdom and genius of Hume, to direct the rising candidate for historical fame into the path wherein alone it was possible to find it; and to enlarge his views, to teach him to look beyond the actual and transient condition of the world, and fix his eyes upon the generations that were to come. Gibbon mentions three works as having more than any others contributed to the formation of his mind: ‘Pascal’s Provincial Letters;’ ‘The Life of Julian, by the Abbé Bletterie;’ and ‘Giannone’s History of Naples.’ Not one of them was English; he acknowledges no early obligations to the literature of his own country; in fact, those five years which usually decide the character of the rest of life were entirely passed abroad, in the study and perpetual use of foreign languages, and the imitation of foreign literature. It was not then wonderful that he should continue for some time longer to follow the first impulse. But repeated failures would doubtless have shown him the false position in which he stood, even without the seasonable admonition administered by the authority of Hume.