It is a small 12mo, containing 230 pages.

Here is the Table des Matieres:--( 1) Histoire de Henri II., par Milord Lyttelton; (2) Le Nouveau Guide de Bath; (3) Essai sur l'Histoire de la Societe Civile, par M.Ferguson; (4) Conclusions des Memoires de Miss Sydney Bidulph; Theologie (5) Recueil des Temoignages Anciens, par Lardner; (6) Le Confessional; (7) Transactions Philosophiques; (8) Le Gouverneur, par D.L.

F.Spectacles, Beaux Arts, Nouvelles Litteraires.] When the _Memoires Litteraires_ collapsed Gibbon was again left without a definite object to concentrate his energy, and with his work still to seek.

One might wonder why he did not seriously prepare for the _Decline and Fall_.

It must have been chiefly at this time that it was "contemplated at an awful distance," perhaps even with numbing doubt whether the distance would ever be lessened and the work achieved, or even begun.