4 has become especially fashionable with the rise of liberal and Mar[ist preMudices against religion. And as pessimism has become increasingly fashionable about the future of our :estern civilization, the Decline and Fall oI tKe 5oPan (PSire has become a handy guide to the sources of decay in other empires and civilizations. I will not enter the debate over the adeTuacy of Gibbon’s e[planations of the fall of Rome. Nor will I e[plore the easy—or uneasy—analogies between the career of the ancient Roman empire and that of our modern :estern civilization. My interest in Gibbon’s work is Tuite different. I will not assess it as a “greatµ book. Rather I will consider it as an “intimateµ book. By this I mean a book that has something personal to say to us today. I am aware that it may seem odd to characterize a man of Gibbon’s grandiloTuence of phrase and a multivolume work on such a grandiose subMect as “intimate.µ For me personally Gibbon’s book has an especially intimate signiÀcance. It was the Àrst e[tensive work of English literature or of history which I read and reread. It occupied much of my thought during my university years as an undergraduate. And the engraving of Gibbon’s rotund face, made by Chapman in 1807, a dozen years after his death, hangs on the wall of my study. Gibbon’s face has been with me ever since I Àrst made his acTuaintance.