"LIFE OF EDWARD GIBBON"

Mr. James Ford Rhodes, LL.D., delivered a lecture last night in Emerson Hall on the great historian, Edward Gibbon. As Mr. Rhodes is himself an historian of considerable note, this criticism was of especial interest.

Gibbon's ambition from early youth, he said, was to be a writer of history, and his early life was one of constant study and preparation for his great life work, "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." This work is one of the greatest historical works written, and has placed Gibbon with Hume and Robertson at the head of English historians. Gibbon's idea was that history, besides the necessary technicalities, should be literature, and this was a great factor in his success.

The early life of the historian was spent in exhaustive reading, and after a short and unprofitable period at Magdalen College, Oxford, he went abroad, staying for five years at Lausanne Switzerland, where he made the acquaintance of Voltaire and Madamoiselle Churchod, the mother of Madame de Stael. He went back to England at 21, only to return to the continent a few years later, visiting Rome and receiving there his inspiration to write Roman history.

Professor Rhodes cited a few criticisms of Gibbon by his contemporary historians, and in conclusion said that his great work. "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," was a masterly work, a basis for the study of all history.

Next Monday evening at the same time and place Mr. Rhodes will lecture on "Edwin Lawrence Godkin."