Switzerland, where he resided in the house with Mr. Pavillard, and 'spent nearly five years with pleasure and profit.' His tutor, who was a Calivnistic minister, spared no effort to convince him that he had come to an erroneous conclusion concerning the catholic doctrine; and his exertions, aided by the mature reflections of his pupil, were at length successful. 'The various articles of the Romish creed,' says our author, 'disappeared like a dream; and, after a full conviction, on Christmas day, 1754, I received the sacrament in the church of Lausanne.' During his stay in this city, he made rapid and profitable progress in his studies; and, besides opening a correspondence with the chief literati of the continent, he acquired a knowledge of French and Italian, and perfected his acquaintance with the Greek and Latin languages.
Previous to his leaving Lausanne, he formed an attachment to a Mademoiselle Curchod, the commencement and termination of which, in his own words, is too interesting to be omitted. 'I saw,' he says, 'and loved. I found her learned, without pedantry; lively in conversation; pure in sentiment; elegant in manners. She permitted me to make her two or three visits in her father's house. I passed some happy days there in the mountains of Burgundy, and her parents honorably encouraged the connexion. In a calm retirement, the gay vanity of youth no longer fluttered in her bosom. She listened to the voice of truth and passion, and I might presume to hope I had made some impression on a virtuous heart. At Crassy and Lausanne, I indulged my dream of felicity; but, on my return to England, I soon discovered that my father would not hear to this strange alliance. After a painful struggle, I yielded to my fate. I sighed as a lover; I obeyed as a son: my wound was insensibly healed by time, absence, and the habits of a new life. My cure was accelerated by a faithful report of the tranquillity and cheerfulness of the lady herself; and my love subsided into friendship and esteem. A rich banker of Paris, a citizen of Geneva, had the good fortune and good sense to discover and possess this inestimable treasure; and, in the capital of taste and luxury, she resisted the temptation of wealth, as she had sustained the hardships of indigence. The genius of her husband has exalted him to the most conspicuous station in Europe; and Mademoiselle Curchod is now the wife of M. Necker.'
In 1758, he returned to England, and took up his residence at his father's house, where he devoted himself to the gradual collection of a library, and to a strict course of reading. In 1761, he acquired some reputation on the continent, but little at home, by the publication of a small work, written in the French language, entitled, Essai sur l'Etude de la Littérature. His literary occupation received an interruption in the same year, by his entering as captain in the Hampshire militia, in which he remained till the peace of 1763. He then set out for Paris, where the reputation he had acquired by his Essai, procured him an introduction to the first literary and fashionable circles. After a stay of eleven months at Lausanne, he proceeded to Rome, where, as 'he sat musing amongst the ruins of the capital, while the bare-footed friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to his mind.' He returned from Italy in 1765, and again entered the militia as lieutenant-colonel commandant; but resigned the situation on the death of his father, in 1770. The interval between these periods was passed by him in a
