Among "the immortals of literature," Gibbon occupies a very high and conspicuous position; and his fame rests on such a noble basis, that it must endure as long as the language in which his mighty work is written. It is interesting to know that, in early youth, his genius was engaged in the contemplation of that great subject on which its finest energies were exerted almost to the last years of his life, and which is now intimately associated with his name. The remote ancestors of this illustrious man had been lords of the soil in England for several centuries. They had flourished as kings' architects, founders of free-schools, and were among "the gallant squires of Kent," described as having been "roused in many an ancient hall" by the "fiery herald," which announced that the Armada was on the seas. But the historian belonged to a younger branch of the family, the members of which had been so successful as merchants in the city of London, that his grandfather had more than a hundred thousand pounds to lose as a director of the South Sea Company. However, he subsequently contrived; by commercial gains, to retrieve his losses in that calamitous enterprise, and was thus enabled to leave a handsome fortune to his son, who sat in Parliament as member for Southampton, and married the daughter of a London merchant who resided at Putney.

At that village Edward Gibbon was born, on the 27th of April, 1737, and there he passed many happy hours of his childhood. His infancy was so exceedingly delicate, that he was with difficulty kept alive in those years when the existence of the most vigorous hangs by so slender a thread. Indeed, it seems to have only been by the gentle and incessant care of his maternal aunt that he weathered the storms that beset his childhood; and he ever entertained for her that warm affection which her tender vigilance, by day and by night, well deserved.

At the age of seven, after having been at a day' school, he was entrusted for instruction to a poor Cumberland curate, the author of some popular works; and two years after he was sent to a private academy at Kingston-on-Thames. While there he was precluded from the puerile sports by his feeble health, which would hardly be benefited by the abuse, beating, and persecution he had to undergo after the Rebellion, on account of his forefathers having been Jacobites Perhaps his not venturing into the arena as a parliamentary orator in after life might be traced to this circumstance, which would naturally implant in his breast an aversion to political conflict. About this time his mother died, and her loss was so keenly and severely felt by her husband that he left Putney, and went, for a change of scene, to his estates near Beriton, in Hampshire. Subsequently he consoled himself with a second wife, a woman of amiable disposition and excellent sense, between whom and her stepson grew up a kind and steady friendship, which lasted throughout the life of the latter. Soon after his surviving parent's removal to Hampshire, his maternal grandfather became bankrupt, and his aunt was compelled to keep a boarding-house at Westminster School, whither she carried her nephew, who tells us that in the course of two years, notwithstanding the interruptions of sickness, he "painfully climbed into the third form." But his aunt, who possessed considerable information, taste, and judgment, took great pains to direct him to proper books; and though his appetite was at first a little indiscriminate, he soon began to show unmistakably the bent of his mind, by the peculiar ardour with which he read and studied historical works. He perused eagerly the "Universal History," as it issued in volumes from the press; became acquainted with Pope's "Homer," which moved his pity and terror; and was fond of luxuriating in the "Arabian Nights," which formed one of the chief topics of the conversation he held with Mr. Fox, when that eminent man visited him at Lausanne, forty years after. But his health was still so precarious, that it was found necessary to remove him to Bath, for change of air and the benefit of the waters. In 1751, happening to be taken by his father to visit a gentleman of Wiltshire, he found in the library a continuation of Echard's "Roman History," which at once rivetted his attention. On returning to Bath, he procured Howell's" History of the World," and studied the Byzantine period with rapt attention and a glowing spirit, with enthusiastic zeal and heroic deter mination. Having passed some time at Winchester he showed, in his fifteenth year, signs of being more robust in health, and was placed at Esher, in Surrey, under the father of Sir Philip Francis, better known as the translator of "Horace." Ere long, however, Gibbon's relations discovered that the teacher did not by any means perform his duty towards his pupil and the embryo historian, being suddenly removed to Oxford in 1752, was entered as a gentleman commoner at Magdalen College, taking with him, according to his own account, a stock of erudition that might have puzzled a doctor, and a degree of ignorance of which a schoolboy would have been ashamed. His fourteen months' residence at Oxford he describes as the most unprofitable of his whole life. He read four plays of Terence, and during the first vacation made at attempt at literary composition, in an essay on the Age of Socrates, afterwards given to the flames. But however small the progress of his studies, he was not without a certain unenviable kind of distinction for the irregular and expensive habits into which he had fallen.

His departure from Oxford was hastened by his conversion to the Romish faith, in consequence of which he was sent by his father to Lausanne, and placed under a pious Calvinist minister, a man with a clear head and a warm heart, who was successful in convincing him that the conclusion at which he had arrived was erroneous. During the next five years Gibbon's studies were guided by this worthy pastor with so much judgment, that he completely made up for lost time. He also made a tour of Switzerland, entered into correspondence with several distinguished literary men on subjects relating to classical learning, and was admitted to the society of Voltaire, when he heard that renowned but erring man recite his own

Terse on the stage. Moreover, he exercised himself diligently in the art of composition, by translating and re-translating Latin, English, and French; the chief part of his time being devoted to the examination and study of the great Latin authors. Never, perhaps, was more laborious exertion made by any man to qualify himself for a literary career of the higher order.

He now formed a friendship with Deyverdun, with whom he was afterwards associated in the publication of the "Memoires Litteraires de la Grande Bretagne." But feelings more tender, and not seldom more lasting, even than those of friendship, now took possession of, and, for a time, enthralled him. It appears to be the fate of almost every great man to be afflicted, during the romance of boyhood, with emotions of love for some charming specimen of the fair sex; and Gibbon did not escape the general doom. The heroine was, in the highest degree, worthy of the flame she inspired; her personal attractions were equalled and set off by the talents and virtues with which she was gifted. She had received from her father, the pastor of an obscure, solitary, sequestered village, a liberal and even learned education. Her proficiency surpassed all the expectations of her parents; and, during a short visit to some relations at Lausanne, her wit, beauty, erudition, and accomplishments, were the subject of conversation and applause. "The report," says Gibbon, in his rather high-flown autobiography, "awakened my curiosity I saw and loved. I spent some happy days at Crassy, in the mountains of Burgundy. She listened to the voice of truth and passion, and her parents honourably encouraged the attachment. But, on my return to England, I found my father would not hear of this strange alliance: without his consent I was myself destitute and helpless. After a painful struggle, I yielded to my fate; I sighed as a lover, but obeyed as a son."

They were destined to meet again, however, and under very different circumstances. The lively and intellectual young lady's father died, and with him the stipend that had maintained his frugal household; and she, retiring to Geneva, supported herself and her mother by teaching, without in any respect descending from the simple dignity that had charac-terised her. But she was not fated to remain in obscurity. Her high qualities were discerned by a man who afterwards, with her assistance, rose to one of the most exalted positions in Europe A native of Geneva, he had, against his own inclination, which prompted him to the study of politics and philosophy, settled in Paris as a banker's clerk; and, by his abilities and assiduity, raised himself to wealth and distinction in the commercial community. As a rich banker of Paris, he wooed and won the grave but enchanting damsel, and soon after became the first minister of France. And when Gibbon next visited the daughter of the humble mountain pastor, he was the brilliant historian of the "Roman Em-pire;" she, the Madame Necker of history, and the centre of that glittering circle in which the philoso-phers, and men of letters, and wealthy bankers of Paris, matched their talents, knowledge, and riches against the high pride, the haughty prejudices, and the hereditary associations of the old, high-spirited, exclusive nobility of France.

On returning to England, Gibbon devoted himself to studious reading, to the collection of a library, and to the writing of an essay in French, "On the Study of Literature," which did not conduce much to his fame. His literary leisure was now sadly trespassed upon by his acceptance of a com-mission in the Hampshire Militia, which he held till the peace of 1763, when he proceeded on a visit to France and Italy. It had long been his cherished ambition to produce some great historical work; and as he "sat musing amongst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to his mind." It was not, however, carried out in haste; he resumed the duties of a militia officer; and he tells us that though his studies were thus interrupted, "the discipline and evolutions of a modern battle gave him a clearer notion of the phalanx and the legion, and the captain of Hampshire grenadiers was not useless to the historian of the 'Roman Empire.' In 1774 he was returned to Parliament for Liskeard, and subsequently appointed a Lord of Trade. At length, in 1776, his first volume of the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" appeared, and straightway was seen "on every table, and al most on every toilet." Each succeeding volume was received with much applause, mingled with fierce and justifiable denunciations of the religious views it unfortunately countenanced. His own touching account of its completion at Lausanne, which he had sought as the most grateful retreat wherein to pursue his chosen labours, though hackneyed by perpetual quotation, cannot properly be omitted He says: -"It was on the day, or rather the night, of the 27th of June, 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page in a summer-house in my garden, After laying down my pen, I took several turns in a berceau, or covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the city, the lake, and the mountains. The air was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters. I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom, and perhaps the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy spread over my mind, by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that whatever might be the future fate of my history, the life of the author must be short and precarious."

He survived for seven years to enjoy the triumph of his genius, and died on the 16th of January, 1794.

That Gibbon's errors in regard to religion - tho less excusable in a man of his great intellect - cast a shade, dark and gloomy, over the brilliancy of his fame, and prevent the majority of his countrymen from fully appreciating his writings, cannot be denied; but, as a historian, he has left an example of great and varied excellences, extraordinary in-dustry in research, fidelity in the statement of facts, and judgment in weighing conflicting authorities, together with the possession of a vast variety of acquired knowledge, and all but unrivalled clearness in the narration of events.