CHAPTER VI.
LIFE IN LONDON .-- PARLIAMENT .-- THE BOARD OF TRADE .-- THE DECLINE AND FALL .-- MIGRATION TO LAUSANNE.
Gibbon's settlement in London as master in his own house did not come too soon.

A few more years of anxiety and dependence, such as he had passed of late with his father in the country, would probably have dried up the spring of literary ambition and made him miss his career.
He had no tastes to fit him for a country life.

The pursuit of farming only pleased him in Virgil's _Georgics_.

He seems neither to have liked nor to have needed exercise, and English rural sports had no charms for him.

"I never handled a gun, I seldom mounted a horse, and my philosophic walks were soon terminated by a shady bench, where I was long detained by the sedentary amusement of reading or meditation." He was a born _citadin_.