the appropriate method of determining whether particular acts deserve the one or the other epithet; but he breaks down altogether in attempting to show why men should be good, and he does not even attempt to show whether there are any means by which a bad man may become good. The practical importance of these questions is at least as great as that of the questions which he solves, and men are quite right in not waiting for a complete theoretical solution of them, before trying to find some way of proximately answering them in practice. Without tentative bungling practice, no theory would ever be possible, and the two ought to go as much hand in hand, and to show the same sort of mutual respect, in morals and theology as they actually do in politics and medicine.

2 C

VOL. II

IT has become a sort of fashion to assert that knowledge which is not derived from original study is worthless, that ordinary histories are little more than handbooks or abridgments, and that those who are not in a position to carry their studies beyond such works will never obtain any knowledge worth having. The best answer to such observations is to be found in studying the books against which they are directed. The common sense of mankind has, as a matter of fact, adjudged to them a high rank in literature, and no competent reader can fairly give his mind to them without perceiving that the common sense of mankind is right.

Gibbon's History is, perhaps, the greatest work of the kind that ever was written. When the vastness of the plan, the nature of its execution, and the sort of instruction which it affords are all taken into account-and it requires more than one attentive reading of the whole book to form an adequate con

1 History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

ception of them-the mind receives a deep impression of the importance of a great book, and of the effects which may be produced by the concentration upon one great object of powers which, though perhaps not extraordinary either in quantity or quality, were certainly considerable, and were used with consummate judgment.

The first point which attracts attention in the History of the Decline and Fall is its general plan. It must, in all probability, have grown upon the author by degrees as the work itself proceeded; but it was a wonderful feat of that high form of imagination which is indispensable to the authors of scientific discoveries as much as to poets and painters, to see that such a work was possible, and to seize a point of view from which Christianity, Mahometanism, Roman Law, the irruptions of the different hordes of barbarians, and the politics of the Persian Empire might all be regarded as parts of one whole. There is hardly any important fact in the history of mankind, during the thousand years which constitute the period of transition from the ancient to the modern world, which does not enter more or less into the plan of Gibbon's work; yet, in reading it through, the mind is not made disagreeably conscious of any solution of continuity. Every chapter appears to fit into its proper place, and to stand in its due relation to the rest of the work. A few words will recall the principal features of this vast plan and show its general symmetry.

The Roman Empire, as established by Augustus and extended by some of his successors, included all that part of the world of which the ancients had any definite knowledge. The political system which they established was in its full vigour in the time of Hadrian and the Antonines, and so continued, with interruptions and occasional internal and personal revolutions, for some centuries. Its rivals were Persia on the East, and the barbarians on the North; but the interruptions to the general tranquillity produced by these Powers were for a great length of time exceptional.

The most remarkable effect of its unity, and that which contributed most powerfully to its maintenance, was the system of Roman law. The existence of so vast a power, the uniformity of government and of sentiment which it produced, and the general intercourse between different parts of the Empire which it favoured, gave an opportunity to the Christian Church of forming a State within the State, upon its own principles, under its own laws and administered by its own officers. By degrees, the Church superseded the State, converted the Emperors, and indirectly caused the change of the seat of government to Constantinople; whilst the irruptions of horde after horde of barbarians into different provinces of the Empire, by breaking up the old political constitution, left the ecclesiastical constitution to ally itself with the new Governments, and ultimately to establish a spiritual dominion over them, animated to a great extent by

the spirit of the old Roman Empire, and closely analogous to its form.

Whilst this process was calling into existence a new political system throughout the whole of the Western world, the Eastern branch of the Empire was continually being diminished by the attacks of its enemies the barbarians and the Persian Empire. At last the Mahometan power arose, and added to the list of its antagonists the one under which it was finally to succumb. It substituted for its ancient Persian rivals an enemy far more enterprising and infinitely more dangerous. By degrees the inexhaustible hordes of the North and the desperate fanaticism of the South washed away province after province, till Constantinople alone, with a small amount of territory, stood for the Empire of the East. Its fall was for a time delayed by the Crusades, but at last, on the 29th of May 1453— it was stormed and taken by Mahomet II., and with it fell the last vestige of the Roman Empire, though a sort of parody of some of its titles was maintained by the Emperors of Germany till it was swept away by Napoleon.

This, in a few words, is the subject of Gibbon's great work. Of the way in which it is executed there is but one opinion. No book has been more eagerly criticised by more unfavourable judges, and in none have fewer serious mistakes been discovered. Considering the vast variety of subjects which the work embraces-political and ecclesiastical history,