GIBBON. 311 



Alps, and the well-cultivated, well-wooded country in 

 the foreground. They were most hospitably received by 

 him and introduced to the pleasant and select society of 

 the place and of the French emigrants, a society in which 

 the historian was the principal person, and was the object 

 of universal respect and esteem. They found him so 

 much under the impression already adverted to respect- 

 ing the danger of revolution, that he seriously argued in 

 favour of the Lisbon Inquisition, saying, " he would not 

 at the present moment give up even that old establish- 

 ment." Well might he call Burke a rational madman! 

 Possibly the compliment might not have been returned. 



During the next year the French fever had extended 

 itself into Switzerland, and he found the society of Lau- 

 sanne greatly affected by it. " Never did he know any 

 place so much changed in a year." The storm, however, 

 blew over as far as the Pays de Vaud was concerned, 

 and beyond some arrests for meditated insurrection, 

 nothing took place to disturb the public tranquillity. He 

 therefore deferred for another year the visit which he had 

 promised his friends, with whom he was to have passed 

 twelve months after their return to England. At first 

 the long journey in his infirm state of health made him 

 dread the undertaking; then the apprehension of dis- 

 turbances in Lausanne induced him to defer his depar- 

 ture. Afterwards he found those fears groundless; but 

 a more serious danger lowered in the month of October, 

 from the French occupying Savoy under General Montes- 

 quieu, and threatening the Helvetian territory. Geneva 

 required the stipulated aid of Berne, and above eleven 

 thousand men, in aid of three thousand Genevese, occupied 

 the neighbourhood of Coppet and Nyon. A convention was 



