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.Les productionsde la nature et de l art autant qu elles nous sont connues par les anciens, lesmigrations des peuples, leurs loix et leur caractère.Parmi tant d objets siinteressans pour un Philosophe, je saisirois toutes les occasions que mon sujetme fourniroit de rechercher quand et jusqu à quel point la configuration dupays, le climat, la situation ont influé sur les moeurs des habitans et sur lesevenemens qui leur sont arrivés.Apres avoir etabli quelques preliminaires, Jeme placerois sur le mont Palatin avec Romulus, et commencant par le berceaude la nation, et le premier pomoerium de la ville j en parcourrais les quartiersdifferens.Dans la description de l Italie je suivrais l ordre des Conquêtes desRomains et j observerais la division des Regions d Auguste.Je derogeraisseulement à cette division à l égard du pays des Sabins que je seroit obligé dedetacher du Samnium pour le mettre à la tète du Latium.Au moyen d unchangement aussi leger je concilierais ces deux objets et le lecteur suivrait sanspeine les armes des Romains et la narration de Tite Live.]³p[I would follow Strabo rather than Pliny.To my general divisions and tables Iwould endeavour to give all the neatness and perspicuity possible; while Iexamined with the eye of a philosopher the interior of the country and themanners of its inhabitants; the productions of art and nature, as far as they wereknown to the ancients; the migration of tribes, their laws and character.Amidstso many interesting objects, I would seize every opportunity of investigatinghow far public transactions and manners were affected by local situation andclimate.I would place myself with Romulus on the Palatine Mount, and thus²x Journal B, pp.167 70.²y P.168: those two fields of erudition, the Etruscan monuments and those of Herculaneum.³p Journal B, p.169. The return to Lausanne 271proceed to the different quarters of Rome, from the cradle of the nation to thefirst pomoerium of the city.In describing Italy, I would follow the progress ofRoman conquests, and pay particular attention to its division by Augustus intoregions; with this one exception, that I would separate the territory of theSabines from Samnium, and put it at the head of Latium.By this smallalteration I should reconcile the two principles of my arrangement; and thereader would easily follow the progress of Roman arms, and Livy s history.]³¹Gibbon was imagining a programme more ambitious than he carriedout.We know that in the event he was to suppose himself seated not onthe Palatine hill with Romulus, but on the Capitol with Poggio Brac-ciolini, conceiving a history less sociological than nostalgic.Here he wasenvisaging a history not of decline and fall but of les progrès de l esprithumain, using the material structure of the city s buildings, less publicthan private he was interested in the insula as the unit of habitation inurban Rome³² as the setting for a history of their mSurs, formed byclimate and geography and profoundly affecting the course of events ofwhich history was the narrative.It is a striking departure from theprogramme of the humanists in favour of that of the antiquarians,looking beyond even Montesquieu to a point where it parallels but doesnot follow the programme of the Encyclopédie.Gibbon imagines thephilosophic eye looking beneath the roofs like Asmodeus to study thematerial culture of the inhabitants; but the authority of narrative historyremains paramount, and in the last sentence the reader will attempt tointegrate all this new history with Livy s narrative of the Roman con-quest of Italy.The history of the city, even at its most philosophical, isnot to be separated from the history of its empire.Gibbon continued work on his Recueil géographique he saw hisjournal as giving rise to a separate recueil of his readings³³ down to thetime he left Lausanne for Italy and Rome.³t It is hard to say whether hefound it valuable there as a self-programmed guide-book, or whether headded to it in Italy,³u or after his return to England.Printed after muchediting by Lord Sheffield under the title Nomina gentesque antiquae Italiae,³vthe manuscript was plainly never prepared for the publication Gibbonhad dreamed of in Lausanne, nor does it attempt anything like the³¹ Sheffield s translation; MW, v, pp.430 1.³² Journal B, pp.47 50.³³ Journal B, pp.190 1.³t Journal B, pp.260 2, shows him reading up to 16 December 1764, and leaving Lausanne on the18th.³u See, however, MW, iv, p.224, for allusions to manuscripts in the Palazzo Ricardi at Florence.³v MW, iv, pp.155 326; in French Sheffield made no attempt to translate it.Craddock, YEG, pp.182 6, considers his editing of this text a story in itself. 272 Lausanne and Rome, 1763 1764philosophic programme he had envisaged in the passage just cited
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