royd says of him: "It never occurs to him that she might have refused him, and if it was mentioned to him I dare say he would sooner believe a miracle than the possibility of a sensible woman showing such a want of taste." But in defence of Gibbon it must be admitted that it is difficult to feel a due terror of being refused if you are not by any means certain that you will propose. Gibbon must be forgiven for this, as Mme. Necker forgave him for a far greater injury. And after all it is in his relations with Suzanne Curchod-when his disabilities as a lover were most acutely proved-that his qualities as a friend shone most conspicuously. He was her lover for only a short time, but he was her friend for life. In 1776 the Neckers visited England, when Gibbon appears to have been a most attentive cicerone. Both husband and wife pressed him to come and visit them in Paris. "I gave her en partant," he says, "the most solemn assurances of following her paws in less than two months, but the voice of Indolence begins to whisper a thousand difficulties." The voice of Indolence managed to defer his journey until the spring of the following year, but he was then determined to go. Mrs. Gibbon set herself against the plan and started, he says, "two very ingenious objections; first, that I shall be confined, or put to death by the priests, and secondly, that I shall sully my moral character by making love to Necker's wife." her house, I must remove the misapprehension which seems to have alarmed you. I shall visit but not lodge there. I have not the least reason to believe that they think of offering me an apartment, but if they do, I shall certainly refuse it, for the sake of my own comfort and freedom; so that the husband will be easy, the world will be mute, and my moral character will still preserve its immaculate purity." After thus allaying the fears of his stepmother, he goes to Paris and appears to enjoy himself mightily. He is delighted with the reception given him by the Neckers, which very far surpassed his most sanguine expectations. "I do not indeed lodge in their house," he writes to Mrs. Holroyd, "as it might excite the jealousy of the husband and procure me a letter de cachet, but I live very much with them." They introduced him to every one worth knowing in Paris, and he took leave of them in October with the very greatest regret. But as was usual with him, the "demon of procrastination," to whom he ascribes all his shortcomings, prevents him writing to his friends, and there is apparently no communication between them until 1781, when Mme. Necker, after reading his four last volumes, writes him a kind of challenge. "I have sulked enough, monsieur, I give myself up at last entirely to the pleasure of writing to you, and of reading you, without asking whether the author of this fine work, if the sublime He found himself obliged to write her genius who has run through the annals a serious letter on the subject: "The constancy and danger of a twenty years' passion is a subject upon which I hardly know how to be serious. I am ignorant what effect that period of time has produced upon me, but I do assure you that it has committed very great ravages upon the lady, and that at present she is very far from being an object either of desire or scandal. As a woman of talents and fortune she is at the head of the literature of Paris, the station of her husband procures her respect from the first people of the country, and the reception which I shall meet with in her house will give me advantages that have fallen to the share of few Englishmen. When I mention of the universe, and who seems to have extracted from all the countries of the world only the purest perfumes in order to bring them to our senses, whether, I say, this astonishing man ignores, like all other lovers of glory, the charms and the duties of friendship, whether this lively and ardent imagination is joined to a cold and lazy character, whether his tastes vary with his opportunities, and whether he only absorbs color from the rays which he decomposes; in fact, whether his affections are like his books, which interest and amuse him while he is reading them, and which make way for others, soon replaced in their turn; I want to know nothing about all this. and yet I still exclaim sometimes, what! even in friendship! But do not think that you will get quit of the affair by being left to your indifference. Although I am absorbed in the objects of my most tender attachments, the sensibility which I received from Nature permits of other ties. My spirit only exists in loving, and still searches beyond her circle for new means of existing; I wish therefore that you would keep the feeling for me which you promised you would have; I have counted it in the sum of my happiness, and-I know you -you will feel some affection for me when you see me again, and you will not be convinced of your faults until you no longer have any." And later on in this same letter she urges him to come and settle in France. "You ought not to return to a country where you will search in vain for the sweet illusions of your youth. I sometimes let my thoughts stray to those places once so dear, and, since they are no longer peopled for me, I only look upon them as on the playthings of my childhood. You are in the arms of glory, come to a people who adore her, or, if the times do not seem favorable to you, let us not lose sight of that peaceful retreat, where we ought to be together, there to await between study and friendship the gentle close of beautiful enough day; live in your own country or live with us. Every one here talks of you, monsieur, with annoyance, or with praise; your silence is your fault, as soon as you speak it will be forgotten." a How little Mme. Necker thought then that political changes would not only determine Gibbon to settle abroad, but would send her and her husband to within a few leagues of him. In 1783 Gibbon took up his final abode at Lausanne, and in 1784, three years after Mons. Necker's dismissal from office, he and his wife spent a summer at the Gates of Lausanne, while their new purchase, the Barony of Copet, was under repair. One can imagine how often Gibbon after his studious morning, and his meal at two, would waddle out on a round of visits, and towards sundown make for the Neckers' house. The evening would then be spent in talk, and at this stage in his career I Mme. Necker, as the twilight began to fade, would perhaps use an interval, when Mr. Gibbon tapped his snuff-box, to send for some tea, and then, in the cool of the evening, she and her husband would accompany the historian back to his terrace. Several friends would drop in-the Severays, Mr. Tissot, the sprightly Mlle. Necker, who had been spending the afternoon with some other friends, perhaps the Abbé Raynal, and after strolling up and down on the terrace—which Mme. Necker, painfully addicted to classical allusion, probably likened to the Sacred Hill, or to the Acropolis-herself to a disciple, Gibbon to Socrates-they would turn indoors. The tables would be all ready, and after playing cards, a small and—as Mr. Gibbon would have called it-an elegant repast would be served, all carefully superintended by Monsieur Deyvurdun. Gibbon liked to hope that he should spend many such weeks staying with his friends at Copet, but he was anxious about her health, and took leave of her with a strong feeling that he should never see her again. Mme. Necker, however, recovered. In 1788 her husband was recalled to office, dismissed in '89, recalled six days later, and finally dismissed again in 1790. It was in 1792 that Gibbon at last realized his project of going to stay with his friends. He writes to Lord Sheffield as follows: "I have most successfully, and most agreeably, executed my plan of spending the month of March at Geneva, in the Necker house, and every circumstance that I had arranged turned out beyond my expectation; the freedom of the morning, the society of the table and the drawing-room, from half an hour past two till six or seven; an even1 Bland Burges Bart., Letters and Correspondence, p. 59-61. ing assembly and card-party, in a round of the best company, and, except one day in the week, a private supper of free and friendly conversation." At the risk of wearying, I cannot refrain from quoting a letter of Mme. Necker's, written when the memory of these meetings at Lausanne must have been present in her mind, and in which she urges him to come and visit her at Copet. "We often think, monsieur, of the days full of charm which we spent with you at Geneva. I experienced during that time a new feeling for me, and perhaps for many people. I united in the same place, and by a rare favor of providence, one of the tender and pure affections of my youth with that one which shapes my lot in life, and which makes it so worthy of envy. This peculiarity, joined to the delight of a conversation without its equal, created a sort of enchantment for me; and the connection of the past and the present made my days seem like a dream which had issued from the ivory door to console mankind." In spite of the classical allusion, this passage speaks a very warm feeling, and a little later on in the same letter she exclaims, apropos of the confidence he had made her about writing his own memoirs: "Good-bye, monsieur; no one in the world has more reason than you to understand the value of that unique combination of the most brilliant and most gifted intellect, with the sweetest and most steadfast of characters, and one might well say of you what Cicero"but I will spare my readers another classical allusion. This letter was written in June, 1792, and again in July of the same year she writes imploring him to come: "Come to Copet, provided that our happiness does not deprive you of yours; but if habit is against us it can also be favorable to us, for the intercourse between different souls and minds becomes very like habit, which is at least one of its most delightful results, and a liaison that began almost as soon as thought, is to be preferred before one which you have formed with your furniture and rooms." And again: "Come back to us when you have come back to yourself; it is the moment which ought always to belong to your first and to your last friend. I could not say now which of these two titles is the sweetest and dearest to my heart.” But in little more than a year this long and tender friendship was dissolved by death. Gibbon had grown to a cumbersome size, and though he talked vaguely of paying another visit to England, it is certain that but for the death of Lady Sheffield he would never again have crossed the sea. For although he did not realize it, his own malady was growing apace. Europe was in flames, and there was a positive danger in attempting the journey to England. But these considerations did not weigh for one moment with Gibbon when it was a question of his friend in trouble. He was just about to write to Lord Sheffield, "after too long a silence," when he was suddenly struck, "indeed, struck to the heart, by the fatal intelligence" of Lady Sheffield's deathhis sister, as he often used to call her. He at once proposed to start for England. "The only consolation in these melancholy trials to which human life is exposed-the only one, at least, in which I have any confidence-is the presence of a real friend; and of that, as far as it depends upon myself, you shall not be destitute." He arrived in England on one of the first days in June, and spent-except for a fortnight in Bath, a visit to Althorpe, and a few days in London-the whole of the rest of his life with "the precious remnant" of his old and dear friends. In December the news of his serious state had reached Lausanne where the Neckers were at that moment staying. She had written to him in July in great anxiety about his journey: "You promised me from Dover, monsieur, a letter by the next courier; I am still waiting for it, and each day with more anguish. I consume myself with disquieting conjectures. One must be just; you could not think of us as often as we do when we draw you close to our hearts. In London everything leads you to thoughts of this world, while every thing turns us from them here; when near you the memories which you recalled were sweet to me, and the current thoughts which you awakened were joined to them without pain; the linking of a great number of years seemed to make all periods touch each other with an electric rapidity; you were twenty years old and fifty at the same time to me; away from you the different places which I have lived in are no more than the milestones of my life; they tell me of all the miles which I have already covered." Her anxiety was increased tenfold when she heard of his illness, and the last letter which she ever wrote to him contains, perhaps, the strongest expression of her deep and abiding affection:"I cannot express to you, monsieur, the shock which this unexpected news about you was to me. In vain did M. de Sévery surround it with all the moralizing which might divert our sad thoughts; your courage, your gaiety, your amenity, all these qualities, so lovable in old days, weigh upon my heart, together with the other causes which I have to cherish you. The twilight of our life is indeed covered with clouds, if friendship itself, the sweet friendship in which we found a shelter, actually becomes a centre of a grief which reverberates in every part of my being. I shall say no more, monsieur, my weakness ill matches your heroism, and it is only in talking to you of yourself that we can stop talking of you to each other. We are at Lausanne; we regret you at the dawn of day, and above all at sunset; for it was then that we were accustomed to see you enter our solitary hive, charged with the honey which you had collected elsewhere, but richer still with that which flowed from your lips. At the same time I congratulate myself on being here, in reach of news of you; I saw your last bulletin, and I hope you will go on with the same exactitude, for you know how much your friends suffer, and you have none of that tigerish nature, which has become so familiar to us." Gibbon died on January 16th, 1794, in London, so that the two friends never met again. He probably could not an swer this last letter of hers; but she had the memory of a long and unchequered friendship, and the references to her in his memoirs were probably not so much a surprise to her as a great pleasure and gratification. One can imagine her mingled sensations on reading the following passage:-. "The report of such a prodigy awak ened my curiosity; I saw and loved. I found her learned without pedantry, lively in conversation, pure in sentiment, and elegant in manners; and the first sudden emotion was fortified by the habits and knowledge of a more familiar acquaintance." And although her pride and her pleasure lay probably more in the memory of their friendship than in that of their brief love affair, she may have been relieved to hear that she was the only woman he had ever really thought of marrying. "Shall I add that, since the failure of my first wishes, I have never entertained any serious thoughts of a matrimonial connection." A WIT OF EDITH LYTTELTON. From The Cornhill Magazine. We know not whether Lord Alvanley is to be congratulated or condoled with in having flourished two generations ago. Had he been a celebrity of the present day, he might have fallen into the fashion and written his autobiog raphy-the rather that he had pressing pecuniary inducements thereto. Or he would have infallibly been the subject or victim of the versatile biographer, inspired by the enterprising publisher. Any capable writer would have found sufficient materials in social gossip and stories in general circulation, and a Boswell, a Lockhart, or a Trevelyan would have made a most fascinating book. Moreover, Alvanley offered an inciting study of a character in which contrasts and inconsistencies were strangely blended; but the opportunity is lost, for much has been forgotten. He has left few written evidences of his talent, though there is far more in his casual correspondence than is generally suspected. A fashionable Boswell, one of the great viveur's favorite boon companions, should have noted his table talk, and caught the exquisite but evanescent bouquet of his sparkling wit. The reminiscences should have been gathered besides from the lips of the men who marvelled at the eccentricities and extravagances they sought to imitate, although they not only treasured his innumerable bons mots, but attributed to him anything good which went ownerless. Like Talleyrand, he stood sponsor to many things he never said. It was his misfortune from his youth upwards to be admired and envied as an Admirable Crichton, and we see in his letters that in solitude and in sober moments he often lamented a wasted life. He was the man of fashion par excellence, a wit, a bon vivant who reigned supreme among the epicures, and was the idol of the clubs. Yet he was no effeminate sybarite, for he was foremost in the first flight in the shires. His very follies and vices were such as commended him to the respect of the society of the day. He was the most free-handed and generous of men; he was the most venturesome of gamblers at Crockford's or Watier's, where he always lost or won like a gentleman; and he was famous for his successes with the fair sex, who were flattered by his careless though courteous attentions. Moreover, he was not without cultivation; he was an accomplished linguist, an excellent classical scholar, and had done a good deal of casual reading, even in such abstruse subjects as political economy. Brougham, he had the knack of cracking the kernel of the nut, and the art of making the most of anything he knew. We suspect that these triumphs and the false glitter of his social reputation were often gall and bitterness to him when he had time to reflect. With his brilliant intelligence, and an ambition paralyzed by constitutional mental indolence, he must have been conscious that he had wasted rare opportunities. He had deliberately chosen Like to be the idler and voluptuary when he might have been anything he pleased. His keen insight into affairs, his shrewd knowledge of men, his tact, his geniality, and the readiness of repartee which would have been readiest in debate, might have made him a commanding personality among statesmen. In the post of foreign secretary he might have been a Palmerston, or he might have led the House with the good humor of a Lord North, and with far wider political wisdom. He inherited more than the paternal talent, but unluckily his father had gone before him. He succeeded to a peerage and a fortune of eight thousand pounds a year, and that fortune he set himself industriously to dissipate. For it is noteworthy that Alvanley, like other contemporary arbiters of fashion who were consulting counsel of the autocratic patronesses of Almack's, could boast of no illustrious descent. The noble beaux who acknowledged his supremacy would have called him a parvenu. His grandfather was only a provincial solicitor, and his father, the successful lawyer, founded the shortlived family. It would have been well had the son inherited some of the energy of the father's temperament. No lawyer threw himself so earnestly into the cases he advocated as the elder Arden. On one occasion an English friend had taken a French gentleman into court to witness the proceedings. Arden chanced to be pleading with his usual vehement passion. The Frenchman asked his name, and was told it was Sir Pepper Arden. "Parbleu if est très bien nommé," was the answer, "Le Chevalier Poivre Ardent." The second Lord Alvanley was seldom seen out of temper, and never betrayed into any loss of self-control. He is said to have had an exquisite charm of manner, which was rather enhanced by the slight lisp which gave point to his sarcasms and pleasantries. When he came on town as a mere youth, with a commission in the Coldstreams, he slipped at once into a recognized place in society. By way of interlude, he served with distinction at Copenhagen and in |