if it were established on the former plan of that of Mesery, would be no longer suitable either to my age or disposition. Shall I pass my life amidst a crowd of young Englishmen just escaped from college, when I should love Lausanne a hundred times as well, if I could be the only individual of my nation there? I must, then, have a convenient and cheerful house, of a superior class to those of the trades-people, an intelligent host, a hostess who shall not resemble Madame Pavilliard, and the assurance of being received as the only son, or rather as the brother, of the family. That we may make our arrangements without difficulty, I will very willingly furnish a pretty apartment under the same roof or in the vicinity; and since the most sparing economy still leaves sufficient means for good cheer, I should not be obliged to squabble about the pecuniary terms. Should I be disappointed of this last hope, I shall renounce with a sigh, my second native country, to seek a new asylum, not at Geneva, that sorrowful abode of labour and discord, but on the banks of the Lake of Neufchatel, among the good Savoyards of Chambery, or under the fine atmosphere of the south of France. I finish abruptly, for I have a thousand things to say to you. I think in our correspondence we are very much like each other. For learned or even for friendly chit-chat I am of all men the most indolent, but when it concerns a real object or an essential service, the first post always bears my answer. At the end of a month I shall begin to count the weeks, the days, and the hours. Do not make me count too many of them. Vale. CLI. MR. DEYVERDUN TO MR. GIBBON. Strasburg, June 10, 1783. Sir, and my dear Friend,-I know not how to communicate to you the variety and strength of the sensations which were occasioned me by your letter, and which have ended in a depth of hope and pleasure that will remain in my heart until you drive them thence. A singular analogy of circumstances contributes to make me hope that we are destined to live for some time agreeably together. I am not disgusted with an ambition which I never knew; but, owing to other circumstances, I find myself in the same embarrassing and uncertain situation as you yourself are at the present moment. A year ago, your letter, my dear friend, would doubtless have given me pleasure, but at the present moment it does much more, it, in some sort, comes to my assistance. Since my return from Italy, not being willing to sell my house, tired of being alone (for like you, sir, I hate to eat without company), and unwilling to let it to strangers, I took the resolution of arranging my dwelling very prettily on the first floor, and giving up the second to a family of my friends, who would board me while I lodged them. This arrangement has now for a long time appeared to contribute to the happiness of both the parties concerned. But in this world every thing is transitory. My house will be empty, to all appearance, about the end of the summer, and I find myself beforehand as em barrassed and undecided as I was a few years ago, knowing not what new society to choose, and very much inclined at last to sell this property, which has been the cause of many pleasures and many troubles. My house is, then, at your disposal this autumn, and you will arrive like a god who, in poetical machinery, disentangles the intricacies of the plot. So much for myself. Now let us talk about yourself with the same sincerity. One word by way of preamble. However much interested I may be in your resolution, convinced of the necessity of loving our friends for their own sake, and persuaded moreover how dreadful it would be to me to see you regretting it, I give you my word and honour that my interest does not in the slightest degree influence what I am going to write to you, and that I shall not say a single word to you which I should not, if the hermit of the grot was a different person from myself. Your English friends love you for their own sake; I only wish for your own happiness. Recollect, my dear friend, that I saw with regret your entrance into parliament, and I think I have been but too true a prophet. I am sure that this cause has occasioned you more privations than enjoyments, and more pains than pleasures. I have always thought, ever since I have known you, that you were destined to be made happy by the pleasures of the study and of society, that every other course was a departure from the path of felicity, and that only the united qualities of a man of letters and an amiable man in society, could procure you glory, honour, pleasures, and a continual succession of enjoyments. At the end of a few turns in your parlour, you will clearly feel that I have seen it in the right light, and that the event has justified my opinions. When I learnt that you were a lord of trade, I was grieved at it; when I knew that you had lost that place, I rejoiced for you; when I heard that Lord North had remounted his steed, I fancied I could see you, very ill at your ease, on the crupper behind him, and I was in trouble on your account. I am, therefore, delighted to know, my dear friend, that you are still on foot, and I very sincerely advise you to remain in that position, and, far from soliciting the office in question, to refuse it, if it were offered you. Will a thousand guineas recompense you for five days taken out of the week? Supposing, what I can, however, scarcely believe, that you will tell me yes; yet do the variations and perpetual inconstancy of your ministry allow you to hope for a constant enjoyment of it for any length of time, and is it not more unpleasant, my dear sir, to lose an income of £1000 sterling, than it was agreeable to have had the enjoyment of it? Besides, will not you always be able to re-enter on the career, when ambition or the desire of serving your country should again taken possession of you; and would not you re-enter it with more honour when, your income being spontaneously increased, you will be a rich and independent man? By making this retreat into Switzerland, besides the beauty of the country and the pleasures of society, you will acquire two possessions that you have lost, liberty and wealth. You will not, moreover, be useless; your works will continue to enlighten us, and, independently of your talents, the polite and gallant man is never useless. It remains that I should present you with the picture of what you will meet with. You were once fond of my house and garden, but they are very different now. On the first floor, which overlooks the descent towards Ouchy, I have formed a range of apartments which will be sufficiently commodious for myself. I have a servant's room, two parlours, and two studies. I have, on a level with the terrace, two other parlours, one of which serves as a dining-room in summer, and the other as a drawing-room. I have made a new wing of three rooms, in the space between the house and the coach-house, so that I can offer you all the large wing, which now consists of eleven rooms, large and small, facing to the east and south, furnished without misplaced magnificence, but with a sort of elegance which, I hope, will please you. The terrace is a little altered; but it is terminated by a large study, better proportioned than the preceding one, and is garnishod throughout its whole length with orange trees in boxes of earth. The overhanging vine, which you are not indifferent to, has grown handsomer, prospered, and reaches almost to the very end. Arriving at this end, you find a little path, which leads you to a cottage placed in a corner, and from this corner following, along another path made in the English style, the wall of a riding-house, you reach, at the end, a small lodge, with stable, dairy, small door, small study, small library, and a gallery of gilded wood, from whence you may see all who go out and in at the gate of the Oak, and all that passes in that quarter of the town. I have bought the vineyard at the bottom of the garden, I have cleared away all that is before the house, and have made out of it a smooth carpet of green sward watered by a fountain; and, all around this little park, I have made a walk, very much diversified by different prospects and even by interior objects, first kitchen-garden, then flower-garden, then vineyard, then meadows, and afterwards lodge, cottage, and small hill; in short, strangers come to see and admire it, and in spite of the pompous description I have given you, you will be very well pleased with it. N. B. I have planted a number of excellent fruit trees. To come to myself;-you understand very well that I have grown older in every thing, except in sensibility; I am in the fashion-my nerves are affected; I am more melancholy, but have no more whims; you will only suffer negatively, at any rate, from my troubles. Living together, yet separated from each other by our apartments, we shall enjoy the greatest freedom towards each other. We will engage a good-tempered and intelligent housekeeper, more for convenience than through necessity; for I should not be afraid of taking the superintendence upon myself. I have, for some time, conducted the housekeeping of a family of four; I have conducted my own, and I find that it all goes on very well alone, when it is once set a-going. Young ladies, who have only this one qualification, make a great noise about nothing. My garden will furnish us with abundance of fruit and of excellent vegetables. As for the rest of the table, and for the domestic expenditure, I would not ask for any thing better than to receive you at my house in the same manner that you received me at yours; but our situations are different in this respect; however, if you were even still nearer to ruin, I would undoubtedly offer it to you, and indeed I ought to do so; but with the income you had when I was with you, or even supposing it to be diminished, you will live very agreeably at Lausanne. In short, with respect to this, we will arrange it as you please, and in proportion to our incomes. However, you will always, I hope, be more decently and comfortably accommodated in this way, than you would be at any other place at the same expense. As to society, though it be infinitely agreeable, I shall begin this chapter by telling you that I should avoid inviting you if you were entirely disengaged; the days are then long, and leave many voids; but as you are a man of letters, I know of no society that will suit you better. We shall have a circle around us, such as it would be impossible to find any where else within so small a space. Mme. de Corcelles, Mlle. Sulens, and M. de Montolieu (his lady is dead), Messrs. Polier and their ladies, Mme. de Severy, and M. and Mme. de Nassau, Mlle. de Chandieu, M. and Mme. de St. Cierge, with their two pretty and amiable daughters, Mmes. de Crousaz, Polier, de Charrieres, &c. form a host of good company, which cannot tire, and with which M. de Servan is so much pleased, that he always regrets the necessity of returning to his estates, and only longs to dwell entirely at Lausanne. He spent the whole winter of 1782 with us, and was as comfortable as possibly could be. You will find manners much altered and more comforinable to our ages and characters; but few large parties or grand feasts, but a great many little suppers and small parties, where you do as you please, converse, read, &c. and from which the disagreeable of every kind are carefully excluded. On Sunday there is a party, to which all foreigners of any distinction, both ladies and gentlemen, are invited. This consists of an assembly of about forty or fifty persons, whom we rarely see all the rest of the week, and these "routs" are sometimes pleasant. We are greatly averse to foreigners, particularly the young, and we carefully exclude them from our little meetings, unless they possess some particular merit or talents. One of our little peculiarities is enthusiastic fondness; you will profit by it, my dear sir, both as Edward Gibbon and as my friend; you will, from the first, be the perfect gentleman, and you will well sustain that part, without being angry, even should they require a little too much of you. "I feel you flatter me; but still you please," is perhaps one of Destouches' best verses. Thus, then, will be the winter; the morning study, a little eonversation, when you are tired, with some man of letters, or amateur, or one, at least, who has seen something; dinner at what hour you please; no farmer-general of feeding, but the honest Epicurean, with one or two friends whom you may choose, then some visits, an evening party, and often a supper. As for the summer, considering your taste for the country, it would seem that my coach-house was made expressly for you; and while you walk up and down in it like a senator, I shall, like a good Swiss peasant, be either before my lodge, or in my cottage; presently we shall on a sudden meet, and endeavour again to stand on a level with each other. We shall keep our doors shut in general, excepting to foreigners proceeding on their travels; but whenever we please, we can have whoever we like to see there, for nobody wishes any thing better than to come there and enjoy themselves. One fine April day this spring, I gave a breakfast which cost me a few louis, and at which there were more than forty persons; there were I know not how many small tables, a good band of music in the middle of the orchard, and a large number of young and handsome ladies and gentlemen dancing cotillions and marking out cyphers in harmonious time. I have seen a great many fetes, but few prettier than this. When my park tires you, we will either purchase or hire in partnership (and in this way it will be a cheap pleasure) a light chaise with two quiet horses, and we will go and visit our friends who are dispersed abroad in the country, and who will receive us with open arms. You will be more pleased with our country scenery the more you see of it, and you will in general find a change for the better in the pleasures of society, and a sort of simple yet elegant refinement. The shepherdesses of the "Spring," excepting Mme. de Vanberg, are, certainly, no longer passable; but there are others gentle enough yet, and though they are not very numerous, yet there will always, my dear sir, be sufficient for you. By little and little I have been led away by my imagination, and my style has got very gay, in the same manner as it often used to happen to us in our aerial castle building. It is high time to put a stop to this strain, and now let us begin again in a more serious manner. "If If you execute the plan you have devised, I should feel pleasure in saying-especially after what you have yourself remarked, I consulted only my heart and my reason, I should immediately break this unworthy chain," &c. Well! what would you consult but your heart and your reason? If, I say, you execute this plan, you will recover a liberty and an independence which you ought never to have lost, and which you deserve to enjoy, an ease which will cost you only a few days' journey, a tranquillity which you cannot have at London, and, lastly, a friend who has, perhaps, never passed a single day without thinking about you, and who, notwithstanding his faults, his weaknesses, and his inferiority, is yet one of the most suitable companions you could have. It remains that I should inform you why I have so long delayed answering your letter; you now already know that it is not through want of friendship or of zeal in the business; but your letter was sent from Lausanne here, to Strasburg, and I have only missed one post without answering it, which is not too much, you will acknowledge, for such a long gossip as this. I left Lausanne on Easter eve, and came to see a M. Bourcard of Basle, the principal of my friends; he is now with the Comte de Cagliostro, for the benefit of his medi |