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 whole would have been impossible for him with a printer's devil always round the corner. Had he had greater wealth, on the other hand—had his grandfather not been ruined by the South Sea speculation, or his father been capable of retrieving instead of damaging his fortunes—Gibbon would have been exposed to possibly fatal temptations. He might have dissipated his powers, and become a luxurious 'virtuoso,' like Horace Walpole; and he still more probably might have been swept into the political vortex, the temptations of which, as it was, were almost fatal to the conclusion of the History. The class, again, to which he belonged was, with all its faults, accessible to the culture of the time; and had some excuse for considering itself to be leading the van of European civilisation. England was still held on the Continent to be the model land of political and religious freedom; and the French philosophers who ruled the world of thought were still sitting at the feet of Locke and Newton. It is true that the education which a young Briton received was not exactly calculated to produce philosophers. Gibbon observes that 'a finished scholar may emerge from the head of Westminster or Eton in total ignorance of the business and