twelve o'clock
After a while they did something very popular . They had the popular ear and the popular heart . Men approved them , and poured gentle words of flattery into their ear , and before they realized it they went into the search of that which they had given up , and were , with Laban , hunting in Rachel 's tent for the lost images . Between eleven and twelve o'clock one June night , Gibbon , the great historian , finished his history . Seated in a summer garden , he says that as he wrote the last line of that wonderful work he felt great satisfaction . He closed the manuscript , walked out into the moonlight in the garden , and then , he said , he felt an indescribable melancholy come upon his soul at the thought that so soon he must leave all the fame that he would acquire by that manuscript . The applause of this world is a very mean god to worship .