Nearly two years elapsed between the publication of my first and the commencement of my second volume.  The second and third volumes of the “Decline and Fall” insensibly rose in sale and reputation to a level with the first volume.  So flexible is the title of my history that the final era might be fixed at my own choice, and I long hesitated whether I should be content with the three volumes, the “Fall of the Western Empire.”  The tumult of London and attendance at parliament were now grown irksome, and when I had finished the fourth volume, excepting the last chapter, I sought a retreat on the banks of the Leman Lake.

VI.—­A Quiet Consummation

My transmigration from London to Lausanne could not be effected without interrupting the course of my historical labours, and a full twelvemonth was lost before I could resume the thread of regular and daily industry.  In the fifth and sixth volumes the revolutions of the empire and the world are most rapid, various, and instructive.  It was not till after many designs and many trials that I preferred the method of grouping my picture by nations; and the seeming neglect of chronological order is surely compensated by the superior merits of interest and perspicacity.  I was now straining for the goal, and in the last winter many evenings were borrowed from the social pleasures of Lausanne.

I have presumed to mark the moment of conception; I shall now commemorate the hour of my final deliverance.  It was on the night of June 27, 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page in a summer-house in my garden.  After laying down my pen, I took several turns in a covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and the mountains.  The air was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, and all nature was silent.  I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom, and perhaps the establishment of my fame.  But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an agreeable companion, and that whatsoever might be the future fate of my history, the life of the historian must be short and precarious.

The day of publication of my three last volumes coincided with the fifty-first anniversary of my own birthday.  The conclusion of my work was generally read and variously judged.  Upon the whole, the history of “The Decline and Fall” seems to have struck root both at home and abroad.

When I contemplate the common lot of mortality, I must acknowledge that I have drawn a high prize in the lottery of life.  I am endowed with a cheerful temper.  The love of study, a passion which derives fresh vigour from enjoyment, supplies each day, each hour, with a perpetual source of independent and rational pleasure; and I am not sensible of any decay of the mental faculties.  I am disgusted with the affectation of men of letters who complain that they have renounced a substance for a shadow.  My own experience, at least, has taught me a very different lesson.  Twenty happy years have been animated by the labour of my history; and its success has given me a name, a rank, a character in the world to which I should not otherwise have been entitled.