on tendency
of the slower or more rapid religious or civil innovations. However
these principles of composition may demand more than ordinary attention
on the part of the reader, they can alone impress upon the memory the
real course, and the relative importance of the events. Whoever would
justly appreciate the superiority of Gibbon's lucid arrangement, should
attempt to make his way through the regular but wearisome annals of
Tillemont, or even the less ponderous volumes of Le Beau. Both these
writers adhere, almost entirely, to chronological order; the consequence
is, that we are twenty times called upon to break off, and resume the
thread of six or eight wars in different parts of the empire; to suspend
the operations of a military expedition for a court intrigue; to hurry
away from a siege to a council; and the same page places us in the
middle of a campaign against the barbarians, and in the depths of the
Monophysite controversy. In Gibbon it is not always easy to bear in mind
the exact dates but the course of events is ever clear and distinct;
like a skilful general, though his troops advance from the most
remote and opposite quarters, they are constantly bearing down and
concentrating themselves on one point--that which is still occupied
by the name, and by the waning power of Rome. Whether he traces the
progress of hostile religions, or leads from the shores of the
Baltic, or the verge of the Chinese empire, the successive hosts of
barbarians--though one wave has hardly burst and discharged itself,
before another swells up and approaches--all is made to flow in the same
direction, and the impression which each makes upon the tottering fabric
of the Roman greatness, connects their distant movements, and measures
the relative importance assigned to them in the panoramic history. The
more peaceful and didactic episodes on the development of the Roman law,
or even on the details of ecclesiastical history, interpose themselves
as resting-places or divisions between the periods of barbaric invasion.
In short, though distracted first by the two capitals, and afterwards
by the formal partition of the empire, the extraordinary felicity of
arrangement maintains an order and a regular progression. As our horizon
expands to reveal to us the gathering tempests which are forming
far beyond the boundaries of the civilized world--as we follow their
successive approach to the trembling frontier--the compressed and
receding line