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its stomach of Silenus, rests on a pair of spindleshanks.' His blemishes had not of course been developed at this time, but were in posse, as it were. But the young lady that attracted him had many charms. He himself gave a graceful and illustrative description of her attractions. He found her learned without pedantry, lively in conversation, pure in her sentiments, and elegant in her manners. The young élève was fascinated. 'I saw her,' he says, and loved.' His first sudden emotion' was fortified by the habits and knowledge of a more familiar acquaintance. His advances were encouraged. From mere meetings at Lausanne, it came to formal visits at her father's modest little parsonage over the mountains at Crassey. He looked back to these as very happy days. The father and mother honourably encouraged the connection.' In a calm retirement,' says Mr. Gibbon in his stately historic way, as though he were describing the Empress Helena, 'the gay vanity of youth no longer fluttered in her bosom. She listened to the voice of truth and passion, and he might venture to hope that he had made some impression on a virtuous heart.'

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Mr. Gibbon pursued his studies for a year or two longer, still speaking in the voice of truth,' and was then summoned home to England by his father. If some supernatural return' could be ordered and made as to the various typical incidents of human life and character, it would be found that the conditions are about the same; the result repeats itself in millions of incidents. Here was Mr. Gibbon, with his voice of truth and passion,' and his 'impression on a virtuous heart,' his vows to a simple country girl, very much like a modern officer in a garrison town. Like the latter, he is ordered away, or has to go and see his family,' and, as invariably, a third person steps upon the scene and forbids the banns.

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Mr. Gibbon dispatches the rest of the business very quietly. 'On my return to England I found that my father would not hear of this strange alliance, and that without his support I was destitute and helpless. I sighed as a lover; I obeyed as a son.' The reader will note the curious use of the word 'strange' in the sense of foreign' or 'incompatible;' and the awkwardness of the confession that he only discovered his dependence on his father at so convenient a moment. The voice of truth' and even of passion was hushed in presence of this unsentimental argument. We may think of the poor girl in the lonely mountains, waiting for the lagging English post, then having this news broken to her with all the ingenious and elegant diction of the author of the Decline and Fall; her mortification too before the Lausanne coterie, with nothing left to console her but the erudition without pedantry,' which had so charmed her faithless admirer.

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When he said he had obeyed as a son,' it must be owned that Mr. Gibbon gives rather an unhandsome account of the short sequel

of the affair; or it may be that his lofty Decline-and-Fall manner had made him view everything as having historical bearings of some kind. That strange irony, sometimes unintentional with him, had grown into a habit; and so he goes on: My wound was insensibly healed by time, absence, and the habits of a new life. My cure was accelerated by a faithful report of the tranquillity and cheerfulness of the lady herself, and my love subsided into friendship and esteem.' Sensible Mademoiselle Curchod!

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But she had made a large circle of friends, among whom this desertion caused no little indignation. Rousseau did not care to conceal his opinion. Some one had written to him with a message or commission for Mademoiselle Curchod, and he wrote back to say that he was certain to acquit himself badly in it, on account of his esteem for her. The cooling-off of Mr. Gibbon has made me think meanly of him. I have been going over his book, and he seems to me to be straining at esprit. He is not the man for me; nor can I think that he will be the one for Mademoiselle Curchod. Any one who does not know her value is not worthy of her; but a man who has come to that knowledge and then withdraws himself, is only worthy of contempt. . . . . I would sooner a thousand times that he left her poor and free among you than that he brought her rich and miserable away to England.' This was plain-speaking, and later was duly published with the rest of the philosopher's letters, and read by Mr. Gibbon, who made a half-good-humoured, half-indignant protest against such treatment; but through the protest we almost see a secret consciousness of wrong.

Mr. Gibbon then went into the militia, and passed through the pleasant mumming' of encampment. It is stated that it was this training that really made him give such graphic power to the military portions of his History; and some distinguished person lately, speaking of the Volunteers, quoted this passage. It was received with good-humoured merriment-a good test of the value of so ridiculous a statement. The deserted young lady remained in her retirement until the death of her father left her almost penniless. She then went to Geneva, and was driven to the calling of a governess; and there, says Mr. Gibbon oddly, she earned a hard subsistence for herself and her mother; but in her lowest distress she maintained a spotless reputation and a dignified behaviour.' This mixture of compliment and awkward reminder was scarcely in the best taste.

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But by and by was to come the reward. A rich Swiss banker, who did business in Paris, M. Necker, came that way, and, Gibbon says oddly, had the good sense to discover this inestimable treasure.' Accident and labour, rather than good sense, generally guide discoveries. Her later career is well known, and the compensation for that early trial was destined to be brilliant. The banker

became the minister; not only the minister, but a sort of heavensent' one, called in to save France. The world now knows Madame Necker as one of its heroines-the clever charming wife, the pleasant agreeable writer, the devoted partner, the good and pious. woman, and the mother of the more famous Corinne'-Madame de Staël. Mr. Gibbon found his way to Paris, where they were living, when the past was prudently forgotten; and in her salons was exhibited the distinguished Englishman, now very famous.

He, however, paid this homage to his early love he never married. He was wealthy, and might have done so with advantage. The curious society at Lausanne and in Switzerland, where he saw Voltaire act, had a special charm for him. And so he pored over his Tillemont and Baronius, collected books and wrote, and grew fat and gouty and almost absurdly out of shape; and it was precisely at that crisis, when he was just fifty years old, he chose to fall in love again. The dramatic finale of that attachment was so comic, and placed him in so ridiculous a light, that it almost seems a Nemesis in consequence of his old desertion. It took place in the same locality.

Lady Elizabeth Foster, who afterwards became Duchess of Devonshire,-a daughter of the eccentric Bishop of Bristol, of whom we had a glimpse in the account of Nelson's weaknesses, was on her travels over Europe. She was a true specimen of the dilettante English who were then found on the Continent, and who really did noble and liberal acts with their money in the service of art. Fancy a lady of title nowadays printing an édition de luxe of Horace at an Italian press, exquisitely illustrated, and costing a fortune.

Mr. Gibbon was at that really dramatic passage of his life, in the middle of the year 1787, when he was completing his History, and on a certain night in June had written the last line of the last page of the great work. Great as it is, it seems now to be regarded more with respect and awe than affection; a feeling that Mr. Dickens has very happily expressed when he made Mr. Boffin choose it for the work with which he was to make his first acquaintance with literature. Very familiar is the description of the almost solemn act performed in a pavilion at the end of his garden. Laying down his pen, he took several turns in the acacia alley,' with a feeling of joy at getting back his liberty after this long and arduous servitude; but dashed with a certain melancholy, as he thought, however lasting might be the reputation of the book, the days of the writer might be numbered.

The lady arrived shortly after, and struck him, as she struck all, with the elegance of her form and manner, her esprit, cleverness, and, above all, the nice apropos of her compliments. She took a great interest in that dramatic completion of the great History, and was one morning asked to breakfast to inspect the very

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scene. In the mean time Mr. Gibbon had interpreted her 'sweetness' and elegance, and all the compliments, as so many proofs of the impression he was making upon her heart. And it seemed this occasion would do excellently to bring on a dénouement. breakfast was over, he brought her out to look at the famous acacia walk, and the view of lake and mountain which it commanded. She was enthusiastic in her delight, and expressed herself in all the raptures becoming admiration for scenery, when the historian suddenly affected to be jealous of the praise bestowed on such objects, and electrified her by an eloquent and passionate declaration, at the same time falling on his knees.

The astonished lady could hardly understand at first; then burst into a fit of laughter. The situation must have been ludicrous indeed; the unwieldy lover still pouring out his vows, and she remaining some paces off and trying to soothe him. At last he understood his mistake, and then she bade him get up. But this was impossible; gout, enormous fat, and rheumatism utterly incapacitated him. The brilliant lady, cruelly ignoring the romance of the situation, came to his aid and tried to raise him; but it was in vain. Then both parties agreed to look at the matter in a prosaic light; and it was determined that she should go for assistance, and give out that Gibbon had fallen. She went, and two stout peasants of the place came up, raised him between them, and landed him in his familiar easy-chair. Mdlle. Curchod was certainly avenged when these honest creatures soundly rated him for his folly, and told him he should not stir without the help of servants. To her honour, the duchess never mentioned this ludicrous adventure during his lifetime; but she afterwards told it to the Chevalier A. de Montor, who relates it in the Biographie Universelle.*

* The Rev. Dr. Russell, the learned and amiable President of Maynooth College, has called attention to this scene in his Life of Mezzofanti, as well as to the curious blunder of Lord Brougham, who makes Mdlle. Curchod the heroine.

THE HAUNTED BARONET

BY J. S. LE FANU,

AUTHOR OF UNCLE SILAS,' ETC.

CHAPTER VII. THE BANK-NOTE.

SIR BALE brushed by the housekeeper as he strode into her sanctuary, and there found Philip Feltram awaiting him dejectedly, but with no signs of agitation.

If one were to judge by the appearance the master of Mardykes presented, very grave surmises as to impending violence would have suggested themselves; but though he clutched his cane so hard that it quivered in his grasp, he had no notion of committing the outrage of a blow. The Baronet was unusually angry notwithstanding, and stopping short about three steps away, addressed Feltram with a pale face and gleaming eyes. It was quite plain that there was something very exciting upon his mind.

'I've been looking for you, Mr. Feltram; I want a word or two, if you have done your-your-whatever it is.' He whisked the point of his stick towards the modest tea-tray. 'I should like five minutes in the library.'

The Baronet was all this time eyeing Feltram with a hard suspicious gaze, as if he expected to read in his face the shrinkings and trepidations of guilt; and then turning suddenly on his heel he led the way to his library-a good long march, with a good many turnings. He walked very fast, and was not long in getting there. And as Sir Bale reached the hearth, on which was smouldering a great log of wood, and turned about suddenly, facing the door, Philip Feltram entered.

The Baronet looked oddly and stern-so oddly, it seemed to Feltram, that he could not take his eyes off him, and returned his grim and somewhat embarrassed gaze with a stare of alarm and speculation.

And so doing, his step was shortened, and grew slow and slower, and came quite to a stop before he had got far from the door-a wide stretch of that wide floor still intervening between him and Sir Bale, who stood upon the hearthrug, with his heels together and his back to the fire, cane in hand, like a drill-sergeant, facing him.

Shut that door, please; that will do; come nearer now. I don't want to bawl what I have to say. Now listen.'

SECOND SERIES, VOL. II. F.S. VOL. XII.

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