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 pictures to ornament a comfortable villa on the banks of the Thames; and form a good solid library in which I write books for the upper circle, without bothering myself about the Social Question or Bimetallism, or swallowing masses of newspaper and magazine articles to keep myself up to date. I belong to a club or two in London, with Johnson and Charles Fox, the authors and the men of fashion, in which I can 'fold my legs and have my talk out,' and actually hear talk which is worth writing down. If I do not aspire to be one of the great triumvirate, of which Gibbon was proud to be a member, I fancy at least that I can allow my thoughts to ripen and mellow into something as neat and rounded as becomes a fine gentleman.

It is true, of course, that this plan involves certain postulates. It might be that in the real eighteenth century I should have turned my opportunities to bad account. I might become a mere dilettante or a mere sensualist. What is remarkable in Gibbon is the felicity with which his peculiar talents and temperament fitted in with the accidents of his life, as though by a specially devised arrangement. It may be worth while to note in some detail the curious play of