'" Everyone remembers the stately prose in which
Gibbon records when and how he determined on his great masterpiece,
when and how he completed it. "It was at Rome: on the 15th of
October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while
the bare-footed friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter,
that the idea of writing the Decline and Fall of the City first
started in my mind." So I could tell with circumstance when, where
and how I first proposed my treatise; and shall, perhaps, when I have
concluded it. But life is short; and for the while my readers may be
amused with an instalment.
Now of all the Mayors of Cornwall the one who most engaged my
speculation, yet for a long while baffled all research, was "the
Mayor of Troy, so popular that the town made him Ex-Mayor the year
following."
Of course, if you don't know Troy, you will miss half the reason of
my eagerness. Simple, egregious, adorable town! Shall I go on here
to sing its praises? No; not yet.
The reason why I could learn nothing concerning him is that, soon
after 1832, when the Reform Bill did away with Troy's Mayor and
Corporation, as well as with its two Members of Parliament, someone
made a bonfire of all the Borough records. O Alexandria! And the
man said at the time that he did it for fun!
This brings me to yet another Mayor--the Mayor of Lestiddle, who is a
jolly good fellow.
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