clear daylight into a dark and complicated system; in fact, there was no reform or improvement which the government attempted to make, without asking the aid and feeling the value of his great and various ability. In private life, he engaged in experimental farming, extending to the peasantry on his estate a kind and generous care; while his rich house in Paris was always open to strangers, and young men of straitened means were sure of finding a liberal and courteous friend. But when the Revolution came, with its wild excesses, the eminence which his talents and virtues gave him exposed him to the jealousy and hatred of the wretches who were thrown up into power. That strange frenzy swept away the boundary which had formerly seemed to separate the races of man and devil, and for a time seemed to establish the identity of the two. The charge against him was that of having used pernicious articles in the adulteration of tobacco; but as his wealth was his real crime, it was evident that his doom was sealed. Hearing of the order for his arrest, he succeeded in escaping; but fearing lest his escape might be injurious to some of his friends, with singular generosity he returned to prison with the rest. By a retrospective law, he was condemned for treason. M. Hallé had the courage to read a defence before that villanous Revolutionay Tribunal, in which he recounted Lavoisier's discoveries and services; but though Carnot and Fourcroy, who knew how to appreciate his worth better than the brutes with whom they were associated, were members of the Tribunal, and might have interposed without danger to themselves, not another voice rose up in his favor in all that wilderness of sin.

Thus Lavoisier perished, in the fifty-first year of his age, his miserable fate covering his country with disgrace, as his talents had thrown more glory upon it than a million of successful wars. When sentenced to die, he requested a short reprieve to finish some experiments which he was then conducting in the prison; but his request was refused, as might have been expected from those with whom he had to do. His widow, a woman of unusual talent and information, survived him, and afterwards married Count Rumford, whom she also outlived. Such was the recompense of one who greatly extended the bounds of his favorite science, and to whom it owes some of its most important discoveries. He relieved it from the bondage of prejudice and error that weighed it

down for a long time; he stood almost alone in his country, maintaining those truths which few beside him had sagacity to understand, but which are now universally received and acknowledged by all the civilized world.

With one of those tremendous strides, which remind us of the expression "sic itur ad astra," Lord Brougham passes to the Englishman Gibbon, if English he may be called, who prided himself on writing French like a native, and whose joy it was to spend so many of his days at a distance from his own land. Gibbon was one of those who have lightened the labor of biographers by giving some sketch of his own life and mind. There is some danger of partiality in these accounts, and they cannot always be implicitly trusted; not from any disposition to mislead on the part of the writers, but from that over-exaltation with which poor human nature contemplates its own perfections, and the Christian tenderness which it extends to its own sins. Still, it is interesting to see how such men stood with themselves, and their self-estimation, whether high or low, is always one of the chief elements from which an estimate of character is made up. In the case of Gibbon, there was no struggle with difficult circumstances, no various adventure, nothing of that incident which gives life to the story. Though not rich, he was well provided for; he had the full command of his time and motions; he had the most desirable social resources at all times within his reach. But with that spirit which seems inseparable from the human heart, we find him lamenting that he had not embraced the lucrative profession of law or trade, or even "the fat slumbers of the church," though it is not probable that he would have succeeded in either of the former; and as to "fat slumbers," we imagine it would have been difficult to find the happy individual who enjoyed more of them in life than he. The health of the great historian was very delicate in his childhood, and he therefore did not enjoy the advantage of much discipline or instruction. Fortunately for him, he was under the care of an aunt, a woman of good taste and judgment, who directed his inclination for reading, which was very strong, and which turned itself most passionately to history, the natural resource of the young reader in that day, when a swarm of novels as worthless as the writers of them had not yet come up into every corner of people's houses, forming one of the chief pests of the age. He

read such works, however, more thoroughly than is common with the young. For example, when engaged with Howell's History of the World, he studied the geography of the Byzantine period, which was contained in the volume that fell into his hands, examining also the chronological systems which had reference to the subject; thus unconsciously preparing for the work which he was afterwards to do. He was hardly fifteen when he entered the University of Oxford, — a place which has a great and venerable name, but which, according to Gibbon and Adam Smith, offered greater advantages to winebibbers and sinners than to those who wanted education without maturity of mind or force of character to work it out for themselves. The result with him was, that he had read three or four plays of Terence after fourteen months' instruction; his habits were irregular and expensive; no care was given to his religious and moral instruction. Under the influence of a friend who had become a Catholic, he was converted to that form of Christianity, much to the annoyance of his father, whose notions on the subject were not the most enlarged, and who could devise no better way to reclaim him than to put him under the influence of Mallet, the poet, whose chief accomplishment for the trust appears to have been, that he had no regard for Christianity whatever, could be reclaimed from what was if a person thought excess on one side, by the winning exhibition of far coarser excess on the other.

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Finding that this beautiful experiment did not succeed, his father sent him to Lausanne, where he was put under the care of a pious and sensible Protestant divine, who soon gained an influence with him and brought him back from the Roman fold, which was not then beset with converts, as it is in the present day. The probability is, that there was no depth in his feeling on either side; and it may have been because he found himself so cheered and welcomed on these several occasions, and was so complimented for his religious principles and feelings when he was not conscious of having any, that he afterwards held Christianity in so very light esteem. Meantime, he was faithfully and diligently employed in study, paying attention not only to French literature, with which he was familiar, but securing those treasures of classical learning which he afterwards used to so great advantage. The monotony of his retired life was varied by an affair of the

heart with the daughter of a pastor, the same lady afterwards known as the wife of Neckar and mother of Madame de Staël. He resorted to the desperate measure of throwing himself on his knees before her, a most unguarded act, since he could not rise of himself by reason of his weight, and she was not able, if disposed, to lift him; so that it was not till the servants came in, that he was released from his unhappy posture, and enabled to depart in peace.

When he returned from abroad, he was kindly received by his father, who had married a second wife; a person who became to Gibbon a kind and faithful friend. A military taste infested the country at that time, and people the most unfit for such extravagances hurried away from their harmless employments to share the excitement of war at a comfortable distance from its dangers. Gibbon, among others, was glorified with the rank of captain in the regiment of which his father was major; but he found no enjoyment in what he called his military life; he complained of the loss of time which it occasioned, and the rude companionship to which it exposed him; it was altogether unsuited to his taste, which did not fit him even for literary warfare, save when there was no enemy arrayed against him, as when he published his work on the study of literature, in which he vindicates, as he says, his favorite, though who had attacked it or thrown any reproach upon it since the Battle of the Books, it was not easy to tell. His essay, being written in French, was not read at all in England; abroad, it excited some attention from the singularity of French correctly written by a foreigner. He apologized for what seemed like an affectation, by saying that he had hopes of some diplomatic appointment, which it might help to secure him; but it was probably more from display than any other reason that he undertook to "babble the dialect of France." There are very few who are acquainted with a foreign language, who can resist the temptation to flourish it in the eyes and ears of men.

The natural bent of Gibbon's mind inclined him strongly to historical investigations, and while engaged in the bloodless campaigns of the militia, he had been revolving various subjects in his mind, such as the expedition of Charles the Eighth into Italy, the wars of the English barons, and the short and brilliant lives of the Black Prince, of Sir Philip Sidney, and Montrose. He had almost determined to en

gage in a biography of Raleigh, and read with deep interest all the records of his romantic and adventurous life. But among so many fine subjects, he was perplexed with the variety and number; and it was not till he had made a visit to Rome that his mind took fast hold of any one. There, in October, 1764, as he sat musing in the ruins of the Capitol, he heard the barefooted friars singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, a sound which, as one might have supposed, brought up affecting and powerful associations of the changes and revolutions that had passed over the Eternal City, and which was itself a sufficient illustration of the decline and fall of the glory that had passed away. But the mere passing thought was not sufficient to inspire him; it was not till he felt the want of steady and systematic employment to keep his mind in tune and to prevent the exertion of its self-tormenting power, that he was able to nerve himself for the great enterprise before him. He found that nothing is more afflicting than the literary leisure which intellectual men so earnestly desire. It was once stated in a Western print, that "the operation of the Relief laws' had been found very burdensome"; and so in life, relieve a man from the obligation to labor with his mind or hands, and he can hardly bear the weight of existence; if he is not under any such necessity, he must supply the want of it for himself; and this was done by Gibbon, with equal wisdom and success.

His great work was commenced in 1772, with diligent and efficient preparation. He appears to have been aware that his weak point would be the style, and so anxious was he to guard from failure in this respect, that the first chapter was written three times, and the next two twice over, before they gave him satisfaction. But even then he was too easily satisfied; for after all, he never gained the power of melting down his various materials into a harmonious, consistent, and flowing story. There are constant intimations of what the reader has no means of knowing, awkward and squinting allusions to facts and incidents which are behind the scenes, and a way of introducing subjects indirectly and by implication, which, if produced at all, should come full before us in the march of the history, each in its place and order. Many sentences seem intended for riddles to try the ingenuity of the reader; over others we ponder quite as long as is worth while to make sure that we understand them, a natural and rea