GIBBON.

THE biography of illustrious men, men whose history is intimately connected either with the political events of their times, or with the progress of science or of learning, has ever been deemed one of the most useful as well as delightful departments of literature; nor does it yield to any in the capacity of conveying the most important instruction in every department of knowledge. It has accordingly been cultivated in all ages by the most eminent men. Invaluable contributions to it have been afforded by the individuals themselves whose lives were to be recorded. Their correspondence with familiar friends is one source of our knowledge regarding them; nay, it may almost be termed a branch of autobiography. Who does not value Cicero's letters above most of his works? Who does not lament that those of Demosthenes are not more numerous and better authenticated? But some have been in form, as well as in substance, their own biographers. Nor does any one accuse Hume and Gibbon of an undue regard to their own fame, or of assuming arrogantly a rank above their real importance, when they left us the precious histories of their lives. On the contrary, their accounts of other men contain few pages more valuable to the cause of

truth than those which they have left of their own studies. "Ac plerique suam ipsi vitam narrare, fiduciam potius morum quam arrogantiam arbitrati sunt: nec id Rutilio et Scauro citra fidem aut obtrectationi fuit. Adeo virtutes iisdem temporibus optime æstimantur quibus facillimè gignuntur." (Tacit. Vit. Ag.' cap. i.)

Guided in part by the light of his own description, in part by that which his correspondence sheds, we have traced the history of one of these great historians. We are now to follow that of the other with similar advantages from the lights of his own pen.

Edward Gibbon was descended from a considerable and ancient family settled in the county of Kent, and landowners there as early as the beginning of the fourteenth century. Their respectability may be judged from the circumstance that in Edward III.'s reign John Gibbon, the head of the house, was king's architect, and received the grant of a hereditary toll in Stonar Passage, as a reward for the construction of Queenborough Castle. One of the family, in Henry the Sixth's reign, married Fiennes, Lord Say and Sele, the Lord High Treasurer; and from him the historian descended in the eleventh generation, belonging to a younger branch of the Gibbons which settled in London in the reign of James I., and engaged in commerce. His grandfather acquired in these pursuits considerable wealth, and was at the end of Queen Anne's reign commissioner of the customs, together with Prior the poet. His family had always been of the Tory party, and his promotion came from the Queen's Tory Ministry. In 1716 he became a director of the South Sea Company, and he was proved to have then been possessed of above a hundred thousand pounds, all