EUROPE TO-DAY

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 177, 27 June 1938, Page 11

EUROPE TO-DAY

MIDNIGHT IN A GARDEN, Lausanne. TV ho lias not heard of it? The older (and higher) part of this famous Swiss town is built on the crest and slopes of five little hills and in tlie, hollows between, ■ a picturesque group, especially when seen front the lake—the cathedral 500 feet above. . Unhappily progress has robbed Lausanne of much that ought to have been kept and treasured. Many of the quaint characteristics of the old town have been swept away—and in the general improvement, if we may call it that, Lausanne has destroyed for ever a house dear to all Englishmen. Tlie house and garden in which our great Gibbon finished his famous “Doeh’ne and Fall of the Roman Empire” have been destroyed to make room for the new post office. It is a thousand pities, but we may wander about some of Lausanne’s older streets (they are quaint enough if you search them out) and remember that it was in this town that Gibbon completed his great task 23 years afer beginning it. / He tells us: It was on the day, or rather night of the 27th of June, 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last pages in a summerhouse in my garden. The air was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, and all nature was still. I will not dissemble the first emotions of jo.y on the recovery of my freedom and, perhaps, the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melanchplv was spread over my mind by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and whatsoever might, be the future of my History, the life of the historian must he short and precarious.—(G).