[Gibbon by James Cotter Morison]@TWC D-Link bookGibbon CHAPTER VI 18/48
It is disappointing to find an elegant trifler like Horace Walpole not only far more discerning in his appreciation of such a crisis, but also far more patriotically sensitive as to the wisdom of the means of meeting it, than the historian of Rome.
Gibbon's tone often amounts to levity, and he chronicles the most serious measures with an unconcern really surprising.
"In a few days we stop the ports of New England.
I cannot write volumes: but I am more and more convinced that with firmness all may go well: yet I sometimes doubt." (February 8, 1775.) "Something will be done this year; but in the spring the force of the country will be exerted to the utmost: Scotch Highlanders, Irish Papists, Hanoverians, Canadians, Indians, &c., will all in various shapes be employed." (August 1, 1775.) "What think you of the season, of Siberia is it not? A pleasant campaign in America." (January 29, 1776.) At precisely the same time the sagacious coxcomb of Strawberry Hill was writing thus: "The times are indeed very serious.
Pacification with America is not the measure adopted.
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