CHAPTER VI.
LIFE IN LONDON.--PARLIAMENT.--THE BOARD OF TRADE.--THE DECLINE AND
FALL.--MIGRATION TO LAUSANNE.
Gibbon's settlement in London as master in his own house did not come
too soon. A few more years of anxiety and dependence, such as he had
passed of late with his father in the country, would probably have
dried up the spring of literary ambition and made him miss his career.
He had no tastes to fit him for a country life. The pursuit of farming
only pleased him in Virgil's _Georgics_. He seems neither to have
liked nor to have needed exercise, and English rural sports had no
charms for him. "I never handled a gun, I seldom mounted a horse, and
my philosophic walks were soon terminated by a shady bench, where I
was long detained by the sedentary amusement of reading or
meditation." He was a born _citadin_. "Never," he writes to his friend
Holroyd, "never pretend to allure me by painting in odious colours the
dust of London. I love the dust, and whenever I move into the Weald it
is to visit you, and not your trees." His ideal was to devote the
morning, commencing early--at seven, say--to study, and the afternoon
and evening to society and recreation, not "disdaining the innocent
amusement of a game at cards.
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