LITTLE 

 JOURNEYS 



[OD sends great men in groups. From about 

 1740 for the next thirty-five years the in- 

 tellectual sky seemed full of shooting 

 stars. Watt had watched his mother's 

 teakettle to a purpose; Boston Harbor 

 was transformed into another kind of Hy- 

 son dish; Franklin had been busy with kite and key; 

 Gibbon was writing his "Decline and Fall"; fate was 

 pitting the Pitts against Fox; Hume was challenging 

 the worshippers of a fetich and supplying arguments 

 still bright with use; Voltaire and Rousseau were pre- 

 paring the way for Madame Guillotine; Horace Wai- 

 pole was printing marvelous books at his private press 

 at Strawberry Hill; Sheridan was writing autobio- 

 graphical comedies ; Garrick was mimicking his way to 

 immortality; Gainsborough was working the apoth- 

 eosis of a hat; Reynolds, Lawrence, Romney, and 

 West the American, were forming an English School 

 of Art; George Washington and George III. were 

 linking their names preparatory to sending them down 

 the ages ; Boswell was penning undying gossip ; Black- 

 stone was writing his " Commentaries " for legal lights 

 unborn ; Thomas Paine was getting his name on the 

 blacklist of orthodoxy ; Burke the Irishman, was 

 polishing his brogue so that he might be known as 

 England's greatest orator; the little Corsican was 

 dreaming dreams of conquest; Arthur Wellesley was 

 having presentiments of coming difficulties; Gold- 

 smith was giving dinners with bailiffs for servants; 

 'Warren Hastings was defending a suit where the 

 142 



